Author of sixteen collections of poetry, Jayanta Mahapatra’s latest volume is titled Bare Face. He has read his poetry around the world and is widely anthologized. He edits the literary periodical Chandrabhaga. His recent work has appeared in the Sewanee Review.
Poetry
Fall 2007
At Times a Man Growing Old
At times a man growing old plays with a knife On its edge the stars shake pitifully Perhaps he loves this more than anything in the world because it can […]
Poetry
Summer 2003
A Brief Orissa Winter, 2000
A puddle of fire by the roadside. Warming hands of passersby. Elsewhere, a schoolgirl gets ready for class, flapping her wings like a bird about to take flight. Both people […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
Traveler
Every evening the bells of the temple close by rest their easy weight on the bones; it’s time again to wonder what I’ll do with what I learn. A warm […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
Cloak of White
When another funeral passes,the street seems readyto defend itself once again. Mana was seven when she lost her fatherand her mother leftto live with another man. Deaths seem so necessary […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
Defeat
As a child, on my way to school, I watched the fire crackle in the blacksmith's shop. A boy sat, smiling, fanning the flames.I didn't notice his eyes then, misty […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
Season
Spring. A few light clouds do not give the sky its vastness. Or a cry of someone being done to death. Seawaves. Wagtails and grass. They are all there. […]
Poetry
Spring 1992
Sickles
Dust seems in no hurry now, sailing the air. A ten-year-old girl runs after her home-bound cows through the ingenious sunset hour, glancing briefly as we pass by but gives […]
Poetry
Spring 1992
Possessions
Another day of waiting out, wondering about our poets and what they are going to say about us. In pain perhaps they stand inside, but cannot yet slam the door […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
Another Love Poem
This country lives, on its image. In a boy’s hand|the flipped coin of life’s meaning, under the nation’s politics and marches an old darkness comes floating downinto the abyss in […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
In God’s Night
In God’s night you do not knowwhat comes next.Past the window scurry the leaves of summer, born of the awesome wind. They drag me to a freedom that turns from […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
Silent in the Valleys
The world is full of toys, many of them unused. Do I detect a note of melancholy in my voice? No use explaining that my lifehas involved me in delicate […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
Afternoon Ceremonies
The flatness of the earth beneath our feetall of a sudden, the wind left behindin the trees, in between the fingers;and an afternoon monochrome lightwhich pushes the blind mind ahead […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
Shadows
Ash-white mists of morningswill soon turn dark against the heat.Peace. The earth-odor is a burdenwhich one cannot lay downbecause there is no one to pick it up again.This longing for […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
When You Need to Play Act
Motionless. Still. Erect. Alwaysits truth, its rigid forbidding mood.No time to look out and rejoicein what one sees in it. Once, I remember,as the flaming feathers of a dawnbobbed through […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
A Death
A remembered face, a window,time’s lowered eyes:hunched and trembling, hope survives. Here, where I livethe wild weed grows all over the skin.Like a photographer’s light it strikes hard between the […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
Crossworlds
Is Japan, this new world, another mirror?Because I am away from the countrywhere only the old and the impoverished cattle share my pain?My people’s eyes telling my sistershe was a […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
Nakedness
Yes, Runu,it’s you and I who are naked.The winds rise kiteless,and meat measures the speed of hooves,as we let our sympathiesedge past the corners of our nakedness. Here the dead […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
Light
Not just another morning, but a rootthat stirs the light of things,a somewhere to place the foot uponand look. Why think of lost steps,or of the need to know what […]
Poetry
Autumn 1986
From Star to Star
It isn’t that I am trying to defend myselffrom a lie. Or from something I hadn’texperienced before. Nights I follow myselfsavoring the humid dark nettledwith the inflamed mango blossoms of […]
Poetry
Summer 1983
Again, One Day, Walking by the River
The same river, the same sun, the same town. Out of the corner of my eye the barge loaded with golden hay trapped like a leaf in a basin of […]
Poetry
Summer 1983
The Captive Air of Chandipur
Every day, the ancient sea at Chandipur spits out the gauze wings of shells along the beach and rumples the air behind the burnt sands. Who can tell us of […]
Weekend Reads
Shadows
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Fall 1986, Vol. VIII, No. 4 Ash-white mists of mornings will soon turn dark against the heat. Peace. The earth-odor is a burden which […]
Weekend Reads
In God’s Night
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Spring 1991, Vol. XIII, No. 2 In God’s night you do not know what comes next. Past the window scurry the leaves of summer, […]