Damascus Steel
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Holding straighter edge even after battalions strike. Manning the cockpit after pincer formation erasing landing pads pushing back away from provision lines. Steering corp(u)s (callosum) away from its hemispheres. Battling front(al) lines Direct face-off with palsy. Weakening. Shortening. A dwindling. Spear point bent piercing through musculature and filament. Corroded ligaments holding metatarsals as prisoners of war forced at gunpoint to reconstruct novel modes of traversing foreign soil. after the annexation of meniscus. Hundreds of dilated pupils towards a spectacle. What they pretend to deem a miracle. Eyes in line with target as general consensus concluded that concrete rubble is stronger than bone past the angle of momentum for there to be too much impact. Cerebrospinal ooze injected in half-goat, half-ballerina. Layers embedded like the dance of carbon steel in spiral formation, precision of a straight edge held perpendicular to dorsiflexion, offset by shrinking talus and dead achilles far out into no man’s land. Wade into deep fault lines until struggle for power deteriorates. Schedule an act of self-destruction. For a cadaver. Slit wrist doused in formaldehyde. Can’t be as bad as a blame for a failure to act in response to the wails of others.
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About the Author
Sudikshaa Amar is a San Francisco Bay Area poet and an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying neuroscience and history. Their interdisciplinary fields of interest allow them to explore uncharted waters regarding poetry. Sudikshaa employs historical themes that have impacted them as a disabled South Asian person mixed with surrealism and psychedelia. They are currently working on their first poetry collection and have forthcoming publications in IAMB and Groke lit mags. In their free time, they like to crochet and forage for mushrooms along East Bay coast redwoods.