Nabokov Shuffled

By Rony Nair

attention spans close in on revolving doors

where Russian roulette is doled out for free in carotid bands, in naked lunches that cavort in restless smiles—the buddha lay somnolent as a vegetable while you cut me off

and said you had to go. 3 seconds into somnolence where we take deep breaths and wade in

a second adolescence. selfish as always, selfless in doling out epithet and time.

clocks whose second hands circle left hands touching tumors on your spine.

lurching forward they cling to new buddhas of suburbia

revving in, all newness and culverts

raised in purple haze, long engagements entrapping only the parents of holy cows, anxious as ever

to sever their own triptych memories of surrender.

ripped up pieces of Piscean horror, innuendo

explodes across November rains and shattered plates, over mid-western skies fumigated with grass and marijuana spines. legalized in cavorting around.

our demise.

Rony Nair has been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. He is a poet, photographer and a part-time columnist. His professional photography has been exhibited and been featured in several literary journals. His poetry and writings have been featured by Chiron Review, Sonic Boom, The Indian Express, Mindless Muse, Yellow Chair Review, New Asian Writing (NAW), The Foliate Oak Magazine, Open Road Magazine, Tipton Review, and the Voices Project, among other publications. He cites V.S. Naipaul, A.J. Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to F. Scott Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish, as do the thoughts!

Photo credit: Woodcut illustration of the zodiac sign Pisces used by Alexander and Samuel Weissenhorn of Ingolstadt, from Provenance Online Project.