gasoline-and-matchstick headache
I lie down a posing
corpse her voice surfs
my ears guides
I close my eye let my tongue
fall back in throat
palms welcome sky
feel the rising resting
of belly behind her voice
recorded river and rain
I think of a lover a book
our mother ash
until Kaali speaks again in lilacs
beckons me back to breath
within us all the water of mercy
for this burning world
witness how easy to heal
it is in our nature to survive
we have lived through
wars famine pandemics
kneel before all the flames
hold the sun in your skin
over her voice I hear Dida groan
in the other room
death is not a disease but a door
everything a portrait of death a
window stars trees clouds
the rain as well as the river
all nearing a lone destination
I imagine all the doors
Dida has opened to find
behind them a woman
fragmented as scattered pollen
KARAN KAPOOR is an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. They have been awarded or placed for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, Frontier Global Poetry Prize,and Bellevue Literary Review Prize. A finalist for the Tusculum Review and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. Their fiction is forthcoming in JOYLAND and the other side of hope. Their translations have appeared in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They are the Editor-in-Chief of ONLY POEMS.
