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Broadcasting

 

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You have reached the voicemail of God—said the high 

pitched voice, and so making the most of this one way

street, I went on a 16-minute rant about the state of affairs 

in the world of my mind, my nervous system a random 

cluster of vibes, both dangerous and mellow, so it was 

only natural that it bared its full range when provided an 

opportunity by providence, starting first with a scathing 

review of the movie based on a favorite novel, then 

traversing a grid of subjects: the lover who called me by

my last name, my parents of course, the friends I wished 

I spent more time loving, the steady protrusion of my belly, 

the sudden intrusion of my age, the cucumbers sprinkled 

with chili powder I loved eating as a kid, the incomplete 

poems, the incomplete relationships, the occasional bitter 

mango, and then tapering off into casual gloom as I tried 

summarizing the futility of the career I was after, that

what I was after I knew was a mirage, yet I wanted 

to exhort in me the remains of details to be able to dive 

into further detail, to make anew a bed of detail, to seek 

pleasure in detail, to absorb detail from detail—when the

phone rang to shock my ear and in the vibration, I felt relief.

 

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Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, The Boiler, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review and The Journal, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. He has been nominated previously for Orison Anthology, Best of the Net and Best New Poets. He spent his early years in Odisha, India, and now lives in Bangalore. He tweets at: @satya043

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