The Venetian Red fish
Slithers through the magentic sky,
Sniffing the violence of electromagnetic vibrations,
I, behind the branchia, spur her/him on,
Far away, the sight of thunder rumbling and static,
Feeling the inky indigo of the mirage of toothy desire.
Hearing cold textures of slippery fishy scales,
Tasting the black velvet Jesus, Elvis, and Nixon,
Our banner.

Oh, that can’t possibly happen said Jonah,
As he was enveloped by exactly that,
A piercing cacophony of clashing color
That resolved itself into the image of his ex.
No more, no more.

The red fish jumped the river Stix,
Halting at the 7-11 from hell.
A seventh circle infernal Powerball anyone?
A hellish scratchie tempts my soul.
But my lucky number is a binary: 1-oh,1-oh, 1-oh.
That’s hell for you, unsymmetrical.

Needed, perhaps a chance encounter,
with an itinerant puzzle person
Would they sort the senses and find truth?
Could that help or should it?
He winks and I don’t believe her.

A stolen kiss thrown
At the 2018 Little League Playoffs at Southaven, Mississippi
Still echoes in their brain pans and mine too.
The dull stylus of dangerous thrills
scratched my pancreas as Jim shoveled his lunch.
But I have better manners than that.

In the chaotic magentic atmosphere,
I mount my scarlet stead,
and move on-- as you should too.
Adieu. Adieu. Adieu.

Took me to the wrong end of the Mississippi
Blown north from the whistling blues
Dreamt that sweet sound of saxophones
Coloring St. Claude Avenue

Banana leaves melted into evergreens
Where the swamps finally ran cold
Through the mountain ranges of the lakes, and banjos of the plains
Where the countryside grew quiet and old

I grew up on the wrong end of the Mississippi
But now I’m taking that southbound train
Oh honey don’t ask me how I’ve been
It’s a restless, lonesome pain

Nature, too, is self-consuming.
Even the grandest oak
of all southern Louisiana
will be uprooted in a hurricane.
The moss that grazes the water
with gentle finger tips
from those weary branches
will be swallowed by the water.
An old man's life spent in Houma
is reflected in the river currents;
his house built on stilts
across from the cemetery
where is wife is buried
next to her eldest son.
It meets the Mississippi
not surrendering,
returning

A ride today in Des Moines
that appraise law and counteract
any that country may enact
where Wichita lineman forthwith

and mackinaw shall really embellish
furthermore with Granny Smith
awhile down stream on a riverboat
that foregoing is never behind

where a river is always wide
and bourgeois with a paddle wheel stride
why his atropine smile
reach the delta with such desire
and let him take the home route

in an abode of parish shanty
where river dance makes day long  
a simple beast, a man

with chinchilla wrap round his neck
that sweep her off flourishing deck
these stratospheric ideals now  
for sovereign witness entail campaign.

the Mississippi starts small,
at the headwaters.

A child can cross
stone to stone, almost slipping
into cold water.

Sometimes they do fall,
but stumbling and soaking wet,
they finish crossing.

Now, these blue-gray stones
and clear rippling currents still
sound like their laughter.

Yesterday
Was in the ecstasy
Of realizing that
We were
Those two
On earth
Who liked bitter gourd curry
Cooked with coconut milk ….

Remember?
Think it was
In the sixth life.
We were
Two nascent bitter guards
On the pandal
Spread in the northern corner
Of the farmland
Belonging to a grandmother
In a village in Mississippi
Who used to attend to the orchards
Sitting in a wheelchair.

We had
Watched earth
And peeked
At the sky
Hanging from the same stalk
The scar left
From your tight clasp on my thigh
Scared
After spotting a double tailed pest
Is still there.

The pleasure of that pain
Makes me tearful now.

I am like the faces
In the house of deceased
Sobbing
At times  
Bursting into tears
The next moment
Holding back
After a while.

Sometimes
I am all the faces
In the house of the dead
Tears have
Nothing to do with them.

Sometimes
The wedding house
Will laugh and laugh
Till its cheeks hurt.

Just like you.

My dear bitter guard,
When will we
Go back to that
Pandal in Mississippi
Where we had pulsated
From a single stalk?

Aren’t we the ones
To offer obsequies
To that grandmother
Who looked after us
With pots
Of wholehearted love?



Translator - Shyma P


Shyma P : Works in Payyanur College, Payyanur. Translator and film critic. Has translated poems and articles in Malayalam Literary Survey, The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Literature, online magazines like Gulmohar, Readleaf Poetry as well as scripts and subtitles for short films.

for Robin

On that frosted January day,
     you and I hiked north
along the Mississippi shore
     on a trail marked well before us.

Footfall tapestries etched in snow
     wove tales of assiduous commerce
of hosts of fur-cloaked cousins:

the playful step-slide gambit of an otter -
      rabbit paw tracks by the score.
A bald eagle soared above singing ripples
      in quest of a mid-day meal.

The distant staccato cadence
      of a pileated woodpecker
          echoed off the limestone bluffs
on that January afternoon.
     Dusk-light washed the western sky
          in pastel gold and crimson hues.

A coal barge heading south
     thundered against the floes,
scattering ice across the channel,
     then vanished beyond the bend.

And we like bargemen at their tillers,
     set our southward course
retracing footprints in the snow -
     back to the world of clocks and enterprise.
January, 2011