Reflection

This poem thinks about the relationship between a person and their spirituality. How words might not even be enough to reach this idea of a higher power. What then does the person do? How does the person reconcile with themselves?

hail to her in the form of emptiness

your fire tickled my skin

before slipping away

 

let me use the soot of this death

to fill my promise

 

to break myself open over and over

if only you would answer me

 

if only you would use my fingertips

like your own

 

i bring the conch         the clove          douse my arms

with dahi and wilted jasmine

burst a coconut

 

a replacement for my own head

 

here i cut open the waning moon

bael leaves      coffee seeds

 

                        the crust of drying soil

every canegrove i raze is to find

 

a home            they hang torn odhnis

off the shoulders of women    now wordless

 

the sink into the water

not from the ganga

 

but the backdam in Johanna Polder

flowing with alcohol

                                     torn slippers

                                            a woman’s anklet

                         bloated cows

 

how do i hold onto words

that smudge

            against the lingam

 

a coyote howls, hungry

all i have is to give

 

                        is an overripe banana

                                                rock salt dug from the seafloor

                        of my grandfather’s story

 

if only my tongue could be

if only these words could cleave        a cutlass         

 

against the bells chiming at noon

              against a skull

against my mind

 

saying there are no more

stories to claim

 

every night would be red

lined and new mooned

 

every tomorrow new words

would roam like spirits waiting to attach

 

to the ends of my hair

 

                                                how sacred

            how sacred