“Broken Sonnet” by Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Broken Sonnet” by Sneha Subramanian Kanta.
Broken Sonnet
By Sneha Subramanian Kanta
When we went deeper into a town of hills,
the housekeeper opened coulisses to show
us hung heads of animals hunted by the owner,
now deceased. We had stopped there for coffee,
in an age of no internet connections or digital maps.
We had forgotten what it is like to wear a country
on your face when living there. I remember now
what it means to be an animal, living against
the violence that craves to meet your face,
lick its edges in a deliciousness of appetite.
Before an animal is hunt, he says, it runs for its life,
like this one didโ pointing to the face of a tiger.
I looked at its half-pale face, knowing well
this ache that throbs like the last of night stars.
Copyright ยฉ Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Previously published in So To Speak.
Born in Mumbai, Sneha Subramanian Kanta resides in the Greater Toronto Area. She is the author of six chapbooks and one of the founding editors of Parentheses Journal. She is the 2025 Woodhaven Artist in Residence at UBCO. Her work appears in Room, Grain, CV2, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. Her work has been recognized and supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Writersโ Trust of Canada and The Writersโ Union of Canada.
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