Rochelle Potkar
Rochelle Potkar Poems
Memory is… images of a prepubescent boy cycling home,
Parag milk packets in one of his arms,
feeding biscuits to a stray gaggle of brown dogs, wagging their shins.
...
Not remembering sleep or the winter of her skin
she dozes and wakes, taking away your burning
with the single-most thought of
salt-water towels on your back and forehead
...
Light over sea, beach light, window light, moonlight,
jaguar-eyed moments,
cloud-bitten biscuit suns,
large white bed sheets…
...
His father's shadow rises every night with the silhouettes of knives, blades, sickles, belts, and whips, growing and looming over his mother's face.
These rise into his dreams too with Amar Chitra Katha, Super Commando Dhruva, Superman, Batman, Bone, The Dark Knight Returns, Sandman, X-Men, and Watchman. They rise into his mother's screams in voice bubbles from Robot, Final Fantasy, Star Wars, and Avtaar.
...
Life after death is not about soul-recycling, incarnations. Before the soul pulls away to ether through 10 dimensions, the realms of knowledge to the feet of light, it leaves behind its old coat, jacket, garment in dirt, mud, grit. Glove slips from finger, rings from toe, tongue from cheek, energy from promises, love from hope, hope from memory.
In this dark abyss, cells emit CO2 in a stream like steam from a train, smoke from a chimney. It turns into glue what was once your beauty. Bacteria, fungi, microbes melt your nationality, color of skin. Sulphur, freon, benzine, carbon tetrachloride evaporate your caste, creed, religion. Maggots, beetles eat your Easter flesh, identity. Bones divide protein into dust and your once-ago body breeds trees. Then, the soul sings in a mynah bird, a parakeet, a guava fruit seed, a Newton's apple.
...
At the time of my birth, my small town Kalyan, did not have a library.
It had no road rage, few beggars, one defunct traffic signal at Murbad Road,
and fewer cars.
...
Rochelle Potkar Biography
An alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2015) , and Charles Wallace Writer’s fellowship (2017) , Rochelle Potkar is the author of The Arithmetic of breasts and other stories, Four Degrees of Separation, Paper Asylum. Her poems The girl from Lal Bazaar was shortlisted for the Gregory O' Donoghue International Poetry Prize,2018; Place won an honorable mention at Asian Cha’s Auditory Cortex; Skirt was made into a poetry film by Philippa Collie Cousins for the Visible Poetry Project; To Daraza won the 2018 Norton Girault Literary Prize in poetry; War Specials won 1st Runner up at The Great Indian Poetry Contest 2018; Amber won a place in Hongkong's Proverse Poetry Prize 2018 Anthology. Her reviews have appeared in Wasafiri, Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, Asian Cha, and Chandrabhaga. She has read her poetry in India, Bali, Iowa, Stirling, Glasgow, Hongkong, Ukraine, Hungary, and the Gold Coast. Her upcoming book The Inglorious Coins of the Counting House is longlisted at the Eyewear Publishing, Beverly Prize UK. Winner of the 2016 Open Road Review contest for The leaves of the deodar, her story Chit Mahal (The Enclave) appeared in The Best of Asian Short Stories, Kitaab International, and ‘Parfum’ was a notable entry at the DISQUIET International Literary prize, Lisbon. Rochelle is working on her first screenplay, selected by the NFDC Screenwriters Lab 2018 for development. She has been invited as a mentor at Iowa’s Summer Institute 2019. She blogs at: https: //rochellepotkar.com.)
The Best Poem Of Rochelle Potkar
Biscooti Love
Memory is… images of a prepubescent boy cycling home,
Parag milk packets in one of his arms,
feeding biscuits to a stray gaggle of brown dogs, wagging their shins.
Large half-moon eyes, kind salivating tongue,
his smile showed no cookie-crescent as he fed them all;
he was my first love.
More than the girls, the calves and canines knew his way home,
this small-towner of a bygone Bhaarat who found humans in animals,
he grew hunger in me.
Now in this morphing, super-quick India, his animals are holographic.
His love fades cookie-slim into the sun of many states, tastes, time zones.
He has not one trail from work to home, but ten homes.
He, the colour of chocolate, almond-abdomened,
he found love in many cities,
technology-girls,
animals in liberated women,
who fed off his glucose, milk, sugar, marmalade;
they never grew thin.
Over the trail of his virgin-white honey, the scent of shudh desi,
Old world in new crackling wrapping,
always with a 30% improved marking.
Bearing the saccharine of my bites and goosebumps,
he now breaks under my neurotic granular breath.
chai mein dubha hua - tea-dunked, wafer-thin, milk crux-ed.
My Pickwick, Marie, Parle G, Tiger,
Oreo, Bourbon, mall-shelved Belgian,
online baked-and-ordered
same old-same new,
premium cream-crunched love.
*Bhaarat - India;
shudh desi - country-made;
chai mein dubha hua - tea-dunked
Rochelle Potkar Comments
Rochelle Potkar Quotes
If a day is a life, a word is a story.
relationships die before a person. relationships outlive a person.
If you don't go for their book launches, they won't come to yours. If you don't go to their funerals, they won't come to yours.
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8/8/2026 8:51:37 AM # rel_20260806T081513Z_580e7f4
