Special Feature Collaborative Poem--By Sheikha A.--Pakistan/United Arab Emirates and Suvojit Banerjee--India

In Kafka Dreams

By Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee

The keys have been tapping on their own;
my pen moves to its metronomic ticking
the way Marquez poured under the rain
in his head; the silence lengthy, the story
trapped in air; Kafka’s ‘giant insect’

metamorphosed; black like the unknown
Morse codes travelling from Austrian graves
where Kafka sleeps in his box of magic

when my Marquez self looks for relationship
with life – from his ghost the way to move
away from intellectuality – towards Aracataca,
and heat, dusty swirling banana leaves

in anticipation for the greatest singular line
that can capture fish falling from the sky –
the man that disappears isn’t really a man
but a brave leaper ready to strike a deal –
a dead space in between – a proliferation

of poetry seeking mind’s warmth and insanity.
Kafka, the provocateur/Marquez, the lover; dying
railroads to nowhere, the sounds of inconsequential
things. Faceless people haunt me to create Odysseys
from where I disappeared into the fog to come back
unscathed in body and tattered in soul, waiting
for the taps of keys to turn into whispers, the sea
to divide the Noah’s Ark. Miracles seldom happen.

Kafka’s insect hangs in my dream by a thread;
and all I see is a house, like a spectre with eyes
glowing green.

Authors' note : Inspired from an interview of Marquez in the Paris Review. Link:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez