And All, For This

By Anannya Uberoi

It pops out of

pink pods in this

flamingo circus. Stiff frocks

on girls, they don’t wind

but the wind flushes fuschia 

on their blank faces and

one by one

    their loose-held ribbons fall.

I know Siene is rose-rocked

and yet dip in my feet,

twirl into the stilted atmosphere

    without a stopple

until I plough into nothing

but the upland air.

The girls put their

finicky hands to their mouths,

carnation crepes mushroom

in their awkward, tied-up hair;

their forms are like rubber

statues on candlewax,

    cake toppers thrusting

into this thick-whipped façade

of joy, ambrosial joy.

Behind 

the rainbow pelmets,

into wires and fixtures

of my collapsing Eden

the ant-sting caramel coat

of my lips,

and even with the juice

of burgundy leaves packed wet in my mouth,

    I fall at last.

Anannya Uberoi is a full-time software engineer and part-time tea connoisseur based in Madrid. She is poetry editor at The Bookends Review, the winner of the 6th Singapore Poetry Contest, and a Pushcart Prize and Best of Net nominee. An avid traveller, she has extensively toured the Himalayas of Northern India, Bhutan and Nepal. Her work has appeared in The Birmingham Arts Journal, The Bangalore Review, The Loch Raven Review, and The Madras Courier.