hold the ceiling
her fever a ritual
death not a noun
no one buries
the chewed bone of her body
lay me on the floor
refused she weeps
a fish renouncing the river
in the closed jar of night
she falls to the floor
a lily thud
bind me back to the bed
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.
