Letters To An Albatross

Anita Mohan

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

Letters To An Albatross by Anita Mohan Copyright 2010 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza Cover art: Anita Mohan First Edition ISBN: 9781935402978 Library of Congress Control Number 2009910011 BlazeVOX [books] 303 Bedford Ave Buffalo, NY 14216 Editor@blazevox.org

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4:00 a.m. Flawed ekistics left us somnambulists. We left the crowded settlement, we followed trails of those before us to this desolate field. A murder of crows, ever dreamless, caw from pepper trees with their shadowy red boughs. Sometimes they sound like violent nose-blowing of old men and other times their harpy shrieks rent the skein of silver wind. Buffeted by the cold flush of this August morning, before the heat flushes our cheeks, before our tongues hang out, before the viscosity of thought is broken by the scent of bergamot I take off my boots and let hay make between splayed toes. The puppy's paws trip-trapping over the famed bridge, down-low and tripping jazzily along, her toenails unclipped, she glances back with kohl-rimmed eyes, flashing mischief, over a determined shoulder. She misses the almond trees that lined the farmyard, the womb with its playmates in amnions, snuggled close and out under the orange wafer of moon- you too are too happy to sleep you are alive! We all know sleep Brooks something strange.

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Shapeshifting at the Museum Scalded, our vision seared by sun, we are each: a sunflower ablaze, a taffeta-swaddled ballet student, pancake make-up drizzling down a chin under calcium limelight. Legs extended, we step like gazelles from the tub, a swath of sky streaming across our thighs. We float along cool choppy streams, under a Japanese footbridge lit up like a torch, roll headfirst downhill through mud-lazy grass in pale ballooning dresses. We picnic by waterlilies floating in serpentine strokes of blue and pink, strip to thin shifts and lounge under a palm tree, bandages over ears. And we narrow our eyes under goosedown, ready for a steep fall into a rosy, voluptuous sleep for over one hundred years.

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Tenderness Rain punctuates skylight with loud ellipses, spreads infinite circles on its face, pellucid. A pink straw angled, abandoned retrieved from the patio, so pink, so thin it hurts, a lumen in the cheek of a cup, its blown glass curve mossy with silverbubbles. Im spooring between rushes, sniffing the air for traces of anothers breath puddles whirr with echoes of clouds, roiling lead-colored. Barefoot, feet splash, around each chilly gasp, circling, breaking the clouds that climb each other, below the soles of feet press wet silt and follow a trail where green tendrils expel earth. And earth parts for each filament from each good seed. And in the garden a rabbit beheads clover.

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Rousseaus Stag Hunt He traipsed through bramble, nose sugar-damp. His hooves slowly applauded the warm stone of our stoop, grazing our bushes, among houses all aglow. Perhaps, in our window, he spied frond upon lacy frond of fern, and conjured a sylvan paradise at sunset there, up in the lamplight, mantling through the veil that flamed before the glass. We mirrored each other, wary. His antlers tanned, fuzzy like a summer dandelion, fragile, and a line of light sparking from every pointed branch, zipping from his delicate head . His coat dappled and supple. I stepped forward, urged himRun home! Surprised, he started realizing no copse lay behind the curtains hot, only a rose red inferno. He galloped downhill, vanished, a distant speck in gardens blooming with people and shimmering with missives of scent

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Tomato Season What do you expect from fruit that congregates in sweaty bliss, speaking to tongues, not in tongues like glossalalia spilling out of pews. Smooth, they surface, they shudder, they burst under the knife. Spilling like spume from the ocean, they flash pearly green and rose. Brandywines and Early Girls, lustful As adulterers on holiday and juiced to Scrub copper pots by. Still feeling betrayed by air as they soften and squish, knees in the dirt whence they came, atrophied, they lay in puddled end-ofsummer splendor, huddled for warmth not desire. Less their youth they crinkle, disrobe from loose skins they fall, bitter as first frost.

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