This Rain That
this rain that patters through
the night and drips
all morning
from the eaves of age-soaked buildings
and lowered leaves of mango trees
along the street
was a glacier
recently
speed is just a little heat
applied with regularity
even now
see the sun that draws
a film of salt across your skin
quicken the stillness of your
continent within
from which
entire sheaves of memory
the size and shape of cities
flake away into the current
maps of slights
topographies of trauma
coordinates of simple misery
shed like petals to
sweeten the thirsty ocean
of consistency
Track & Field
—for Suguna Sridhar
a field without a
person is a field
nonetheless
even sunk in water
but stoop to plunge a
shoot of rice into the mud
and three simultaneous majesties
take place inside the fluid
cantilever of your frame:
imminence of soil
eminence of sun
immanence of effort
your arm as much the
sprout you carry as
the baton the sprinter
her leg of a relay
could be a bouquet of angled light rays
puts an image of you on
the surface of the paddy
makes you think you
pick stalks up and
set them down again
then night comes
and you lay out your mat
the runner is a wand
passed for an interim
around the track
grain raises grain
into stacks
last crops sift the
next from their husks
we live delivered
on the one hand to
and on the other of
Keido Fukushima’s Cup of Coffee
about
as soon as
we feel we have
built our house
on stable ground
another quake
another
great wave breaks the
sea gates down
again
Special Relativity
put a ball on a hill
the ball rolls down
supposedly
that's gravity
make the hill a hole
the ball spins round
descending
day drops through you
like egg yolk into soup
sky a blue albumin
there's this charge to light
that might just be the
frequency of coffee
boxes full of empty
bottles on the balcony
you excuse with the belief
you opened them to being
if there were prizes for denial
you'd be stiff competition
so far at one end of
your rope that you have
no clue what the other
is attached to
falling along
toward the heart
of a fugitive star
Corona I
—after Adil Jussawalla
eclipsed the mood
that put the world at
odds against you
birdsong takes the
whole bird
singing
holding nothing back
from lungs to the ends
of their feathers
beaks so wide the
morning fits there
like a seed that needs this
consummation to be eaten
music taps the marrow
of grief and leaves
us light again
give to the king the
heavy head and wear
yourself the crown
These poems were part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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