Introduction by Tiffany Troy

Ilora Bhattacharyya’s “Pixelated red heart” documents the “doomscrolling” emblematic of the post-COVID modern age. Rather than Edgar Allen Poe’s tell-tale heart, we have the “pixelated red heart” of Instagram and social media, influencers, and fake news. In this way, the mother figure serves to uproot the speaker’s fixation, albeit only momentarily, in the bit-sized lines that mirror the shortened attention span endemic of social media. In “What faith doesn’t feed” and “Silent pleas,” Bhattacharyya attempts to give voice to the women and the animals, and what is surprising about the turns in both poems are the speaker’s ability to connect the visceral shouts of a protest with her own interiority (“Words that shouldn’t be said”) and to make visceral the pain of laboratory animals.

Pixelated red heart

I’m eating dinner at the table
Fork in one hand
Phone in the other
Mindlessly scrolling
Illuminating that red pixelated heart
My digital praise
For these gorgeous
Happy
Perfect
Looking people

Eat this
To look like that
Buy this
Don’t wear that
That’s “out”
But this is “in”
A checklist for existing
Being fed information
That I don’t know is true
But do I really care if it’s true
Because as long as all the boxes are ticked
Then I’m safe
I’m enough

It’s an addiction
That I can’t tear myself away from
This silent self-degradation
It’s swallowing me whole
Consuming me
As if no online presence
Means no presence at all
Because it didn’t happen
If I didn’t post it
Who cares about being in the moment
When I could get a hundred likes
And be praised in the comments
By my followers
My “friends”
For this beautiful
Enviable life
That I’ve carefully curated
A life that’s not really mine

My mom says to put my phone away
At the dinner table
But she just doesn’t understand
Doesn’t understand that I have to
Like and comment and share and respond
That I have to stay present

What faith doesn’t feed

We are in the 21st century.

You say abortion is immoral,
Prohibited in your religion.
So now she doesn’t get a choice,
She doesn’t have a voice.

Why does your God
Dictate her life,
Seal her fate?
Will it be your faith who feeds her child
When she cannot?

You say pro-life,
But not hers.
Not the life,
Not the body
That’s living, breathing,
Fighting, bleeding.

We are in the 21st century,
Yet still we march,
Still we shout,
Words that shouldn’t have to be said:

My body is not yours.
My body is not theirs.
It is mine.

Silent Pleas

Muzzle around the mouth
Chain around the neck
Tail between the legs

Their innocent souls
Consumed by needless pain
That human hands inflict
Their once pure and curious eyes
Now gleam with fear and apprehension
With questions and silent pleas
That they feel so deeply
But can never voice

They wonder what it’s like
To have enough food in their stomach
So they don’t feel their ribs stab
At their tender skin
To have the comfort of a roof overhead
That doesn’t feel cold and confining
Like that of a cage
With no escape in sight

And they wonder how it is
To be touched with gentle hands
To be held with loving arms
To be seen by a pair of eyes
As something worthy
Not expendable
Not disposable
But deserving of the love
They want to give

*

Ilora Bhattacharyya is a student at Stuyvesant High School and a guest editor of Matter Monthly.