by Vinita Agrawal
Vinita Agrawal writes a poem about the overwhelming thrill of the alien pleasures of a big city when she visited it for the first time. It’s about wanting to risk the forbidden adventures of everything unfamiliar… iconised by the metal bean structure.
Silver metal bean of Chicago
How will I digest you?
You didn’t rise from the gardener’s hands
Nor from the elusive rain
but from mercurial skylines of Loop Area
And its famous clouds above
You’re the world’s modern navel
Studded with reflections
Polished, with no visible seams
I’m just a lonely tune
lost somewhere in between.
Never again will the winds be so shameless
Feel my touch, today, feel my touch
This roaming isn’t as straightforward as it seems
Chicago, tonight I am instilled with meaning
Like a firefly, I burn and fade
In the glitter of your night
Wanting to be lost in lanes where nothing is gained
Such a sweet dilemma. One Chicago night.
Vinita is a Mumbai-based, award winning writer and poet. Her poems have appeared in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Open Road Review, Everydaypoets.com, Mahmag World Literature, Miracle Magazine, Spark, The Brown Critique and Mandala among others. She was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 and awarded first prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2014, commendation prize in the All India Poetry Competition 2014 and the 2014 Hour of Writes Contest twice. Her debut collection – Words Not Spoken – published by Brown Critique/Sampark was released in November 2013. She was featured in the ten questions interview series on Fox Chase Review. She has a Masters in Political Science with a gold medal and is a full-time writer, working freelance.
A beautiful thought…