The mulberry tree is night-ripe,
its fruit fermenting almost before dripping
down the branch to the gray-saddled sidewalk,
where birds refuse it; the sharpened tang
slips and spreads into the green closeness.
Char-wings spread out above me,
interrupted by static bursts of cloud
that stream from a southern vagueness;
the waxed crescent moon-blossom
spits a little of its milkish shine
towards me in the black heat.
The lance-lights of the streetlamps
snap on, lidless and yellowed,
venting that yellow down
into the wet cut yards.
Everything is quiet, empty;
in a cardboard box by my side
is her sketchbook, our locket,
her old phone. I look through the glass
at the blue cape that drapes
the sandy castle across the street,
watching as sleep comes for me,
mincing through hillside pines.

easiness
the traveling light
thaws time
- from sunset
to the east
late borders we are
watered by rain with its silence,
- two halves of a stone rounding their edges in the sun,
two forgotten lips in the lull between two *******

Woe to the world, the sun is in a cloud,
And darksome mists do overrun the day;
In high conceit, is not content allowed;
Favour must die and fancies wear away.
O heavens, what hell! The bands of love are broken,
Nor must a thought of such a thing be spoken.
-Robert Devereaux

Goodbye, mockingbird -
I must leave you now.
I have often watched you
hash across the yard
from your holly station,
chop chop chop with such vim,
from the leaf to the post
to the high-lidded lamp
that surveys the night dispassionately.

In return, how ungrateful I have been -
what terrible things
I have offered your shining bead
of an eye. In your tenure
on the gray-green sill
you have listened to the sharp salt
of my many difficulties
with perfect equanimity.

But now I must go.
Perhaps you will find me,
across the living ruins
of this capital city,
in the raining triangle
that corners down to Dupont.
Or perhaps you will stay sentinel
over this nest, deep in the green.
I will miss you, little bird.
My two brightest years
passed under your wing.

I think I let this blueness overflow a bit
Mother’s being tender again
She talks to me like a bee does
To a sleepy sunflower
And does not mention the missed classes
Does not remind me of the exams
She says to me
‘Ayesha,’ she says,
‘Ayesha, you brood too much.’
And I know mother.
And she jokes that she might have to
Burn this notebook I keep scribbling in
Because it does not make me happy

She says to me,
‘I know you’re brooding when you write
And all that writing makes you grey.’
She says she’ll have to throw it out
In the street
But I know she never will
She’s too tender
Too tender, my mother.
I think, ‘Will I have to myself then?’
And I think, ‘How many will I throw?’
And I think, and I think till the sun
goes down

But I brood when fairies are on their way
To the stars
And mother,
Why are dead things always the scariest?
Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be
Focusing on these Orbital radii
But I can’t stop, mother
The atomic structures
Keep mingling with dragons
And their pretty eyes

Mother’s being soft again
I am a little child stumbling up the hill
And she never asks me to help in the kitchen
But when I wander around
Light as a wind
She lets me chop the vegetables
I do
There goes an onion, so quiet
Chop, chop, chop
Mother, do you think if trees bled
We would still butcher them to pieces?

Chop, chop, chop
Mother, who carved this goddess out of my name?
It feels heavy now, wings mighty and huge
I can barely stand this mortality
Chop, chop, chop
Mother, does it not pain you
Seeing all the coriander dry in the pots?
The dirt that birthed it from a quiet seed could not keep it alive.
How are you so strong?

Mother, mother
It reminds me of my Morning Glories
Last year
They bloomed so happily every morning
And they’d wilt by the evening
And the next day
The slender plant would make more blooms
They kept dying, mother
All of them
On and on and

There was nothing I could do
Nothing the stems could do
I watered and watered and watered, they kept dying
Born to wither
And in the winter, when the sun wasn’t as cruel
Cold did the job
And all the leaves fell down
empty plastic wrappers, they were
And I pulled the hollow vine off the railings
We burned it that night, I and Faizan
The fire ate away what was left, and
Ate herself when nothing was

chop goes the last lamb
I sacrifice a lot to my wolves
The sparrows outside ask me why I do not talk
I do, mother, don’t I?
I talk a lot, a lot, a lot, my skin gets tired of hearing
The silence hops around the kitchen,
a mad cat

Mother wipes the heat off her forehead
The stove whispers on
‘You’re brooding again, Ayesha.’
‘Whatever, I told you it was not just the poems.’
Everything’s a poem to you, Ayesha
No mother, I’m just tired—

Ah! -
Summer is here -
No, stop -
Something is wrong -
Gray rain collects itself
into chilled coal-water in the road.
Burnt cocoa & cigarette smoke
fill all the engravings of air.
Thunder arrives in bands of purple,
as hawks circle in the twilight,
piercing the configurations of grass.
The mockingbird slips from the holly,
as if embarrassed or ashamed
to be associated with this high fog,
this greenish pallor.
Where are our shadows,
that played upon the brickwork?
The sun refuses to commit
to this dismal June.
Rain begins to fall,
late in the morning,
& all throughout the afternoon.

The purple folding face drips
into the cake-colored battlement:
night is here again.
The sun has kneeled into the treeline,
into the gauze-clouds
whose humid cobalt heads
hang, hang, just hang
all angled like hammers
in a carpenter's belt.  

Everything seems to be ending:
cicadas have erupted
in tens and sevens
with bright scarlet eyes
to die on the sidewalks
in little hums and hisses,
looking at me through
whetted blades of lawn.

I'm moving soon, to the point
of the old triangle
where we haunted
the coffee and ice cream store,
where she stole a little shining spoon
that we used to mix the luminous milk
into the coffee pool.

How will it feel, after dark,
under unfamiliar high-stippled ceilings?
So quiet - she's gone -
her vacant clothes
no longer flutter in the closet
when the breeze slips through.

Will some rain come,
blue-brushed brow,
& wash this feeling away?
I feel the night moving,
crawling on insect feet -
the air is full of absences,
great holes that go unfilled.

The wind is settled in the east,
and the clouds are gathering
heavy hems.
I find a single dark hair of hers
on the inside of the pillow case,
years later,
years later.