realizing it also has a pocket, wondering what a ten
month old would keep inside.
gazing at the blueberry stain as I vacantly rub a wet
Q tip over it, again.
I think slowly, with the deliberation I need to follow through sounds, not drop silverware.When I open my mouth, the oh sound doesn't ah, remains round.
Shine a light through my gullet doc
and you'll see intestine walls lined with fishes
that I drew as a kid. Fishes, yeah. Plural.
Tried to warn them about war, doc.
Nobody listened.
We made love in the kitchen, dinner cooked
In the stove, and then burned in the stove.
I don’t recall what the third mouth was doing
As her first mouth kissed me and the second mouth
Talked and inhaled and talked and exhaled.
One of three brothers, one of three sons, he tells me, one Sunday
his oldest brother choked him unconscious onto the kitchen floor
just to see what might happen.
Elsewhere.
she plays dumb, prefers the old school dumpster meeting in silence. Or the local Pentecostal bad boy and his one-hour evening advice sessions. Or playing dutiful daughter, Or playing tad dumb.
A country of broken tiffin-boxes we are-
If you come from my village
for lunch at my city home
let me know beforehand;
we shall meet at Curry Road station,
both you and I...
Both will be stuck with the tab at the end of the night.
I’ve been the lawyer, so sure that I can argue down
disdain; the doctor, trying to heal the broken at all costs.
Nobody wants to drink alone, but everyone does.
My second sleep, where red, white and blue are burning,
the ashes gleaning and glinting as they die.
I wake to the carmine rays of dawn
and fall asleep to the sound of fireworks outside.
I cradle the ivory dove in its mourning,
whispering, “Am I alive? Am I alive?”
My mother rationed it like electricity, food
enemies had to be beaten, bombs avoided
fires put out
Love would be shown
in a more practical way
through duty, service.
The bleached armory of the sea
Lay ever-washing on the shore
In casques and blades and bulwarks.
In your hand a gray medallion crumbles
To powder
And is claimed with haste
By the wind
Spider plant is the wrong name for my immortal perennial.
In all her newness, she remains
the same tuberous roots that I touched with tiny fingers,
eyes illiterate, but full of love.
They'll be tests, machines
that spin famished tubes with eyes
like steam engines hanging in space, and no matter
how deeply infrared you are, no matter
how many mean dogs you put out front
the only observer of this war, a woman,
she would recall, for years
the haunting images of drinking blood
from the enemies’ wounds
a bestial attack on the body, long dead,
of one of the defenders
a starless, smothering blanket of beastly odour.
Pinned down, your mind sifts and sifts through
the shock swiftly, recalling the ranger’s warning:
it always goes for your face, cover it with your hands,
curve your body into a C, and be still;
on the backs of those who bow
on the believer and the unbeliever
on the protestant and the catholic
on the anglican and the jew
on the muslim and the hindu
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