October poems (2)

10142016 dream

Something that gleams in the hot
bath water, sparks,
and my jerking thighs.

                                      You, falling
           from my lolling tongue and
                               quiet of cooling
                                             smoke.

*

october

I collect masks, laughs
like jittering candles, death
gasps of branches -
a wind brings crystals in the night.

September poems (11)

last-ness

our shadows straggle, lagging
on every brick and twig as
we chase gold down
graying streets











*

i couldn't say

how bodies gasp
how goosebumps glaze thighs
or how the mind, blind
earthworm, writhes and
crawls for rain
or how the skin explodes -
don't ask me to explain.

*

September (quiet autumn things)

With autumn, I'm a quiet thing,
the skirt of fog trailing as
engines whine alive. Go find me
among the grinning burs, restless
with some tale of me; in
cyclones of dust; my kiss
on every balmy blade of grass and
blushing leaf.
One day I'll shake the bones out of these trees.
I know that you want more from me.
But today I watch the red sun
between seams of rain clouds, curled
up in some spot of warmth,
a quiet thing with autumn - let me sleep.

*

do the sweetest thing

love me like a seed a blighted

sun can nourish too; see that

I'll bloom and bloom and 

bloom

*

09152016

girlhood's an

egg that binds

flailing baby

limbs. Ladies

emerging all air and

silk feathers, 

remember, remember, 

the grunt blunt in 

you, your hairy back, your

knuckles only sinking

on this soft beach. 

*

2010

follow the gray path

someday to where the

copper-topped clock 

ticks; sit

on a gargoyle's tongue

once your lungs have

gargled out and

dried

but this moment, like a drop

of rain, runs and runs

down hills and out

past streetlights

and the sun - go there for now. 

*

muse

Want me, explode me. Splatter my bones

on museum walls. Worship me - 

lips, rosebuds never blooming; eyes, winter

sky diamonds. Never know me, but 

speak of me, dream of me, embalm me

like the "i" in "extraordinary" - a syllable you

swallow to make it work - and call it love. 

*

last of summer

she straggles in dapples

of sun across cold fields

dragging her feet, waiting

to meet southbound 

mallards. 

*

I'm a twitch
of rage, a pinch
of anger, puckered
like a volcano, erupting
a moment or two.

*

periods (ongoing)

bent double, I birth
islands floating
red across the warm
bath water

twisting papaya
threads; a split
and gutted fruit

days like a single moaning
wave pass me, nudging

i swallow an ocean this way, gulp gulp

*

092616

yellow evening wedging
into the gloom - a lemon slice,
hints of light this heavy
autumn day

August poems (5)

autumn came yesterday,
golden dress cloaked.

*

rose song

Sweet flower,
make diamonds of
how yearning cools
on waiting lips.

*

170816

let's dig holes through
the days that wait
for us, nest love there
out of time.

*

19082016

you wait for joy like
the moon's gray spots
to fill; galaxies overflow and

spill, child, blossomed
from that dust.

*

where the river changes

I knew you,
River, you were
a kinder thing -

     what sunless wild tore
     your tongue into
     this spitting froth -

     knotted with your heart,

     what swallowed stone
     made home now
     grates to frantic grit

the song that
held me
gently once?

*

july (lack of) poems

july was as silent
as a hand sewing

june poems (10)

this hurt
like glass i swallow
shredding my tongue
taking the words

*

big bang

imagine everything pressed tight-
hot exploding. beautiful;
violent:
that's you.

*

This beautiful sun.
This minute before 7.
Notes of hallelujah spilling from the quiet radio.
This memory of you stirring in my heart.
This love, this ache.

*

remember how slow
the world used to move every day a
drop of light caught in beads
of oil remember night's laughter black
and gold tumbling through the tall grass remember
falling?
how heavy it felt bringing me to you

*

you, a mirage that
pooled
in cracked skin, on
bonedry lips,

i lick myself to taste just
a dream of ran

*

06132016

We lock dead eyes, we
love by chance, lungs
plumped on dust. Above us,
satyrs dance.

*

the sea betrays its
deepest wish, to dissipate
and kiss the moon's smile.

*

if i'm a piece of meat

know: you can lick me dry
but the ugly story of your teeth
will be written on my bones.

*

if my heart is a flower,
it's sick
and never opens to the sun,

only daring to love
the rain on its crinkled skin
promising the sky in every dying dance

*

I go

beyond the promises of birds,
where time runs like a stream down
summer's endless throat,
remembering the scent of apples
your golden eyes and tight tongue coiled
only like a chill that recedes, here
where waves lick away my melting eyes,
I wait for you.

May Poems (8)

Gray May 1st

I wait for May to
burst like a pomegranate seed and
dribble down my lips; today's just
the pith.


in the shower with a thought of you

mist whispering, swirling
against neck; water licking
skin, nibbling; threat
of burning tumbling down
spine; I mere
sigh, melt settling into you.


forecast

clouds bumble in, soft
white like marshmallows, hiding
hearts of hot lightning.


what it is (II)

the quiet of a
flower opening and your
gentle eyes that smile.


loneliness

not in your eyes like dusk
not in your touch like sleep
not in kisses like dreams I gladly drowned in, but
when you left - god

like a star's first waking blink into
nothing, wide-eyed I
drifting cradled in her smile.


05242016

bones that swell and pop
lungs that bleed from screaming
palms collecting journeys for another life

before these, your face is the sleeping moon
and I'm enchanted by craters, waiting for your eyes -


i am so hungry

I am so hungry
for the missing bits of me,

the fullness of a belly
unbuttoned. Hungry for poems

I can't read, for how my
tongue can't twist

anymore and all the million words my mother
plucked from pain. Desperate for memory,

I let your evil jungles split my
brain and licked into the cracks,

smacking my lips: hungry
like you almost.

Almost.

But in the mirror where I go
to swallow myself whole,
my eyes on me are not like yours.

Bless them for what hunger can't take.


05252016

this grey morning-
forecast of split skies-
this day that waits, teetering like a boatman in the fog-
I am by the window braiding words to keep thoughts from flying-
tucking worries behind my ear-

recess

what madness stung
the hearts of boys,
sick with playing nice,

what thirst pressed heavy
on the bone thrilled them to
break a hundred homes,
cackling in delight?

the bees are dying, boys - what madness
stings the hearts of men?

after the fact

No nightingale,
no pain transformed to beauty,
Cracked tongue lodged in this human throat,
I croak broken notes
to sing of you.

7 minutes or until pasta is tender

7 minutes or until pasta is tender,
let's fill ourselves in different ways:
nibbling on tidbits of our days,
the dreams that leave us gasping;
tell me about your hunger
and
simmer with me.

Poetry can be like

forgetting to brush your teeth:
something collects on your tongue
before even waking
an overwhelming need to spit

peck

brevity's the soul of wit but
your lips stretch
forever;

curl into a question mark, love,
let me lay some knowledge on you.

042616

line me in blackest graphite, blur 

me into loving you, i choose 

softness.

the kids want bollywood

The kids want Bollywood
something more North and more West

glittering cloth, bouncing bare hips
praise of lips
on national TV

not so much the kitha-dom of me

------

back home
they learn to point their toes,
the redde is lowered,
hatte bejewled,
mandiya straightened out.

they loosen their palms and step lightly.

we say, it's very indian, it's very western, it's pretty and also
it's very necessary.

the beravas have been dying a long time.

------

I work with a lady who says
give me just a flavour of "Senegalese"

I lean in with a stifled wince: I
crush me beneath a hundred cultures, I
grind me to spiced dust, scatter me.

------

no one knows that
I think of you

in my curled arms
draped across this curving waist,

seeking to see yourself
in half-dropped eyes,

find yourself on
half-laugh mouth.

I think of you in the
tharikita-kun-dath-

I even think of you in the
thah

your body rigid, you gasp me in.

------

#WhatItsLikeToBeADesiGirl
am I a desi girl?

#WhatItsLikeToBeADesiGirl
to be pressed into an even tone

------

the kids want Bollywood, I try to be what they want me to be

------

rivers

ottawa was most of all
the sturdy curve of collarbone,
slope of loose embrace:
a place to rest a burning cheek.

I carry you with me

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
the urgent froth of your dreams beating
against the shore roars
always in the scooped
curl of my ear. I carry your fears.

I carry you with me
your stories like
distant stars, reaching,
tickle in my throat, coughing
fire in the gaping gut, burning
me out.

I carry the contradictions
the hate on your tongue tied in
a mouth that smiled and kissed,
the warm crinkle at the edge
of your eyes that sometimes
filled with spite,
the gentle lick, sometimes the bite.

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
I am the why, I carry this
question and your life
folded over and over itself
in mine.