Prasenjit Maiti

DOMESTIC

How do I write your name, Roopsa? How do I spell out the years that have come and gone like cruelty? How do I feel the majesty of our separation, trapped in my ingle-nooks of comfort women and yogurt and Coca-Cola? My daughter at the computer, my wife mangling a steak that burns merrily like our sorrows and my letters never written to you for lack of money and memory . . . You are more distant now than even our frigid anniversaries that come and go like virgin snows, seasonal, fragrant wines and white napkins that help wipe my whiter tears . . . You are my defeats as I write and fail to reach, walk and fail to arrive, make love and fail to satisfy or sustain . . . How do I really write your name, Roopsa? You are my dreams at dawn, the lights all grey, chasing women like beasts of prey . . .

Date of Birth: 1971 Location: West Bengal, India Occupation: Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Burdwan University Email: pmaiti@vsnl.com Website: http://www.serve.com/Lucius/PLG.various.maiti.index.html Publications: Blue Collar Review, Green Queen, Harlequin, Micropress Oz, Monkey Kettle, Nightingale, Paper Wasp, Phoenix, Poetry Church, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetry Greece, Pulsar, Skald, The Journal,, etc.

- April 2002 - For C.C. and Mr. Shaman Midnight at the Hot Springs A Rebeginning Things that are Left at K-mart, According my Dream on Wednesday Little Shadows Anonymity Domestic Leaving the dining room Coup The New Gynecologist Dreaming of Grandma Anastasia Gathering vodka. - Stirring's Best Nature Poems - Rodin's Stare Attrition Hither and Yon Grace at the Top of the Food Chain Dear Alaska fraser river, december