Green Linden Press

Alabama Diwali

                                     
भुल गयली प्रार्थना के का फ़ैदा
थाली उठाई के भागवान सुनबा 

My offering plate’s porcelain pink
roses gleam. My gifts? Sugar-free ladus. 

Today I eat ham, tomorrow beef,
no matter my lunar ancestry— 

The blue god divides clay into hemispheres,
North-throat, South-dusk, compass-less bodies. 

Jesus’s disciples call for white knights
to arise, again from the West. Look, white folks’ 

lawn signs toll out Christ is Alive!
church bells sounding hymns against  

my threshold’s lamp with the cotton wick
I burn for the God of the Dead.  

I forget what use is prayer
If I raise my plate will God hear?

Betrayal


Look what you’ve done to me— 

In a dream I bleach on sand,
like the bone of a donkey’s jaw
I use to turn men into asses. 

You have given me this secret,
and what have I done 

taking every whimsy to bed,
weaving my hair into her loom, 

eating the honey from inside
a lion’s carcass? Southernmost god, 

my hands are still sticky
with gold. Saying your name,
even in lament is a cardinal sin. 

I’ve used it as a curse
so many times it would be a flock 

of cardinals. In the trees they gather
drops of red against the desert,
wielding nothing but the blood 

in their morning prayers. And now
veiled and dark-eyed 

I am no vessel. How can I
write my sacrilege except
beg my way to the shore; 

to shoot down every warble
with stones and sling?

Cardinal


The dogwood out back begins
its October shift in November 

my own branches are green still
and cones not yet fallen 

on the red clay road
from the parable where 

a sower scatters seed
pell-mell. But what use 

is singing out only to those
who know the lyrics, 

the rest picked by birds? Red feathers flicker
against a forest’s skeleton. 

When I see you, I think of heat— 

Rust burns the shed’s roof
under the snow’s down to come. 

Do you understand,
some glad morning 

I will come to you
with the pulpit fire of birdsong— 

What haven’t I already wasted?