For my Grandmother and Derek Walcott Voyages by sea from two spice islands lay claim to the hidden song that is plucked by momentum from my hidden sinews. There is no logic or reason to this intersection of personal histories. Why two men with diverging histories sailed from Jaffna and became station masters. Why their […]
I always eat what I eat, alone. So true, that what spills from our lips has a life of its own. Flowers, jewels, toads, and bones: I speak in streamers to cast my spells. You, you swallow what you cannot keep: gingerbread children, a red riding cape, a river stone heated to make stone soup. […]
You arrive in the night to smash and topple stones that mark our resting place. This golem is cousin to the gravestones and stands guard against vicious interlopers. Your task is hatred in action, but the golem cares only for truth. This golem is inexorable stone in motion. You drop your tools and try to […]
After, it is like surgery: things heal or they don’t, the stitches pull or the wound reopens, offering a spill of fresh grief, a spark of pain, the way steel flints when it is being sharpened— just enough light to be a reminder, but too small to speak against the night. Eventually, you tuck it […]
Urgent through the lambent air Stormcrows croak “Despair, despair!” Dark clouds race against the sun And the water will not run. There is nothing here to eat And the heart will find defeat. All the iron rails are rust And our dreams have turned to dust. What is it that says this trope Is more […]
I made this land myself. I put dirt in my own mouth and hoped it would mature; you made manure of the bodies of our mothers, asked us to chew the remains, and on our tongue they whispered, Babalú-Ayé, make my children potters of a planet, give them farmers’ […]
Here I am, the understove-listener, the ancestral keeper of an indefinite gender and infinite hairiness who lives under your kitchen threshold, under your fridge, making your ice cubes perfectly square when you deign to pour yourself a drink: minimalist living requires an absence. I protect you while you sleep—but you want to wake up in […]
Do you remember the hands of men? How they pressed into your skin until red blossomed across the surface? How their intentions left patterns on your body? When you fled through fields, through forests, up mountains, up hills, into streams, into […]
She wraps herself in the sparkling sky A black sari of sleekest night Ageless maiden clothed in mortal form In her chest beats a mirror pool Rippling with regret Solitude lived in shadow stings, it says Sip your grief, sip your grief The stars in her sky-silk Are heavier than salt Gleaming, ringing in each […]
you should fly fragile bones and your heart beat beat beat your gilded cage cannot hold you the stars call your name and the nebulas are your skies the Pleiades your home somewhere, they meet, hand in hand, the bridge of your kin a red wedding string joining generation after generation you should fly fragile […]