Meena Alexander Poems

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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...Read more of this...

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...Read more of this...

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...Read more of this...

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...Read more of this...

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,...Read more of this...