Rita Mookerjee
Poetry
Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Iowa State University. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Cosmonauts Avenue, New Orleans Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Queen Mob’s Tea House. She is the author of the chapbook Becoming the Bronze Idol (Bone & Ink Press, 2019). She is the Assistant Poetry Editor of Split Lip Magazine and a poetry staff reader for [PANK].
Rooh Afzah
I tore a rose from its perch
and thumbed its velvet
with plans to watch its corpse
unravel on a table. I readied
myself for the cold trace
of the florist’s. Instead,
I smelled Rooh Afzah, that syrup
my dad stirred into iced milk
in the summer, turning the banal
into something pink and singular
in the smallest juice glass
which made the drink sacred.
I never drink milk now.
No stores in this city
sell Rooh Afzah, and most days,
I can’t even find a bouquet
of real roses, the kind
I smelled in Mumbai
that made me want to suck
the buds and press the petals
to my wrists to make their scent
my own. I have three dozen
perfumes, and none of them
get it right. I’ve learned to
expect nothing of shrubs,
boutonnieres, and centerpieces.
Those roses are sterile, scrubbed
of wildness, stand-ins for
the real thing which is why,
just outside my window, I am
shocked to find that honeyed
scent; to be 13 again, tasting
Rooh Afzah on the back
of a stirring spoon.
“ Like many, I study and enjoy food, but I am also interested in the mouth and its role in poetry. There’s a deliciousness in the utterance of certain words, and I wanted to showcase that here. ”