Poetry
Two poems
Relevant to the Day
for Mr Daliri
After lunch, I decide I have no brothers and sisters, I am
Alone. My love is in another room.
She doesn’t know of this severance, how far I drifted
In the space of morning. Language no longer speaks to me.
Though I see its many bodies, I cannot be
Reached. When I return, I shudder in this God-given air
Praise what remains. Outside, a man has built a kookaburra
Fifteen feet tall, and put a laugh inside
Big enough for the world. I watch as the icon meets its makers
And they join in laughing. You can inject this moment
With whatever amount of joy
Or poison you desire. I like to think the birds are not
Questioning if family is real, or joking about size—instead
They make a cacophony of kinship.
In the last human hour, I start to build a poem as large and
Weird as love. It cannot save us and still I am rushing
To usher every spirit to live within
To join in, to laugh, sweetly, at all that has transpired.
To Be Loved Like This
I loathe being outside when it rains.
Much like family, I can’t see the beauty
when I am included. I love the subtle
distortion of water on windows, how glass
protects, separates, magnifies. It allows us
to hear the slop and splash on slopes
without rushing to be free of it, the slow
hard clasp of thirst. It reveals
the illusion of transparency. O shallow
curtain, I kiss it, mist it, get real
close to the muted crackle of droplets
meeting the world. Fields of popcorn.
What delicious entertainment, God is
saying, I am watching, I am falling,
I am touching every inch of this earth.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 14, 2020 as "Two poems".
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