You must change your life, Mademoiselle
from Armentières, while the days are in your favor.
You have other battles,

Swallowed by blood-red vinyl of the hotel lounge,
I drain the last of a grasshopper—my first cocktail,
ever. You loosen your tie. Dad, glare at headlines

My index finger nestles in your hand.
You run a penknife’s blade beneath the nail.
Discomfort is a thing we understand.

after Valmiki’s Ramayana (Aranya Kanda, Sarga 46)

Dressed simply but not
without elegance, holding ritual
staff and parasol

Radiating gloom, like an asteroid with designs on a star
like night’s curved shadow that swims across the Earth
like the darkness of our Sun in its deepest explosions
like the planet Budhan about to take hold of Rohini
like Saturn advancing on Chitra
like the forests and cities and far ridges of infinity
each planetary body with its moons each moon that governs

50. When your refrigerator breaks,
51. It’s good to have a job

in the kitchen after cutting
she tapes muslin to the paneglass
sliding door with the northern exposure

      As the storm moved in, you marked the night
And later the night marked you. A biblical clap woke
      The house to a spray of sheetrock: a powdered sprite
Sprung off the nailheads. Air flavored with ozone.
                                On the ceiling in the hallway, a halo
                                   Grew orange around a fixture, aglow—
                                And Dad on the phone

      Young gray cat puddled under the boxwood,
Only the eyes alert. Appressed to dirt. That hiss
      The hiss of the grasses hissing What should
What should. Blank road shimmers. On days like this,
                                My mind, you hardly
                                   Seem to be.
                                On days like these.

you’re home. eating lentils. talking to your
loved one. you’re abroad. eating lentils. talking to
your loved one. you’re not yourself. you’ve been stolen.
you’re talking to your lentils. you’re not a knife, not cotton.

don’t read this text who knows what
it will open or close in you so read what
until now for so many years you read that