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