by Shriram Sivaramakrishnan —
this poet is having dinner with/ a shot of Espresso/ his dinner: Veg Stroganoff/ made of zucchini, broccoli, mushroom, baby corn, green peas, tossed with tomato paste, paprika and cream/ served on a bed of flavoured rice/ ff cc oo ss he saw and ordered/ if there was assonance on the plate/ he does not see it/ the gravy dammed on all sides by the rice/ and that name: Stroganoff/ it reminded him of Smirnoff/ he who once sipped it because his friends wanted him to/ and slipped into the space it offered/ …Stroganoff he says to the waiter/ then Stroganon to himself/ his Kindle snug in its black case/ slant as a rhyme/ resting on the support the case had for easy-read yet wakes up to the slightest of touches to settle on Essayism by Brian Dillon/ Brian is saying how he discovered Barthes from the works of other writers like/ the light reflected off silver ear-studs/ and his Camera Lucida/ Brian stops a little short of calling the ‘picture’ as tincture for the mind/ Barthes too does not say it in Camera Lucida when Camera Lucida is clearly an elegy/ to his mother/ the floorboard bounces from the weight of other customers/ the floorboard is a false ceiling someone says/ this poet is now intrigued/ this poet looks down from his table on the first floor/ the floor is a ceiling/ when viewed from the ground level as it is being looked at now by a waiter who can’t wait/ this poet knows well what the waiter is going through/ this poet who was once a waiter himself/ in black and black balancing draft beers and Crispy Fritters/ his manager watching his every move/ the man who taught him how to face customers how to face the last drunkard of the night/ the same man who said the gin must percolate past the melting geometries of/ ice cubes and settle at the bottom while the tonic/ opened and left to tart the tongue/ the man who spoke of Stevie Wonder with such awe/ the man who played My Cherie Amour/ on a loop/ the man of many cuisines/ this poet knows well what the waiter is going through/ the floorboard still creaks but a floor is not/ a wall/ a dam is a wall/ a wall is a wall on its either sides/ this poet masticates this poet rips the dark side of a mushroom/ strange/ this poet is allergic to mushroom/ but the mushroom takes not much room of his hunger/ this poet does not know it/ this poet only knows that the shot is bitter