and everywhere is war… what can i save against the drowning of a nation i got nailed in, from the first crown of my fawn-soft hair against my mother’s other mouth, doctor’s tools slicing her open as my cloud-covered body slipped quietly out, into hands swollen many times from violence, what can i defend in [...]

Hello, there. You don’t know me, Although you know my name I think And can at times Connect it to a face. I’ve struggled to extend to you Regard you have not thought to grant to me But I have failed. I’ve tried to think of all of you as real To imagine that like [...]

Her house is empty now. Only the tailless tabby, Joy, prowls the staircase. She walks to the corner store, buys one red apple, then exchanges it for green. A gilded mirror frame catches her eye in the window at the antique store the owner flirts with her. She is content not to flirt back but [...]

Sitting here on this hill, I watch the ghosts of burning wood rise from behind the low mud walls of huts that cluster the foothills. In each of them, a woman, perhaps helped by her daughter is fanning a fire, rolling out rotis and blistering them on red flames. All the little children must be [...]

There are variegated color hairs on my head, Yarn all fuzzy and wild One inch from my scalp there is red Lush auburn youth. Below the white Threads winked with gray waving, Roots visible like tree arms against the sky. Crone means old ewe, An old you That you do not recognize. Do old ewes [...]

In the interlocking limbs of two eucalyptus trees I see your soul. Can you know it’s me gazing at you from the window? Do you know I dream how it feels to be joined in wood, not flesh? I see elephant tusks and the flesh of paper in your limbs. My boyfriend calls, and says [...]

I went home, but I’d grown to outsize the furniture. My fingers were even longer than my mother’s hands. Like perspective had misjudged me or distance itself. Mother cried a little, You’ve grown she said. I bent myself into an old chair; the room was clean, ready for me, but I stayed the night there [...]

in the voice of the dead assorted bodies tempt us in a basket speak to the dead they guffaw back enfold in the breeze a tree the tree of everlasting while not paying attention azaleas spring from graves of the dead cut and sold like genitalia in the middle of the night robbed of potential [...]

35 years of living with only five fingers to help out with my closed fist I have confined all time and space Cabbage potatoe egg plant Fish chicken a chicken feast All life's luxury drips like ghee From my cook's fingers All the world*#039s knowledge Roams scot free since gods knows when Dehradun to jaffana [...]

distance measured by silence stretching oceans away no bridge. love letter red lipstick kiss perfumed words inside no reply. costumed leading lady pale white mask red curtains open no audience. mother of too many bearing dream children kitchen withering hopes no love. Poet breathing under heavy ocean. Star fish thrive, suckling in life; no regrets. [...]