Glancing away from a riveting female historian
turned Sanskrit expert, rowers put out
in the Charles: bathtub vessels flying triangular sails
Like Kuru and Pandava pennants on either side
of the Mahabharata. She asserts: The Charioteer’s
driver, Krishna, is like—think of a Humvee owner
Taking his friends on a Friday night spin
in Bangalore saying, “I am God.” Parsing
an ancient text, and [...]

Blue plumbago waving frantically
in high wind the brass chimes
echoing an emperor’s garden
after he has withdrawn his hands
from a courtesan’s shaved legs
the kingdom’s burdens and labors
are shifted in the official painter’s
brushes water pink and lime bamboo
cured to engineered floors fitting
without nails or paste
interlocking Channels clicking flush
like bodies in a spoon and birds
coming out as tentative as [...]

Pausing in the heat to pour water
around new planted shrubs:
Formosa azaleas still turgid
from last night’s watering.
We misplaced the wheel’s rhythm.
It was not possible.
We could resume at will.
Periwinkles snuggle up to marigolds
over-ripe carrots bloom
because we failed to harvest them
last fall. Lantanas wait on winter.
You whispered goodbye and turned
your face to a land and time we loved
and [...]

Once you’re in lefty
it is right and right and right
and you can stalk cars
forever—Olds gone, GM going
Chrysler’s way. The history of automobiles.
Ford’s blue egg hatching
another fusion. The freight train’s horn
awakening a new year’s slumber
dissolved in the Carolina wrens’ chirps.
Once you’re in lefty
it is left and left and left
until your tenancy’s over. Who slept
in what room, [...]

And when that time arrives
—as it must—when we part
may there be no taste of neem
on our tongues—what might have been
is in dreams and our next mornings
the smooth transitioning motorcycles
gears trolling our dull neighborhoods.
The poems are from the Persaud album, Lantana Strangling Ixora

Touching the harmonium’s black
keys, singing a dhun and stopping
a Florida night in a Boston’s
I couldn’t make out your melody
was sweeter than any Demerara
sugar. The closest we came
to conversation: Are you off
on holiday then? No. I’m finished.
So quickly? Yes. Goodbye? Yes.
You toss that cabbage
head into your room. I do not know
your name. I [...]

They are dismantling the tents in the dusk.
The steel poleframes clanging as they fall
to the ground. We are still sitting on the tarmac
under a few leaves yellowing in the September sun
a folk artist singing, “This land is my land”
and then, “Where have all the flowers gone—gone
for graveyards everyone.” You are not supposed
to cry for strangers, [...]

Lemon-green buds cover the tarmac.
Young maple leaves laugh
in the wind. This is not the way    
to say goodbye; not in the pub
by a cold river, or a coffeehouse
cozy and comforted by a dozen ears
listening for tomorrow. Do not look back
to this piped time; the one who talked
too much, the one whose ears went out
to space, whose [...]

LANTANA STRANGLING IXORA
There were times in the morning
we questioned the bloom
of the previous evening, watering
cana lilies, clearing the live oak
acorns from our white wrought-iron bench
How do ripe plantains smell?
Like ripe bananas. You could laugh
until after dinner. I will hold
Radhakrishnan’s interpretations of the Upanishads
until you snap on the ceiling fan
And we swirl on the sheets [...]