Debarun Sarkar lives in Calcutta and spends most of his time juggling between freelancing and writing. Recent works have appeared in or are forthcoming in 1:1000, Visual Verse, Former People, Burningword, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Your One Phone Call, Wild Plum, Tiny Donkey, among others.

Talk of Desert at a Music Festival

I met him among strobe lights
accompanying bass across a desolate
landscape at the fringes of the city

He talked of Rajasthan 
zealously
said he travelled from the desert 
						so far
to listen to music and dance

His camera popped out
	guns at the borders
	my fake hand pistol
	killing the policemen
	looking for drugs
	
I wrote of deserts
dust and sand for a year
to encounter an epiphany

of ravanhatta in the mind
and the sounds
of an ex-opioid user

shuffling in and out of
institutions
raising my fear of temptation

of utterances and feelings
I had left behind with the
words of dust and sand

the everyday torrent of muzzles
popping in and out of pockets
straight fingers deformed 

[image: Trey Ratcliff]