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Visit to the Grave of Abraham Lincoln
I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial quite a few times with the childish, stubborn understanding that Abe was buried there, that a memorial required an actual corpse to be complete, something to mourn beyond a field of marble embossments, but it came to my attention, really through a logical progression where I first noted the openness of the space, my pure and complete map of every portico, every chamber and the severity of its molding, like a mausoleum, a place designed to eventually fall into disrepair, to fall in ruin against the summer sun, heavy rain threatening the indifference of its tennessee marble;
Economy of Waste
Watching birds crisscross the solemn sun
Quivered in the reflection of gentled waves.
Far away cobalt mountains stood hushed and frozen.
Mellow ivy, cool grass, beneath the feet, wet sand.
September in Dhaka
Everything around me shimmered
through my irises—lights, colors, a dun sky
seamlessly curved into the earth, neon attires
strewn on wet tracks, outlines
of shadows scudding across faces, but if
some faces reminded of other faces
I would awake, suddenly discovering myself
against the immense expanse
of a city I could escape only with my soul.
Participation Prizes in Byzantium
The fountains are quiet, gardens brown,
concubines choreograph the palace
and are directed by eunuchs.
The best go off on pilgrimage
while the arcades cough up
cobwebs instead of silks in every color.
1776 Versus John Adams/Boogie Nights Versus American Hustle
How many levels of nostalgia are you on?
I know, counting seems to take the fun out of it,
Yet, there are limits and there are levels,
Again, how high and how wide
Is your painful longing for the past right now?
To the Porter Sisters, Amrita Pritam, and other Women they did not teach for my Literature Degree
I’m so sorry your celestial minds
Were deemed unworthy of the spotlight we’ve dedicated to the man who would
Never been known if you were not the first bloom
And stories written by
Ivory powders
And male egotism,
Half-hearted “I love my wife when she obeys me” sagas--arrogance and bigotry
Buddha Was a Husband, Father,
And a son. We know he loved his mother.
Mourned her in the myths where he caused her death.
Cherished her in the ones where she didn’t die.
Heard her when she called out Siddhartha, Siddhartha,
come sit next to me and listen to my voice. Siddhartha,
love is everything. You must love. You must love
august, nineteen-forty-seven
your mother tells you to drench yourself in every piece of clothing you own and you do not want
to be a jungli so you wrap your torso in kurtas and salwar kameezes and layer your long legs in
tight churidars and you want to bring your ghagras but they are too heavy to run in so you leave
Confessions
wǒmen—or to say—we
are waiting by the sea, & i watch
my mother confess to receding
shorelines. there is only plurality
in her stories, only wǒmen, only
A Photograph Standing on a Wooden Bridge in Berlin 1945
How do you come back normal
from Deliverance Day
The New Pilgrims
Milo: …women so beautiful they don’t seem like they exist.
Father Rogers: It only seems that way because you’re young. (cigarette) Or actually—you’ll stop caring eventually. Time has a way of levelling it all out.
(speaking on Naya)
Milo: It’s the voice that goes before the laugh. I’m thinking of getting myself hypnotized because she’s still there completely if I have a dream or something. It’s not my fault, the impression, you know, the somatic thing…starts to fade. It’s a defense mechanism. It’s time…
Rogers: Leveling it all out, taking care of it all…
Milo: I don’t want that—like this. (beat)
Health and Safety
There have been plenty of times when I had to fight for my life.
Sometimes it was for my “health and safety”,
sometimes for happiness.
I fought for what I could not bear to lose,
but I lost all the same. I can still recall the taste of all
those defeats, as bitter as unripe plums.