divya m. persaud
do you want me to stay or leave? a bit of poetry
divya m. persaud
THE BIRDS OF MOHAVE I want to see the birds of Mohave but do they want to see me? a desert is not for a girl to search for birds and the thunderstorms are pressing through the mountains now. I want to fly with the birds of Mohave but I am frightened of giants watching us, for flight in empty places is a stolen thing; it is, in fact, a lie. I want to become a bird in Mohave when the sun hits the stones; when virga clouds become promises kept; when the brushes turn to thrushes and vulture feed into macaws and when the trailing dusts behind planes are reborn into endless murders and when the haze cities give birth to me, to me, I want to see the birds of Mohave to see me
FLOWERS I dress you in sunsets because I have burns on my eyes and the night frightens me and the residual warmth of daytime on your face makes me want to forget the days my flowers have lived
MASS / RELEVANCE (1) autumns in parallel / symptoms in three bewitch you, I / beseech me, you; we thrice evasion seek / twice persuasion leech the orange intangible / cold nestling ears bristling, storm towers / flowers on the beach i, ours, yours, mine / cataclysm, each and I am left to breach / quiet synchrony leafed infamy, fall / into me see / this three-word liturgy autumns in parallel / symptoms in three bewitch you, I / bewitch, you, me
STAR ANISE clove vapor: vesper, numbing, reach inside and plant this red forest of kelp gone dry; tulsi stains my palms, so rest yours in them and extricate this quietude from my bones, soaked fruit; I am become [anise blossoms] we are become
DO NOT FLINCH unveil my teeth about your neck: youthful bird, these feathers are mine, do not flinch: I am the moon tonight and you do not know whence my light peels away your reddened eyes, this light fading; I am the belt of Orion, struck gold in these Eastern lanterns lit by Venus in the dregs of September, you, octobris umbra, vis, vis, I am everything
RENEW ME and rescribe: you once touched my neck, gently - say this again; and remit: shoestrike through gravel. Fighter planes overhead– and revise: my eyes were dry from rage and rage and rage and revise: my eyes were dry from not speaking in so long, so let us, and rewild: toothed ribbon tied in my ghost hair, now about your wrist, and retrieve: the rain, unknown, foreign, so sweet through wildfire dusk and retrieve: the rain, known, foreign and retrieve: me, through wildfire and retrieve: me, unknown, wild
THE LAST OF THE SUMMER MUSK aerosol honey; mollify this golden spool of thread, these unsung spirits, tetrachromacy; blinding, zephyritic euphoria of the evaporite, its hue so imbibed: regrets asunder; egrets’ plunder; lingual is the avian theft as the sodic vapor, as the apiary star-song, as this, the final musk of summer.
d i v y a m . p e r s a u d © 2015