Poem 205 ± December 26, 2015

Devi S. Laskar
Not clock chimes but wind chimes

Even the court’s most celebrated clown
wrestles his shadow when the shades are drawn

and the Christmas clocks begin their midnight
dance. Frightened, he throws the soft wool blanket

over this marrow weariness, eyes to
sleep. In the morning, his shadow Is

underfoot, distorting body and quite
possibly the soul. At noon the jester

believes he’s won, his empty reaper long
disappeared; man swaggers like a cowboy

post victory in the Wild West pioneer
town. By five o’clock the shadow reaches

out from shared nightly grave and slaps him
smartly across each side of his coined face.

Devi LaskarDevi S. Laskar’s poems have appear in numerous journals including (but not limited to) The Atlanta Review, The Squaw Valley Review, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Tule Review, and The North American Review, where her poems were finalists for the James Hearst Prize in 2011 and 2009. She is a Tupelo Press 30/30 Project Poet for December and her work can be found on the Tupelo 30/30 Project blog. Devi is a native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She holds a BA in journalism and English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; an MA in South Asian Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and an MFA in writing from Columbia University. Devi is a photographer, writer, and former crime and government reporter in Florida, Georgia, Hawai’i, Illinois and North Carolina. She now lives in Cupertino, California.