The gods must be hungry

I walk through this night

Eating away like hungry cats

In hospitals, on streets,

Warzones

Eating the little ones

With ventilators at their nostrils

Gods must be hungry

I walk through this awesome

Deadly dinnerplate

All kinds of meat

Black and blue and crimson yellow

All kinds of blood

Some thick some thin

Cancerous bodies

Viruses eating into the crevices

Of your heart

I see my sweetheart crying

She lost a buddy

Someone lost a mother

Someone a son

I walk through the cacophony of sirens

I walk along I walk along

I see my sweetheart’s face

Covered in blood

For she has been droned

In some corner of Iraq or Syria

In the valley of Kashmir

In the desert of Palestine

My sweetheart’s face multiplies

I walk along I walk along

This world is a dinnerplate

For them hungry gods.

Just like we ate out of Jesus

They eat out of us

A massive dinner party, merry-making

And dancing, lovemaking,

The gods must be hungry,

For I walk through this night.

…

Atreyee Majumder teaches sociology/anthropology at National Law School of India University. Her poems have been published in the Cafe Dissensus Blog, the Sunflower Collective Blog, the Bombay Review, and the RIC Journal. Her current research and preoccupation concerns the contemplation of Krishna-devotion in Vrindavan.