Track Eight: “Alienation of Affection”

Track Eight: “Alienation of Affection” Sumita Chakraborty (bio) Keywords poetry, Sumita Chakraborty, aliens, outer space, exploration, rabbits, cats, animals, fur When cleaved of their fur, rabbits look like they do not come from our planet. Perhaps they came to us, bare, from yours. Perhaps some of you came here with these creatures, their muscle and fat smooth around their lungs—the size of thumbs—and their eyes protruding from their faces, like emaciated cats. Or perhaps you sent them on a spacecraft alone, and it is mere luck that they landed safely. Perhaps they prayed as they hurtled toward the ground. Perhaps their little eardrums popped. Regardless of their provenance, what happened next is the same. You left. The mystery about them is the same as the mystery of all of us. Where did they find their first pelts, and how did they learn to attach them to surfaces that were so raw, so smooth, and had such little to cling to? [End Page 50] Sumita Chakraborty sumita chakraborty is a poet and scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection Arrow (Alice James Books [US]/Carcanet Press [UK]), which received coverage in the New York Times, NPR, and the Guardian. She is currently writing a scholarly book, Grave Dangers: Poetics and the Ethics of Death in the Anthropocene, which is under an advance contract with the University of Minnesota Press. The recipient of honors from the Poetry Foundation, the Forward Arts Foundation, and Kundiman, she is assistant professor of English and creative writing at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. Copyright © 2023 The Massachusetts Review, Inc