FISH HOOKED POEM

Mother said, here, and the ink swivelling in the glass
said to me, I am what was written on the parchment
drowned in the glass, and that, letters have a soul,
you know? I nodded then, agreeing to that dispersal

to cure my malady. I am now older. In another city.
Cities are like books. Inhabited. Infinite beyond measure,
no ending is really ever an end, some obsidian mind is
already constructing a continuance. My life, all

my life, I have pursued paper, to write, to roll and light,
fight demons, as such, as my mother might have
believed could be cured out of me. Salt, sugar, nitrite.
That’s all that flesh needs to be cured. I was cured

by Arabic letters falling off from the sinking boat
of paper the man of faith had inscribed and blown
warm breaths into that winter. I was cured
of my demons then, I think, for it didn’t happen again

that the man of faith was called for me, but today,
this evening, I said aloud, at the kitchen counter
listening to a raga pulsate on tabla, that
I am drowned paper in this air-water, and …

… no, already, I am dispersed,
in this water … I am water.
Fish hooks descend into me,
they bring up images

unleashed from their script
-ural hold. One pierces
the jaw of a poem. I pull up.
I drink myself forever.

FOUND RECIPE

i.
Everyday.
She trades a teardrop
with the stream, clay pot
swallows trembling water
terracotta crown
wrists steady it
her head
a mirror-dome
hiding jewel of aqua

ii.
Cold reticent breeze grows
ears around her fog of gloom
she hums a song of always-longing
teasing spring
mornings of frosted grass
back to the house of always-longing
crown heavy head
her temples glisten, the gentle air,
oars away the sweat
hides jewel of aqua

iii.
She fixes a meal for who she’s wed (forefather, mine,
on a serpentine bough of Adam and Eve’s heaving tree)
then, steals from her traded-mother’s hunching gaze.

She sits in the courtyard, smiles, scrawls on her parched limbs
— In the name of
God of Abundance —
lists in charcoal script, ingredients,
and heats them, dry,
with prayers.

iv.
Daydream moss spreads over my heirloom skin
– reams of never told stories –
I read on my parchment of unease
charcoal records, hasty transcripts, now dislanguaged.

v.
One reads, before falling silent:
“A Lesson For My Great Great Great Great Great …. Son.”
I don’t savor the recipe except
a flavor a memory:
my Great Great Great Great Great .… Mother
(my tongue insists)
loved sweet rose petals, after
a dinner of thorns.

MARS 2020 

Perseverance, this morning
on Mars, searches for signs
of ancient life,

on a crimson crust that mars
all chances of an oasis,
and my ancestors,

this morning, they
are but pilgrims tented outside
the altar of the night.

Come to save my life, they
call me an us among them,

and the burdens
of this I
dissipate in an embrace
of timeless arms —
a strong string of lineage.

I say I see loss in everything.

We say:
we always read
a catastrophe in
every apostrophe.

We sway:
pilgrims tented outside
the altar of the night,

we pray
this morning, for perseverance
not to mar
our search for signs. And

Perseverance, this morning
on Mars, searches for signs 

of ancient life.