“Refusing March” by Anindita Mukherjee

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Refusing March” by Anindita Mukherjee.


Refusing March

By Anindita Mukherjee

The end of March is a madhouse—

Suddenly I have to swallow crinkled cones

with a clenched grin. But I am not alone, a wild

cavalcade puts the whale’s weight on me.

Suddenly I have to count moons for Neap tides.

‘Nep’ which means ‘nipped in the bud’ which

means a fresh wound which means a queen bee

has broken the colony without her hymnal

drone, which means in the end a frenzied hum

has refused April’s march. On such a topical day

My cat purrs—


Copyright © Anindita Mukherjee

Anindita Mukherjee is a poet, translator, and editor. She is a PhD student at the Department of English and Film Studies at University of Alberta. Her latest book, How Silkworms Break Their Eggs: Selected Poems (2024), brings for the first time the Bengali poet Mridul Dasgupta’s works in English. Her poems and critical works have appeared in The Guernica Editions, The Antonym, Madras Courier, The Lake, and The Paris Institute of Critical Thinking, among others.


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