Cathexis Northwest Press
dear you dear me
By: Ishani Synghal
you hold an entire ocean inside your mouth you’ll swim
kal: yesterday tomorrow caught in sheer luck
and you know i know one day your knees’ll buckle into water
you’ll encounter problems:
opportunities
so what’s worth digging through dead skin for?
i hope your dry bones’ll keep awakening
and maybe you still take aching breaths over
broken skin brown sin
and whisper-swallow i still don’t know
ma says pray so they’ll hear you
but you know i know the gods don’t giveadamn
so write
to every ocean you’ll swim
with teeth tongue punctuation
Ishani Synghal is a second year MFAW candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a poet first, but also writes creative non-fiction essays. Her poetry has appeared in Storm of the Blue Press's issue "robbers" and essays in the award-winning F Newsmagazine in early May 2020. Selected works are set to appear in the upcoming September 2020 issue of Levee Magazine. Ishani is based out of Chicago, IL and Concord, CA.