Author: poetryfest

The pelicans soar so close to the water as the waves come
into shore, over and over again, their rhythmic melody
all crash and foam and gliding wing together,

The purple flowers of the ice plant are blooming again,
despite what the papers say, despite the accelerating
warming of ocean and land, and the fires, and the heat,

and the floods, and the terrible wars, especially the wars.
I expect that the ice plants will go on blooming, even
after human life races to its inevitable close, but yes –

the pelican, who looks as though he’s been around
since pre-historic times anyhow, will remain, following
the curve of the water as it rises and storms, flying away

from smoke and ash and high winds. The animals will adapt
as they are able, and the mean violence that humans inflict
upon each other will vanish, and the whale may yet endure.

in my earliest memories a neightbour takes / a glance at my grandfather’s house / remarks at how green it is / my grandfather has a green thumb / the plants thrived with him / my grandmother talks about how in the ages past ripe mangoes fell of the trees / children hurrying to gather them all / they say now some trees flower late / fruit even later / back then the kanikonna would flower in time for vishu and the jackfruits would be over by monsoon / and on some days i am grateful the jackfruit fruits for longer so that i can taste its delectable flesh even if i’m late in my
homecoming / on other days the rains flood the place and ravages everything / leaving / only tattered bits behind

i have only ever travelled with my family to the mountains which are india’s link with madagascar [i]/ i can recall graves and dry land and cacao trees with boards of “do not pluck cacao seeds” / and ponds / and drinking water off the stream, the forest is so delectable and lovely i can taste the loveliness in my mouth when i am under its canopy / under its care / and there i am protected and safe and the wind howls and i know it might flood again but / for now i hold the peace of that moment and everything is alright

tomorrow it will not be the same / the forests with lianas curling around its branches will be razed / and there might be less moss and less green and everything will be gone / somedays i want to curl up in my bed and weep / i will weep over my non-human kin i never got to know / take a turn in the forest and be awed at the sight of something i wouldn’t have encountered before / i would say hello to the new thing but now the world is burying so many creatures in its stratified layers and i won’t have the chance to meet them all / for a moment the weight is too heavy to bear and i want to say hi / and / i want to breathe but it comes out as a cry / a choked sob / and i realize / i’m encased in soil

The Earth is at the head of the class
Her words are lost among the students
dull roar drowning out
lessons lost on generations of unintentional apathy

Frolicking on a playground unaware how deep
their steps drive into the dirt
Dehumanizing nature to its face
Forceful upon its will

Concepts unheard and forgotten
That we are smaller than our egos
Merely a part of the world
almost unknowingly in a symbiotic relationship

Insane is what we have proved to be
Reputation of failure to learn
that we cannot escape
what is to come

I bet I have more friends than you
hiding behind the house
there they fan their fluffy harmless feathers
passive stares and welcoming clucks
adorned with the warmth of autumn leaves and
a lonely sunset

the ground was riddled with droppings
with the precision of a minefield
hopelessly intimidating to intruders
but never for me

In that Arcadian corral
of half-eaten lettuce and dim catatonic lightbulbs
Primal wasteland
of plastic buckets and steel sheets

I take note of their lives
ones who get too close to the dog
ones we eat for festivities
ones we replace when the salesman comes with his wagon
I can confide with them
not that there is much to confide about

the other village kids would never bother me
there I rotted in recluse
no secrets no acts no fantasies no tragedies
in compensation
like the floral blankets draped over the sheltered nests
hiding their jagged fragility

I. the scent of burnt rubber is unmistakable.
its offense permeates otherwise unremarkable
conversation of cuss words and crosswords
on the daily shuttle. paired conductors speak
little, other than to deliver a series of cautiously
punctuated reminders. no smoking. no poaching.
all steps monitored. all stops scheduled. a small
child dressed in denim overalls, a B inked on both
cheeks and Tonka truck on his lap – its front wheel
spins at an awkward angle, sits two seats over.
“The air smells bad, Momma,” he cries. the woman,
eggs fried, wrapped in a belted camel coat and hair
teased as high as the rails are wide, sighs. “I told you,
baby. I left the bacon too long on the fryer.”

II. in row D, teens play rounds of spades. greased
cards pile on faux leather seats. jacks battle queens.
kings demand like-kind repeats. cushions remain less
eager to receive frayed laces than crumbs and traces
of heartless debates. wars conflate wages. as the train
rounds a corner, a woman stumbles. a sandwich, stocked
and stacked of salami and oil drops beneath dueling stars.
mustard spreads like congealed foil. clock hands spiral.
a series of punctuated letters, I A M sorry follow.
“There’s no point,” a male, eye sockets wired, offers.
“Sorrow is only a few degrees removed from rigged soil.”

III. the train stalls at Fern Rock Station. “Like Plymouth
Rock?” the child questions. “No,” his mother responds
in an exhausted fashion. “School of Rock in sequence.”
lifts end. shifts begin. again. an outbound train races.
all destinations between Here and There isolated.
underneath, on a platform to the right, a man sleeps. peace
one breath removed from piece. voices storm. the overhead
speaker dishes condolences in clipped form. “Sorry folks,
it’s the rubber. We ask for your patience while we do
our best in an unfortunate situation.” Done as much a form
of movement as none. Gone as near to GO as NO.

V. I ride the train to conserve dollars but forget that the cost
of miles accumulates all the same. I count houses, smokestacks,
and imaginary daffodils but forget that smog promotes delirium
after hours. I pull a beanie over my head but forget that heat rises.
As the train compiles miles, I miscalculate the distance between
Earth, Wind, and Fire. The conductor hums Let It Be, then calls –
All Aboard! Passengers meddle as if the exit door offers medals.
The conductor nods. a book of poetry,
of delights, peaks from his pocket.

Under the billowed out wave
Into the rock retched reef
Where you sit with your
Knees tight watching the
Stones hit the hard surface;
Sink, silt, sonder, someone
On the bottom bloodied from
The nothing feeling you
Gave to them. Perched at each
Pop of pebble to top, you
Think it looks real fine from
All the way up here. There’s
No other view but this one.
My hands wrist deep in sand.
You’re good at everything but me.

I believe the salient stalk
of crimson bee balm
will sprout again in spring
and blossom in early summer

I believe the ruby-throated hummingbird
will remember and return
to the perennial in bloom

I believe that after all the petals fall
to the oak mulch below
the sparrows will feast on the seed head
before the snow falls

When the stalk is ragged, bent, and broken
layered in ice and snow,
it will shelter the dormant pollinators
waiting to crawl again
when the sun can shine
for more than a glimpse of the day

When I transplanted it outside the bedroom window
I hoped to enjoy the scarlet display
and ensuing visitors
with the company of my partner
on a bright summer morning

But all I see is a lone mourning dove
flying out of the neighborhood
of beige vinyl siding
single-family homes

autumn is the season of rot.
before the bodies ice over in winter,
carefully preserved by the cold,
death ravages the newly deceased and
eats merrily away at the
freshest flesh and pulp. There is no
grave that escapes devourment; no
isolated case of a body left
just as it was when it
keeled into the unknown after.
love will not keep the bones covered—
mushrooms are born hungry during harvest;
newborn scavengers need to feed
on the very weakest of
prey. the dead can’t fight back.
quilts of fallen leaves provide a
rest for the soul but not the
skin. the mites will find their way in
to the holes left open. does this make autumn the
ugliest season? you think her heartless,
violent and insatiable, but she is not
xeric by choice. but you, however,
you can choose to die some other time and
zincate what’s left of you. for now.

The murmuring beauty of the glistening brook
And the vibrant chirrup of the birds
Keep gnawing the silence surrounded
By the silent standing trees of the forest.

The shepherds keep passing by the brook
Grazing their sheep
Like the clean water flowing in the brook
With the dry cracking sound dropping onto the ocean of silence
By treading their feet on the dry leaves .

Their calling to the sheep
And the bleats of the sheep
Were cutting the silence like pebbles
Thrown into a stagnant clean water body.

Sitting on a black stone by the brook
An old shepherd expresses
The scarcity of the rainfall has reduced the brook
Into a trickle
Bringing forth the bad harvest.

In English class we learn how the lotus flower, native
to Guyana, is a fiction of resilience, but under keen
Chinese eyes blooms purity in the dark. Because critical
interpretation never lies – unlike climate deniers, harms none
with narcissistic subjectivity, personal insight,
the queer naked streams and rivulets it produces
from ash-dusted inkwells, bound and gilded paper sonnets
all reversible with the tenderizing root of a whip, breaking-in
of a sand-flecked mustang lost and grazing celestial beneath
the shifting leaves of cottonwood understories – good argument.

But no words may possess where I’ve lived for nineteen years
no debater may capture any time zone, nor grammatical instructor
invade conservation with unwieldy tradition, not epic novel lectures
timed before Aristotelian systems collapsed – earth, wind,
fire, water, Ptolemaic heavens spinning vulnerable circles,
quintessence of stars, planets, antidote of all disease. In other
words, seek geopolitical tensions of a single tulip planted
in an English garden, unnatural clusters in Europe’s
Chinese courts perfuming medieval midnights. They say
rising tides and heat waves live and die without intervention,
how the four elements of emotion wash over us
in Mandarin before vanishing.

In twenty-four seasons watching cherry blossoms fall on Park Avenue
with the muddied runoff of gasoline-soaked snow, believing winter
and spring never fought, or were torn apart, loved or even recognized
one another – only consumption’s sorrows, creeping steam
treatments for asthma, boiling water into clear diamond glasses,
cirrus bubbles foaming away lead in dreams, ghostly
chromium 6 combusting liver, lungs, womb, high fevers.
Public housing’s chlorine mutations, the magic of pretending
and oblivion. For the female titan Theia bestowed elements
their brilliant looks, forgetting beauty attracts misfortune. Only
known for the children she bore, she of starry cow-eyes.
Her roving gaze searches for governmental carelessness,
crafting mid-victorian diseases of melting, torrential rains,
skin slickened in debauched contact – how the drought
is our thirst, flooded air all our gasps.