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| Rahana K. Ismail |
She messages, at Koyilandi. I picture dust,
bus swerving, sign boards, Malayalam
though she may have taken her car.
I don’t ask my other friend why
she is playing truant too. I was set to go.
Had my clothes ironed. Had boiled
water enough to last the whole day. Had
thought of shoe-shopping after the gym. They word
tomorrow in sistered echoes
that cave me in.
Tomorrows
to be stuffed with our sounds—
our languorous sistering
picking at
and unspooling tomorrows’
yarn sacks
that we hide
our tomorrow-selves
in.
***
Room
A nibble of sun
on the wall.
Near, trussed bodies
of my doubt, & darkness.
Show me how
they room in
this whiteness together,
how they won’t collide,
& despite my relentless
dreaming, cancel.
***
Drift
Beaded curtain my hesitant hand parts. A room with indefatiguable geometry. Something sharper than incense yet doesn’t slacken to death. Disarray broomed to unplaceable cobwebs. White walls in a house teeming with crayons, child-hands. Ceiling fan: lone spider on the plain washed ceiling. Teak bed housing all his bones; spilling most of the marrow. Catheter snoozing like a sated stream. His openable eye holds a primal map, shells dead on the curtain marking unskirtable mountains falling sheer.
***
Mothering a Daughter
You have to make a choice
between you and a younger you
before morning-mists clump coffee into granite
as the TV chef instructs you.
Look at her now:
she will open the door with bronze and let you in.
She will talk about snails, gift you gravel.
But on the street they say coffee clumps
as a rule. I am imagining a giant coffee jar the size of our thoughts.
We buy spoons to scrape at a corner. We get keener
edged in imprudence, at times in desperation. Or life-size
hammers pound at us to break off
a piece that turns out too much or far little for what we’re planning.
It’s pitch bitter or water on the tongue. Pouring hot water
into the jar burns us, turns us into marshes that steadily flows
into inclinations we are tilted into.***
Rahana K. Ismail is the author of the chapbook ‘Newtness’ released by Yavanika Press in 2022. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Penn Review, Usawa Literary Review, POSIT, Alchemy Spoon, nether Quarterly, Contemporary Haibun Online, Aainanagar, Aleph Review, Chakkar, Alipore Post, Last Leaves, Io Literary Journal (Refractions), Paradoxlit, Farmer-ish, Stone of Madness, Foxglove, Hakara, Qissa, Verse of Silence, Pine Cone Review, among others.
Weldone dearr
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, as always!!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, as always!
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