Behind the Scenes, by Tanmoy Das Lala

Alphabet Fireworks, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada), 2016. Click image for artist site.

Behind the Scenes


is what happens when sateen alphabets slide down the gelatinous cells in your brain and reach the knobby bulb of the presynaptic terminal –called synaptic bouton –to ferry across the junctional ports, giving birth, as a result, to a murmuration of thoughts, a word you utter, or simply an alphabet, on which you chew, for the entire course of an afternoon.


Draw your attention, then, to the E, A and K tumbling down the notch the word-mountains make. Alphanumeric trees rise from stony waists and burst in blossoms of wild acanthus. There are roots too, growing deep and muscular into the pit of the rock, where vowels bleed like oil, and rosy O’s spend afternoons eating honeycombs and rye.


Wings of nouns and prime numbers flutter and flap, ruffle and beat, wrestle, tug, yank before the feathers leap off their warm hooklets. Volcanoes simmer with boiling J’s. Birds of flight and endless night eat husks of L’s, necks of 5’s, nails of E’s, following endless dives, whipping splashes, heady roils, after which, is born, a verb or a soluble adjective in the intercession of speech.

Tanmoy Das Lala

Tanmoy Das Lala lives in New York City with his partner Eric and a pea plant. His works have appeared in several online journals. His blog is tanmoydaslala.blogspot.com