we read proust by the lake

to search for the time we lost reading

proust by the lake. we awoke under

a fallen tree. you abandoned me

because my poetry could not outlive

the legacy of marcel proust

 

i met a poet

at parkville station

and another

on the train

 

my tongue malfunctioned

i wanted to offer

stanzas of gratitude

but stumbled over

my alphabet

 

mass

gravity

grave

my wedding dress is silk brocade

 

maybe my thoughts

are words strung 

to a tattered thread

maybe language

sometimes forgets to breathe

 

there’s a strange alchemy to my poetry

it spells things

i can’t say

 

temporality, beauty, grave

 

aunt aakanksha^[1] 

stares down from the wall

the last madonna

of the family 

my other aunt was a whore

(she lost her heart in petersberg)

 

this mouth of mine

is silk brocade—

bright for a moment

then disappearing

into firmaments

 

density, grave, desire

 

the poet on the train

talked about kafka

(he puffed smoke

into my eyes)

 

crescendo, innuendo, grave

 

 

words don’t always

disappear into firmaments

sometimes they’re eaten

by silent trepidations

consider the sociology of gratitude

i left parkville without

offering “thank you”

                                                                       

pushkin, virgil, grave

 

my virgin aunt

does not know

that i am a whore for words

placed on silk threads

i have loved people in fragments

even when

they can never love me back

 

(i loved a boy

who will be dead

i read proust with him

by the riverbed)

 

my grandmother spent

a lifetime bleeding

words onto a khadi sari

spun through hands tied by empire

i cannot compete

with ghosts and their legacy

 

mass

gravity

grave

my funeral dress is silk brocade

 

language is a wound

i keep reopening

poets know that—

they prick wounds too

 

poetry, stanzas, graves

 

when i met the poets

my mouth collapsed into

paralysis

 

imagine the curse

of living with a tongue

that only bleeds onto the page—

i cannot talk eloquently

to poets or ghosts:

this tongue of mine is silk brocade

it disappears into firmaments