A bear brings forth her young informous and unshapen.
I now wear the pelt of the conjured beast around my groin.
I think of new words for solace, one of which is knifed.
We take no form until licked into shape by the tongues of those who love us.
Sumita Chakraborty is assistant poetry editor of AGNI Magazine and a doctoral candidate in English at Emory University. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, PANK, At Length, Gulf Coast, Adroit, Witness, and other journals; her prose has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Rain Taxi and the Los Angeles Review of Books. This poem takes off from a line in Thomas Browne’s Vulgar Errors.