Until All the Lights Go Out

The last patch of sky in Andheri East

is a melting stream of plastic

Crimson blood flowing

through patches of dusted leaves

The streets are handcrafted with a mosaic of stubborn cultures

Where there was once an Earth are now

sutured roads sewn into the back of their skin – running into starving JCBs

Devouring the last known sediments from bruised intestines

Diversions everywhere

Trapping taxis in a fishing net

Endless brick games of docking – undocking

Played by those who have quit to reach home early

Numbers are new words

Statistics is pure literature

Data embedded into our bloodstream

while we un-think, podcast our mind

when everything blends into everything

there’s only darkness left

Andheri East doesn’t realize

that its sleeping in a belly of void

It’s only a matter of time

until all the lights go out

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Sanket Mhatre’s first book of cross-translated poems, The Coordinates Of Us, won the prestigious Raza Foundation Grant after being shortlisted at iWrite2020 at Jaipur Literature Festival. His poems have appeared in anthologies such as Indian Literature, Yearbook of Indian Poetry In English 2022, Shape of A Poem, The Well Earned, Home Anthology by Brown Critique, as well as literary magazines such as Punch, Borderless, Muse India, Madras Courier, The Usawa Literary Review, Men Matters Online and others.  His second poetry collection titled A City Full Of Sirens was recently published by Hawakal. 

Learn more about Sanket and his work: Instagram: @writeright.sanket, Facebook: facebook.com/writetome.sanket, X: @insanekeeda