‘Why don’t you start us off, Mr Tucker?’

‘Joe Works on His College Application

“When I cut off his index finger, the purple was almost black And the cryogenic lab I worked in—I’ll tell you about that tomorrow—

had taught me to cut when flesh went beyond purple. So I cut off his index finger and I slashed at his arm To wake him up. He would have died if he’d slept.”

Pause. Water. Gums smacking each other in places, Then he resumed—

“Yellow is so forcefully cheery isn’t it?”

Looking around at the walls, laughing, and then the sudden, unsurprising turn:

“They think the walls hide it. I saw Dr Swire with my wife— they’ll take my money,
they’ll take everything I won in the lottery.”

Leaning back, “At least they don’t know I rigged the elections.”

A wheezy chuckle.

Joe nodded without looking up from his SAT prep book.

The man propped thin against his pillows

On the iron bedstead next to him,

Was as ancient as the mountains he had climbed,

And he would just repeat his stories the next day anyway;

The insurance salesman looking back on unreal years,

Fantastic times.

He looked at the imitation TAG skimming strong sinews on his tanned wrist;

Another twenty minutes and he would be done for the day.’

I blinked. This tool with six inches of exposed Abercrombie underwear wrote that?

Everyone else seemed to feel the same way. The articulated admiration was surprised, sometimes grudging.

Hatch said that Mr Tucker would be better served if he shifted his focus from poetry to fictional prose.

Rosie was up next.

‘The Kiss

Your lips are cold

But when they touch me,

I feel warm,

And my hands get cold.

My heart is beating faster now

And you are . . .’

I stopped listening.

When she was done, Hatch informed her that she was using an ABCA rhyming pattern in the kindest voice we had ever heard from him.

I was reluctant to go third (three is a bad number—I don’t, I can’t), and nervous about how Sarat Chandra would translate here, in America’s cold Midwest, away from his pedestal place in Bengali classrooms. But Hatch pointed at me and I had no choice:

‘Aubhagi’s Heaven

As the gritty wood of the pyre ensconced another end in flames,
The smoky carriage ascended to heaven.

The Untouchable, Aubhagi, watched from a distance and prayed for the departing soul.

“I look forward to leaving for Heaven in a carriage of my own, son.

She was the zamindar’s wife, and gold adorns her neck and ears as she journeys to the Gods. Find a little wood, son,

Give me a carriage that will travel to Heaven.”

Aubhagi left when the monsoon rains came.

In her last moments, she thought of the journey to Heaven, Finally, on her smoky carriage along the road paved with skies—

And her son begged for wood.