Category: free verse
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selvi akka’s tomato plant
there is a tomato plantbehind selvi akka’s buildinggrowing out of an old blue paint bucketsplit down one sidelike somebody meant to throw it awayand forgot halfway throughselvi akka says she never planted itselvi akka also saysilaiyaraaja once ate bajjifrom her cousin’s tea stall in kodambakkamso you can believe what you wantevery yearright after the first…
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mirror
they went all that wayto look backnot forwardnot at the moon waiting to be claimedbut backat something already holding themand there it wasnot spinning for applausenot posing for historyjust beingblue that refuses languagewhite that does not ask permissiona thin green whisperand thereif you look long enoughthe faint flickerof uscities breathingsoft electric pulsesproofnot erasedjust reducedno borders…
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wingbeat wingbeat
i wake before the lightbecause the light is lateand i have things to sayall night the branch held methin as a thoughtbut morningmorning splitsgreen everywheregreen pushing through woodthrough soilthrough memoryi shake myself loosefeathers cracklethe sky opensand i cannot hold iti singtrill-trill-trillsee-see-seebright-bright-brighti throw my throat into the airhere i amhere i amhere i amthe worms wrigglethe…
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first loves
we don’t talk about them muchthe ones who taught our heartshow to mispronounce forever.they smelled like folded dresses,faintly of naphthaleneand said things like alwaysand promiseand meant ituntil they didn’t.and now every songis a door we don’t open,every photographa city we can’t go back to.but godfor a momentdidn’t it feellike we invented love?
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the math of us
there used to be fourthat’s how most families beginfour peoplesharing one roofone tableone stubborn historyand no one tells youthat fouris just a temporary numbera seasona brief agreementbefore the worldstarts doing its subtractionbecause timedoesn’t askwho’s readyit just movessteadilylike it’s got somewhere to beand one dayfour becomes threethen twothen oneand the last person standingdoesn’t get a medalor…
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