Writing

GHAZAL FOR THE CHILDREN BORN FAR FROM HOME

–  to my sons

Gather rotis for stray cows, scatter rice for the ragged crow
I’ve severed you from old ways, this is my sorrow

It takes practice to scoop daal with your fingers, taste spice on the honey
of your hot skin before you swallow, this is my sorrow

Rama scaled the ocean/Bheeshma died pillowed on a bed of arrows
Their ghosts in your marrow unstirring, this is my sorrow

In the bazaar you petted unblemished baby goats, you didn’t know
they were meant for slaughter, this is my sorrow

Exiled from a language where yesterday also means tomorrow
You wander thirsty with no tongues, this is my sorrow

I will be your compass, my bones are yours to borrow
My body your only true country, this is my sorrow

ODE TO MY RIGHT EYE THAT SEES DOUBLE AFTER READING LATE

Once you were imprisoned for laziness

all summer behind a pirate patch.

Made me the one-eyed oddity

in the neighborhood. Found

wanting. Under pressure

of the black ants that crawled

across the fourth row of the eye chart.

You saw a father worried he has a girl

who wears glasses.

                          Girl, you’re soldier

and queen: one of two

sultanas dreaming in their harem, walled

behind glass, unveiled only to the favored.

Remember the time somebody’s mother

waved a wand of mascara for a school concert

and called you gorgeous? I was shaken

down to my skinned knees. And that time

when a piece of you stuck

to a contact lens and tore? Scarred, you tilt

towards the dark, fuzzy logic

of memorized street signs.

             In the mirror, a forest of names

             you’ve called me

none of them Song. But that is history.

I offer you sliced cucumbers, rosewater.

Everything you touch is mine. All the light

you hold. All your shine.

ON THE TRAIL

When my father was a lawless boy

he snuck out to hunt deer with his friends

in the foothills of the Himalayas, in spring

dared his slim body into the snowmelt

of the Ramganga river. They slip from my fingers —

snatches of stories, a few photos of the Terai

pocked by the pug-marks of big cats: clouded leopards,

tigers, and night-stained panthers. It's after dark

in my dream. A man with a squat nose hunches

over a wood-burning stove, pours tea into a clay cup.

His ruddy face mirrors the dancing flames, flickering

so wicked I cannot tell when we cross the borders

of dream to somewhere lived. This is my land then,

part memory, part dream. Smoke-stung eyes.

Hands warm and primed for something wild.