Best Famous Meena Alexander Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Meena Alexander poems. This is a select list of the best famous Meena Alexander poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Meena Alexander poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of meena alexander poems.

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Written by Meena Alexander | Where Do You Come From? I come from the nether regions They serve me pomegranate seeds with morsels of flying fish From time to time I wear a crown of blood streaked grass. Mama beat me when I was a child for stealing honey from a honey pot It swung from the rafters of the kitchen. Why I stuffed my mouth with golden stuff, no one could tell. King Midas wore a skin that killed him. My nails are patterned ebony, Doxil will do that They made a port under my collar bone with a plastic tube that runs into a blood vessel. I set out with mama from Bombay harbor. Our steamer was SS Jehangir, in honor of the World Conqueror — They say he knelt on the battle field to stroke the Beloved’s shadow. The waves were dark in Bombay harbor, Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography Writing too is an experiment with truth. No one knows my name in Arabic means port. On board white people would not come near us Were they scared our brown skin would sully them? Mama tried to teach me English in a sing song voice. So you can swim into your life she said. Wee child, my language tutor muttered ruler in hand, ready to strike, Just pronounce the words right: Pluck, pluck Suck, suck Duck, duck Stuck, stuck.

Written by Meena Alexander | Revenant This disease has come back With frills and furbelows. You must give your whole life to poetry Only a few survive if that— Poems I mean, paper crumpled Shades of another water— Far springs are what you long for, Listening for the slow drip of chemicals Through a hole in your chest. If you were torn from me I could not bear what the earth had to offer. To be well again, what might that mean? The flowering plum sprung from late snow, Ratcheting trill in the blackberry bush Blood streaks, pluck and throb of mercy.

Written by Meena Alexander | Muse I was young when you came to me. Each thing rings its turn, you sang in my ear, a slip of a thing dressed like a convent girl— white socks, shoes, dark blue pinafore, white blouse. A pencil box in hand: girl, book, tree— those were the words you gave me. Girl was penne, hair drawn back, gleaming on the scalp, the self in a mirror in a rosewood room the sky at monsoon time, pearl slits In cloud cover, a jagged music pours: gash of sense, raw covenant clasped still in a gold bound book, pusthakam pages parted, ink rubbed with mist, a bird might have dreamt its shadow there spreading fire in a tree maram. You murmured the word, sliding it on your tongue, trying to get how a girl could turn into a molten thing and not burn. Centuries later worn out from travel I rest under a tree. You come to me a bird shedding gold feathers, each one a quill scraping my tympanum. You set a book to my ribs. Night after night I unclasp it at the mirror's edge alphabets flicker and soar. Write in the light of all the languages you know the earth contains, you murmur in my ear. This is pure transport.

Written by Meena Alexander | Krishna, 3:29 Am In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god) Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battle He balanced himself on a flat boat painted black. Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flag A tongue with syllables no script can catch. The many births you have passed through, try to remember them as I do mine Memory is all you have. Still, how much can you bear on your back? You’ve lost one language, gained another, lost a third. There’s nothing you’ll inherit, neither per stirpes nor per capita No plot by the riverbank in your father’s village of Kozencheri Or by the burning ghat in Varanasi. All you have is a writing hand smeared with ink and little bits of paper Swirling in a violent wind. I am a blue-black child cheeks swollen with a butter ball I stole from mama’s kitchen Stones and sky and stars melt in my mouth Wooden spoon in hand she chased me Round and round the tamarind tree. I am musk in the wings of the koel which nests in that tree?— You heard its cry in the jolting bus from Santa Monica to Malibu After the Ferris wheel, the lovers with their wind slashed hair Toxic foam on the drifts of the ocean Come the dry cactus lands The child who crosses the border water bottle in hand Fallen asleep in the aisle where backpacks and sodden baskets are stashed. Out of her soiled pink skirt whirl these blood-scratched skies And all the singing rifts of story.

Written by Meena Alexander | For My Father, Karachi 1947 Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well's mouth. Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood. You were bound to meteorology, Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds. The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm, Fissured air baring the heart's intricate meshwork Of want and need— Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me. Crossing Chand Bibi Road, Named after the princess who rode with hawks, Slept with a gold sword under her pillow, Raced on polo fields, You saw a man lift a child, her chest burnt with oil, Her small thighs bruised. He bore her through latticed hallways Into Lady Dufferin's hospital. How could you pierce the acumen of empire, Mesh of deceprion through which soldiers crawled, Trees slashed with petrol, Grille work of light in a partitioned land? When you turned away, Your blue black hair was crowned with smoke— You knelt on a stone. On your bent head The monsoons poured.