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dapt-poems

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on the bill, are you ready
to sing? Are you going to sing?
Monsoon. Monsoon.
Kissing your lips
I try to forget roses
or the fruit of palmyra trees
sweet and strong
Tongue lolling upon tongue
heart beating
against heart beating,
these are my words
signifying our human bodies
which poetry does not capture,
the absolute desire I have
to kiss your lips
on this hot and sunny afternoon.
or perambulate the toddy tavern of my dreams
where black faces and white toddy mix
in black and white memories
of Jaffna, Sri Lanka,
my Tamil countrymen
far away on an island across the sea.
Far away and far away
the palmyra fruit and your lips.
To drink toddy now.
To kiss your rosy lips now.
To uproot the roses in my garden
and offer them upon my tongue now.
To fly to Sri Lanka
and grab the last fruit on the tree
before history throws the Tamils into the sea
as is said it will do;
She is so determined, and so inventive,
that by stringing together a rickety trap
of ropes and sticks, she creates
a puzzling structure that just might
be clever enough to trick a buzzard,
once the trap’s baited with leftover pork
from supper.
Mad and I used to do everything together,
but now I need a project all my own,
so I roam the green fields,
finding bones.
Older cousins show me
how to shake the mule’s quijada,
to make the blunt teeth
rattle.
Guitars.
Drums.
Gourds.
Sticks.
A cow bell.
A washboard.
Pretty soon, we have
a whole orchestra.
Tonight we will function like women.
The snow has gone away, the ice with its amniotic glare.
I clasp my sister’s tiny hand.
We will not turn away
Though spring, spring with its black appetite,
Comes seeping out of the earth.
The lion was sad. He suffered us
To touch him. When I placed the bread of my hands
In his mammalian heat, I was reminded
That the world outside this world
Is all vinegar and gall, that to be a young girl at the foot of a god
Requires patience. Timing.
The White Witch has mustered her partisans.
Because I am fascinated by her bracelets strung with baby teeth,
I will remember her as the woman
Who grins with her wrists. From my thicket of heather
I note that in her own congenital way
She is pure, that tonight she ushers something new into the world.