Death by Language (for Katsushika Hokusai and Pablo Picasso) The midday sun turns muted ochre, bee-buzz softens to a lull, I am falling into my phone's lockscreen. Pale blue turns azure, now sapphire, now yale, now midnight blue as I dive deeper; the texture of water is ice on gooseflesh. Now here is the promise of a thousand nirvanas! Delicate pink tentacles on skin, mouth wide-open onto my sex, mouths that contain thunderstorms, mouths devoid of language, any language, all l.a.n.g.u.a.g.e... The sea evaporates into sunlight- my friend laughs and says how an orgasm is a 'little death' in French- "We call it la petite-mort". Maybe all pleasure is death, some deaths, pleasure? His laughter echoes, then transmorphs into Picasso on the wall: here the woman becomes the octopus. I stare at it until sunlight evaporates again, and I, I am her, but also myself, the octopus, & the painting staring right back into my own eyes. Nikita Parik The recipient of Nissim International Poetry Prize II 2020, Nikita Parik holds a Master's in Linguistics, a three year diploma in French, and another Master’s in English. Diacritics of Desire (2019) is her debut book of poems, followed by Amour and Apocalypse (2020), a novel in translation. She was the former Assistant Editor of Ethos Literary Journal, and currently edits EKL Review. Her works have appeared in Rattle, U City Review, The Alipore Post, Vayavya, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Bengaluru Review, and others.
1 Comment
AVERI SAHA
6/18/2021 01:15:34 am
I love the surreal in your poems. It transports me to a different plane of reality.
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May 2025
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