In Sixteen Bridal Adornments You Come,
opening to another. What cannot be
carried from room to room?
You line eyes in burned ghee
cured under the full moon,
toe rings gleam
against your dark
skin, brush the doorstep
of stone. You open another
door. Stay there,
standing. Your earrings flicker,
thresh gold:
a votive collaboration
with candlelight.
You need another
to light your match.
अंतिम श्वास / At My Last Breath
A crow perches on a deer’s collapsing
ribcage in a field of cut corn stalks, gold
tarnished beneath snowfall. The tractor blades
that harrowed the fawn, rust in winter wind,
snow-bitten into fragments. Tomorrow
asphalt cracks widen with thaw. The red
fox curling against the highway shoulder
widens until it opens to earth, each cell
lifting into arid light. When the crow
comes for me I want to recall you full-
leafed at Gaviota beach, your swimsuit
a whelk shell ashore; for the sun of you
to pull me up, to release me to mist.
