TWO POEMS by Rajiv Mohabir
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.
- Published in Featured Poetry, Issue 34, Poetry
PREFACE by Rajiv Mohabir
Let’s pretend you are going hunting.
You pack your gear: a buck knife, a bow
and arrows cleft from the straight weeds, wild
in my front yard. You perch in a red oak, yearning
for those chilly mornings that signal harvest.
The copper of pine needles falling; whether
you catch me or not is not the point. You look first
at the wandering deer, the bigger prize,
full of meat and bone, with a skin to cure,
but you keep an eye peeled for upland birds too,
smaller, easier to mount once ensnared. You don’t need a guide
to hollow lungs of song. Yes, I said,
birds are easy to work with, their refugee bones
hollowed for flight, so small and delicate,
they may as well not be there. I have always
made myself invisible. I mean to say
I am still—the trembling breath of a comma,
the coincidental object of your want.
Listen to Rajiv Mohabir’s reading of “Preface” below…