Photograph by DaniyaSovereign
Plucking sunsets from the water
the horned sovereign
half stamps half slides across
the beach
stopping
to dig claw rake
What washes up
is drilled shale lost static parsed from gulf to strait
plastic whorls in whose wake gagged dolphins trail
scarred humpback whales whose shadows
will drift unmoored up thawing glaciers
What washes up
is news of the cracked ice
across which a shivering fox is making her way
from Svalbard to Nunavut
leaving her pawprints on frozen currents
to a shore stippled with burst nebulae
a shore
that on a compass dizzy with wind-scattered directions
she can and can’t call home
Cave
Ask yourself how
you’d breathe through swaddling skins of light
and reach for the faint reeds waving above
when what you’d really like
is to swim upstream
to where the cave still pulses
with lines you’d sketched
and yes if you must know
the patient rocks were crushed
in a mudslide
and something has been moved
something no longer
than a strip of raw silk or a croton leaf
no wider than the gap in a shutter
through which
you saw the vine snake
green-whipping across the steps
the hawk swooping down on the chicken coop
the grooves in red earth glistening
jewel-quick with early rain
through which you heard Varaha say:
What is it Earth
shall I lift you
from the roaring waters
on my tusks?
Could you breathe if they trapped us
in a net of myths?
Ape
The key body part can be downloaded on demand
tear the banner
darn the shroud
Try making a man Ghalib says out loud
let him walk blindfold on a gunpowder track
that snakes through a crowd
One last suture to get this buttonholed skin in shape
try making a man of the speaking ape
Bonesetter
You mend what’s snagged
fix what’s gone out of true:
the bulging knuckle the scuffed runaway shoe
that hides a spur the cracked femur
the twisted knee
Stoic, you repair us for combat
we go out again and again
at the emperor’s pleasure
but in the end the arena
takes no prisoners
We walk out holding our heads high
in our stiff raised hands
your sutures
an embroidery
of carbon dust
Musk
for Ranbir Kaleka
The fire spreads from mouth to cup
eye to spoor it’s tracking
ear to storm that’s drumming through cloud reefs
rumour glistens and drips
from leaf to leaf
Behind the surveyor a peacock dances
on an orange tree
its branches withering in the gale
he hears it whistle and whir and grits his teeth
his eyes remain trained
on a golden deer that prances
from one burning forest to the next
it’s forgotten the voice that said
Don’t set foot in the third forest
it cannot escape the flaming musk it carries
