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-

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

------

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.

reminder

i don't want to forget

the precise angle of your shoulders

or the tight curve of your smile

but it has been a while

and the skin forgets its goosebumps

the heart forgets its joys

there is a deepening void, and i cry

I remember! I remember!

pleasing aches and little plummeting delights!

of course! the pain of that jagged edge of satin petals fluttering out of sight!

on a sunny day --

I remember (because i'm terrified

to recall only that i've forgot, 

to know only 

that i loved you once and then i loved you not

as undeniably

as dreadfully

as a dead thing rots).

011313

is it the gray month

is it the winter rain in the cavern of her
breasts cracking
stone where it falls that makes her break and
say

i'm old
and i'm alone oh

if only if only

i could take the coldness from her
i'd lay it like a shroud over the sky and lick
her ragged forehead till it was smooth as milk.

Spring (a poem from a dream)

All the world has woken finally;
The sun is shining bright - hurray!
Fat clouds amble, smiling lazily;
The wind is soft and sweet today.
And oh, the children, all so beautiful,
running, laughing, off they go!
But here I am cold still and silent
For no friend calls my way "hello,"
and this is as it is, and so.