The howls of open exit wounds – Three poems by Kashiana Singh
Photo: Sahir Chawla
‘a lacquered / summer that lacks / rivulets waiting for / gods to decipher us’
grief in a potli
breathing in the cold today
I felt your weight on my eyes
as the sky
stares at the robin
her eyes in gridlock, with its
blue ordinariness.
as starlings
ballet past in murmurations
leaving behind a stilled tail
of coaxed departures, you
insisted on leaving behind
howls of open exit wounds
gathered into potli’s of my
mother’s erased smiles.
I can hear the season turn
shadows fall in patterns of
immensities outside.
*
Assemblage
I polish the brass frame that houses my father’s medals. Medal’s trace
in them a journey from metal to brass. The making of a man. A man
who held light beneath his tall shadow. Like an oak he rose, tall into
the sky, always to the sky. His face. Looking upwards. The limbs of a
voice spreading long deep rays. Light rays that penetrated the dark.
They spread. Vines into the thickets of life. The rays elongated as he
grew older. His mind holding them from one end, our curious hands
pulling at the other. The medals flicker in a shadowed frame. I wipe
the dust from the edges, and turn away. The sunlight hits the round
nugget in a way that squints my eyes. I run my finger over every oval
bronze, a silver too, a badge, some pins. I linger at fraying ribbons of
blue silk. Fragments of a time when medallions were conferred upon
him. A left breast gleaming. I take stock. I count. Adding, dividing
subtracting. Total bars on the medal bar. How many medallions in
the frame. Total number of years my father had diligently pinned
the badge to his lapel. The sum of collar pins divided by the total
number of cities he had lived in.
My eyes turn to his dinner jacket.
I dust it. Straighten the shoulders.
*
of disappearing towns
I keep pretending a
life in distant towns
those I dream of so
often—a lacquered
summer that lacks
rivulets waiting for
gods to decipher us
I do often awake
quivering
thawed as
of memory
often allow
albeit flittingly
a longing to engage
a longing to relive
a longing to reveal
a longing to retrace
a longing to stay sullen
provoked by the peeling
skin of buried aftertastes
mangoes custard apples bread
streetlights jam jars dense sky
store fronts temple bells shawls
bargaining taxi rides monuments
the patina on statues of gods
and goddesses
a longing so eager
for the disheveled
monsoon to return
a longing humming
immortality like the
woman quilting her
life in mustard oil
lit rooms, squatting
on haunches, alone
even as I dispossess
my pulsating homes
pulsing in my heart
my rosary absent in
every timed rotation
Each bead luminous
as it scars my palms
leaving my fingertips
patterned with an ash
***
When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. She currently serves as poetry editor for Poets Reading the News. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills by Yavanika Press is a journey through 10 cities. She is currently knitting a new collection, Woman by the door. You can find more information on her website. She is on Twitter: @Kashianasingh and Instagram: @kashianasingh.
