Building

By KANYA KANCHANA

“Raise high the roof beam, carpenters.
Like Ares comes the bridegroom,
taller far than a tall man.”
—Sappho

 

A brief architectural brief 

Give me 
a circle, a halo, a circumscription, 
a sphere of eleven dimensions, 
a list of lists,
a key. 

Give me 
a thunderstorm poncho, 
an endangered turtleshell, 
a backpack no heavier than 12 kilos, 
a cave. 

Give me 
a terrace of food, 
a garden of songs, 
a communal lovebowl, 
a lab. 

Give me 
the bones of mammals, 
their tendons and ligaments, 
their shrinkwrap of fascia, 
a ship. 

Give me
a compendium of excruciating minutiae, 
a harem of small kitchen appliances, 
a nest of mynahglitter, 
a web. 

Give me 
the unfittable fit, 
the face of the mask, 
the toomuch that I ask— 

Give me 
or go home.

 

Kanya Kanchana is a poet from India working on her first collection. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Anomaly, Asymptote, and elsewhere. Her translations have appeared in Exchanges, Asymptote, Waxwing, Circumference, Aldus, and Muse India. Her flash fiction has appeared in Litro and Paper Darts, and is forthcoming from The Conium Review. Her work was shortlisted for the 2019 DISQUIET Prize and awarded a 2018 baseCollective Residency Scholarship. Kanya is also engaged in practice, teaching, and Sanskrit philological research at the intersection of tantra and yoga and is currently doing her MPhil at the University of Cambridge.

[Purchase Issue 20 here.]

 

Building

Related Posts

Blue cover of There is Still Singing in the Afterlife

Three Poems by JinJin Xu

JINJIN XU
my mother, my father. / Her skinny blue wrists, his ear caressing a cigarette. In the beginning, / it is already too late, but there is hunger & no time / to waste. 

black and white photo of a slim man's body, arm outstretched from the bbody

LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal

PAISLEY REKDAL
On the seventh day / of the seventh month, magpies / bridge in a cluster of black and white // the Sky King crosses to meet his Queen, time tracked / by the close-knit wheeling / of stars. I watch. You come // to me tonight, drunk on wine / and cards, nails ridged black / with opium

Mantra 5

KRIKOR BELEDIAN
from channel to channel / the lengthening beauty of shadows that float and bow down / and suck at the stones and planks / of the damp, bitter fog / of loneliness, / stone horses let loose their golden neighs / and the waters transform to / stained glass