Devanshi Khetarpal

Leaving

listen:  I play dead
with everyone all the time

but here’s the thing:
mother keeps this shadow &

cleans these bones      the water
kneading my toes into lattice-work

pulling it like a drop out of the ocean
but please listen: make this grave

with your feet in such quiet that
no noise can act like it has seen

             a body before birth

Well, I own an 18th-century copy of the New Testament in Ancient Greek. I bought it in 2014 from an antique book-seller in Cambridge, UK. Although I can't read Ancient Greek (yet), I feel strangely proud of it.  

Devanshi Khetarpal is a Bhopal-based poet. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio 2015, she is the Editor-in-Chief of Inklette Magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Corner Club Press, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, The Cadaverine, HIV Here and Now and Alexandria Quarterly among others. Khetarpal is the recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest by Hollins University and was a winner in the Young Authors Writing Competition by Columbia College Chicago.