(POETRY) Two verse essays by Dipanjali Roy

In two verse essays, Dipanjali Roy draws on the personal and political to articulate 'everyday life in India', in an era of digital distraction and gendered oppression. Drawing on the nexus of dream, subliminals and the literary theory classroom, Roy's work is both critique and playful venturing. Our latest contribution to Digital Dreamland.

SUCH FANTASTIC JARGONS SUCH WONDERFUL SATELLITES

I.

I think the prophetic texts are all called subliminals now 

Lately have been recommended a ton of intention videos

like "Your Future Self Sent You This Subliminal (Don't Ignore It!)" 

Learnt yesterday that you can place an intention inside a .mp4

Think of your YouTube history as a spiritual frequency 

this one creator with 1.1M next to her username writes

Did the algorithm pick you up? Hey I’ve been struggling

for a while and I needed to see something good and this

feels like the light at the end of the tunnel thank you yes, I am 

looking directly into the eye the 🌀 a concentration of hard diamond fractals 

the Doctor Who time vortex is funnelling down into sunlight on a twinkling river 

If you think about it all particles are made to catch the light 

in the absence of manifestation, a piano overlay will have to do

PLEASE DON’T OVERUSE THIS VIDEO

this goddess energy was made especially for you

the universe carried this to you the spirit speeds up the cues 

the algorithm does the rest & we the believers 

are all claiming our share of abundance 

🛰️

II.

Suppose the universe is hopelessly in love with us all 

money and health are attracted to us here like electrons in a blue stream

and if you don't believe it then you must ask what is stopping you 

Watch next: the Minister of Corporate Affairs is asking 

a woman “what patriarchy, ya? Don’t get carried away by fantastic jargons 

Women are sending such wonderful satellites, rockets and spaceships 

and most of those women wear saree, have clumsy hair etc. 

Which patriarchy stopped these scientists here?” she’s so right for that honestly

says another woman in the comments we don’t know it but 

subliminally we are only standing in our own way I learnt it the hard way trust me guys

just have faith instead of wasting time on discourse I’m trying to think 

about what I really got from being a student of semiotics all along

and she’s so right for that because funding for poetry is still the homewound

You really think I'm trying to be a revolutionary? I’m only coming out

of hermit mode take my last two brain cells & put them to work Minister

the subliminals are illuminating what’s free for creative & commercial use 

the algorithm is on your side, the angels are synchronising for you.

🛰️

WUNSCHERFÜLLUNG 

It is always twilight when the train curves the bend at Arjan Garh metro station where, with your back turned to mine, I fall into a long sleep as a wishbone sprung far too soon snaps in two & fear holds me steadfast to the pinwheel of an interminable dream. Dream lays itself at my doorstep like some wretched creature left hard-hocked & half-heathen. Dream arrives on the back of an ordinary hex left bent & broken & barking for kindness. Dream of shelter, of arid plains passing by this train. Dream of sobbing & sobbing & sobbing for what. Dream of Ma from years ago screaming herself hoarse at me as a young girl playing fast & loose with the rules of time. Dream of the self as woman who said all the things I had ever wanted to say, like forget everything that ever happened to you that didn’t happen in a dream. Dream of shaking, shaking, & being shaken awake. Dream where a gleaming langur perches astride a peacock on your balcony & we watch their tails swaying this way & that to the peridot heat of summer in a dream where I let a man shear away my hair & it spills in my hands as evidence that I can still feel like myself without the things that make me feel beautiful. Dream of the town where I forget to be a woman as the weather rips into the bloodmuscle of time. Dream of a dam awash in dynamite, washing it all clean. Dream of mist pouring itself limitless into every vessel I see. Dream of hail streaming in a clamour over corrugated tin. Dream where I, too, learn to weather things. Electric fragments of bone conjoined inside of a dream where I know myself to be unbearably attached to someone else’s dream. Fear dream of married to you & you are nowhere to be found. Dream of blood-red glass bangles & a winnowing basket filled with the whitest, puffiest rice; a fine golden chain wrung around long fingers dipped into alta dripping crimson from a bowl sung iliac, arterial into being as I remain ankle-deep in the monsoon sheeting emerald down the kharif crops beyond the floodplains where you confessed you have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen & that when you saw it you thought of the rain sluicing down a raven’s wing. Antediluvian dream of you abandoning everything for a cause which would have hurt less than the reality of our separation. Dream of survival. Dream writing the mottled chronicle of light leaking from a rainbow over the old silk-cotton tree. Slow dream of cherishment or cherries, whichever you prefer. Dream where the sun is high in the sky above the blue greenwoods terrace with your shadow cast long under the young neem tree as the children way down below are blurred slinging rocks into the hard grain of broken concrete in a game of pitthoo played fast & loose on the streets screaming with laughter run amok. Dream of silver flowers slicing against my foggy breath in the window. Dream of ochre sky splitting in two over the skeleton of a broken mall. Dream of glowing screens. Dream of a florid mob calling for the end of one thing or another. Dream where Freud states that [dreams] are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes. Dream in which I search for you in every crowd in every city, regardless. Spinal dream of indifferent terror from which I, unbidden, awaken – having long forgotten how to breathe. Dream where every vigilant eye turns away from mine. Upended bowl of arterial dye slides a shaking hand over the sunset sky. Please mind the gap. Doors will open to the right.

~

Published: 15/7/25

Text & image: Dipanjali Roy