Elegy for a Poem by Gita Viswanath

Painting by the poet herself
Metaphors twisted like a unalome
and drowned in a bucket of soaked clothes.
Similes stumbled down the stairs
and fractured a few bones.
Conceits hovered over the chillies
drying on the corridor and vanished.
Alliterations ambled along
only to fall over each other.
The knock on the door
broke the flow of words.
The cooker’s whistle
blew away the lines on the page.
The pesky phone’s ringtone
blurred the image in my head.
Finally, I placed the poem in a coffin
and consigned it to dust.
It deserved an honourable burial