the lover must remove the veil
of her face. hell will
fall if papa hears him. if the storm of disgrace
enters through the window,

my father’s turban will be disrespected.
don’t develop an affair with
me. this is the dust of the storm in your
eyes which can cause havoc.
truth is always dry.

DESERT THROAT
-for Mongolian vocalist Urna Chahar-Tugchi

champ the bit, whirl, snarl.
the rope is not long enough. it never was.
urna sculpts

a thousand horses of dust, wind
flayed ribs
naked on the steppes, an unutterable lullaby

to the gale, a tempest flower.
she keens for the lonely arc we leave
our little ones,

wails for the breach of each birth:
desecrated silence.
bless me with your wept howl,

molting foal, mare shying from the bit.
incant sand
to rain the clarity of your cry

tenseless
incessant

However and wherever
you find the god, bring him back to us.
Bring him back,
but first tell him,

tell him that the love
of his life is dead, and will rot
before he arrives back
in our arms.

He will cripple, be dung-laden
hobble on frail bones.
He will lose all his hair.

He will arrive like us:
spitting water from his mouth.

THRENODY

As always, it begins and ends in pain. Bodies litter the landscape.

Kneel,
the blood on your hands from your handpicked god,

and cry again, cry in front of your altar,
whatever and wherever it is.

You are the eternal war.

© Vikas Kizhepat Menon 2007

Vikas Menon is a poet and playwright who has published poems in journals such as TriQuarterly, Catamaran, Bitter Oleander, Brooklyn Review, Toronto Review, APA Journal, and Monolid, among others. He was a recent finalist in the Writers at Work competition, and his work is forthcoming in Writing the Lines of Our Hands, the first anthology of South Asian American poetry. His first play, “Lead with Your Left” was recently produced at the South Asian Theatre Arts Guild Experiment’s (STAGE) One Act Festival in Washington, D.C. He received his M.F.A (Poetry) from Brooklyn College in 1997, and his M.A. in Literature from St. Louis University in 1993.

© MiPOesias Magazine 2000-2007~. A Menendez/King Publication ~