"if still forest (winter)", Written by Pratyusha and illustrated by Thai Hoang

Writing created by Pratyusha and inspired by the seasons, for a special edition of the Willowherb Review, as part of Waltham Forest London Borough of Culture 2019.

Illustrated by Thai Hoang

making less of the body / worlding: the swallowing of green light

the thin fog of a season’s turn / pungent fragrance in Epping, nineteen

translation as a means for survival / terrestrial seeking what-has-been

fleshy fibres separating skin / roots of blood-current

veins / moss glimpsed through protective barriers, your thin skin

masquerading parchment / felled branch landing into a blueprint

new reckonings through the smell of birch / deodar-song or.

brief loss, trying not to count / mapping leaves & dull brown

collateral damage we could never unsee / overhead, turned down

some forests remind you of other ones / existing in myth

& song / remember the thirteen-year-exile that the five brothers lived

& two women / hidden & lacquer-painted, switched & mimicked

it was a kind of healing perhaps to live other lives / shadowy endurance

I imagine tropical summers yellow & hot / pouring through oak and pine

sap remembers everything / vernalisation of negations & shrines

we could (n)ever? / think corporeal. paddle downforest

luminescent glimmer of presence / cool lungs & a wren singing

collapse into the familiarity of hand-holding / my dear it is composing

The reference to the ‘five brothers and two women’ is an allusion to the story of the Pandavas, from the Mahabharata (a Sanskrit epic poem). These allusions are to various events that occur in the tale, such as when the Pandavas escape a lacquer-painted (and thus highly flammable) palace. ‘Switched and mimicked’ alludes to one of the brothers cross-dressing during a year in exile.

Pratyusha is an Indo-Swiss postgraduate student based in London. Her pamphlet, Night Waters, was published by Zarf Poetry in 2018. She co-edits amberflora, an eco/world poetry zine, at
amberflora.com