the bystander effect
even the wind waited
for the dinner plates of the sky
to coincide and dine.
everyone there— i knew
instagram, work, or school.
we passed by and through
each other. rubbernecking
to the blue abyss above us.
teeth know how to make
cheese shredded. my friendships
jules’ friendships— stripped
with locked lips. ribbons
of cheddar, blotches of feta.
mounds of silence. no backbones
in backs, popularity contests taking
the stage under the eclipse.
for a moment, we’re all shadow
beneath the dinner plates. finally
kissing in the dishwasher.
on the north lawn of south
westchester. i nearly burned my retina!
tammy explains the foothills of fresno to her daughter
tammy said she’d drive these roads
with her first husband stacy.
they’d get up on a saturday morning
grab a cold drink, fried food
wrap their hands around each other’s
hearts and get on the curvy, undulating hills—
collect rocks, memories, miles
on the odometer.
outside the car window, there is a fake lake—
a fourth of its normal size, dried up
like tammy’s eyes,
the hills surround us with their dust and rubble.
“that’s why i have so many rocks around our house”
she tells jensen.
we pass a herd of cows and a billboard
advertising their milk.
there is a calf huddled next to his mother— it’s not cold
today, it’s tammy’s birthday.
“if you could do it all over again,
would you take him back” jensen asks (at the expense of her existence
late september, partly cloudy)
“i just like the rocks, j”
3rd annual tiger resource convention
105 bengal tigers congregate around the shallow watering hole.
the keynote speaker, mr. bigstripe
stands, commands attention with a smoke pipe, and declares
this year we’re not going to talk about our survival or thinning ranks.
instead, we’re going to start catching and employing humans
during their mangrove tours.
all the patrons knew those funky, two-legged mammals neared extinction.
why not make a show of it?
the young miss pauwline interjects, they can blow bubbles, bleed, become
bait for prey!
very well then. we’ll show humans praying to some animal called a god, echoed mr. bigstripe.
but it’s not a dog! it’s a more powerful human, chimed general black.
miss pauwline began to wonder about this god—
it did not please, instead
it let those humans cut the trees
kill our bodies to make rugs.
perhaps we can make souvenirs of them, general black suggested, their eyes could be expensive
marbles, their toes can be candied snacks, we can get all our land back once we get those two-
leggers off our backs!
Sadhika Ganguli is a senior at SLC. She enjoys writing about and questioning nature and the human condition, as well as writing poetic portraits.