Aquarium : Jagari Mukherjee

Jagari Mukherjee is a poet, editor and reviewer based in Kolkata, India. She has authored three collections of poetry, a chapbook and two full-length volumes. Her latest book, The Elegant Nobody, was published by Hawakal Publishers in January 2020. She is a gold medalist in English Literature, a Best of the Net 2018 nominee, DAAD scholar from Technical University, Dresden, Germany, a Bear River alumna. Her poems and other creative pieces have been published in different venues both in India and abroad. She is the winner of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 for Book Review, Poeisis Award for Excellence in Poetry 2019, and also the recipient of Reuel International Prize for Poetry 2019, among other awards. She recently won the Women Empowered Gifted Poet  (Powerful Emergent Voice) Award.

Aquarium

Inamorato, do horses from fairy tales

move across the curves of years?

The mechanics of soul-splitting fears

once forecast a separation,

but you came to me like a protagonist

from a rainbow.

I instantly recognized you—

an ethereal fish in the blue-glass aquarium—

the man with the tender eyes.

Inamorato, our skies turn water

and we swim together where

all hues meet.

There, I hand you a dandelion white.

We tear off the petals, the last of which,

forecast fair weather.

I take a deep breath and pick up shards,

and shuffle favorable cards like you

play the harmonica. On repeat.