Kashiana Singh (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Kashiana Singh is a management professional by job classification and a work practitioner by personal preference. Kashiana’s TEDx talk was dedicated to Work as Worship. Her poetry collection, Shelling Peanuts and Stringing Words presents her voice as a participant and an observer. Her poems have been published on various platforms including Poets Reading the News, Visual Verse, Oddball Magazine, TurnPike Magazine, Dissident Voice, Feminine Collective, Spillwords, Poetry Super Highway. You can listen to her reciting her work on Rattle Open Mic sessions, Songs of Selah podcast and Poetry Super Highway episodes. Kashiana lives in Chicago and carries her various geographical homes within her poetry.

Love in the foyer

The shimmering zest of your skin
Rubs into mine like a secret sin
An oblique glance at the kindred
Sun, liquid as it slips into the sea
I eat at the salt of my grainy dreams
Scale by scale by scale, my slithering
Mornings awaken to your listless ocean
Drop by drop by drop, flapping/pulsating
My tail draws death from your liquid oils
A manna, bleeding red into my reefs
My pores absorbing into their savannah
Your luscious color, you gather my rage
And become an altar-piece of plenitude
To the confetti of our petulant silence

As it stays —

stubborn, trembling at the lonesome

foyer of our stalled still afternoons

dormant rituals 

when the world

is better, less bitter

we will inherit again

migrate again

settle,

unsettle again

we will stand

tall, look each

other

in the eye,

non posturing,

again

we will be

free

in our language

again, phrases

poetry, words

not sanctified

expressions

we will begin

again, with

pride

our shoulders

in hope

will steer us

there

again

we will migrate

and unmigrate

again

what is

done

again

and

again

is         ritual

is         practice

near     perfect

things like

dressing the

dead, smiling

through

missing

teeth,

dodging

bullets in

alleys

of grocery

stores

cracking eggs

in equal halves

hiding stains

of

menstruation,

spilling guts

neatly inside

paper bags,

we will migrate

and unmigrate

again

existing

without insult

the ritual

of being

dormant

they say time heals

in aggregation it does but there are those

individual moments or significant memories

that sneak their way through

your pores every once in a while

and ever since you left, you arrive

in many such minutes that rise and fall

through me—

your bellowing laughter, your

sufi music, recasts itself often, then

the pendulum’s tick tock, whirring of cars, are an inept

distraction. every so often, you escape a laugh

straight into my ears, it is irritating

oozing chicken patty crumbs, you insistently

left scattered, around your plate

on purpose of course—

bread

crumbs in stories

always lead

to a dead end

your presence, sharp and photogenic

that fugitive charm of yours, bright

like confetti—

those days, there were

no apple phones

you would have made

such a good capture

your hand as it lingered around the dog’s neck

her clipped hair black, bleak, bristling

as if aware of what was to come, soon

they say

dogs know, before

humans of what is

to be

and then there were always your shoes

those sneaker shops that line the malls

you never learned to tie your fraying laces

those shoes

do remind me

each time of

how

every step, your stride always had a dance

like quality, sure-footed like the horses

you rode, a pretended diligence in

your straight face

encountered life

imagining what

could be

Setu, April 2020