III

not sight, not beholder
                              but distance

not expert, not apprentice
                                     but autodidact

not light, not shadow
                          but body,   gash – a midpoint between inside and outside

not body, not voice
                           but listener

not object, not desire
                                       but play

not A, not B
                        but C     (see, sea, or, with a baby urinating, sheee sheee)

not above, not below
                           but calling

not lover, not beloved
                        but triangle,       its empty chest, an archive

not before, not new
                         but seeing through

not progress, not regress
                                     but those falling behind

not creator, not created
                                   but percolation,       a resting sieve.

Elegy

I carry a stone through my life.		It shapes my body into its hard design.

I hear my heart’s thrum in its thrum.	Its limbs, like my limbs, 
become an obstruction and a vehicle. 

The stone resembles a horse in the street – in the supermarket, 
it becomes a cart.

When I sleep, I stir in the light of its fastened eyes. 	When it moves, I see porous.

The stone emerges as flowers for my beloved.   Soon, 
the stone is solving sudoku  making cappuccino for my spouse  teaching dogpaddling to my kids. 
                                                     
                                                     
                                                                               stone, stone, stone,  they cheer at the game –

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Arpita Roy is a Creative Writing PhD candidate at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she is a Managing Editor for Interim. Arpita has received awards from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Vermont Studio Center. Her work is forthcoming or can be found in The Rumpus, Fence, Iron Horse Literary Review, Cream City Review, Thrush, and elsewhere. Arpita is from Kolkata, India. Find more of her work at arpitaroypoetry.com