Poetry

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 4 Comments

Sharing this piece from September 29th, 2016. It was written for dVerse Poets, inspired by Wallace Stevens’ classic, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. But interestingly, this poem was included in a dverse poets anthology called CHIAROSCURO which is supposedly part of the proposed LunarCodex to be inducted into the Polaris time capsule, targeted for the 2023 SpaceX/ Astrobotic Griffin lander/ NASA VIPER rover mission, headed for the Lunar South Pole. I have no idea how to process this information, but there it is. 
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I
how many mirrors
has this morning hung
everywhere I see my soul

II
like mirror shards
the morning dew falls
suddenly a thousand skies

III
my grandmother’s mirror
photoshopping my image
with her soft eyes

IV
somedays the mirror
stretches a hand
to catch a falling tear

V
between me and the mirror
seven steps
seven presumptions

VI
the sky is our mirror
you see the falling stars
I am bewitched by the moon

VII
empty mirror
how much did I lose of myself
leaving you

VIII
free,
the way we looked
before there were mirrors

IX
hidden behind the mirror
all those reflections
before this

X
today the mirror
casts three reflections
asking me to choose

XI
in his rearview mirror
he brings home
the waxing moon

XII
then what saved Narcissus?
a ripple?
a tear?

XIII
three blackbirds
flying past the mirror
six pause

A story in many unequal parts, some missing – 14

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ Leave a comment

Born in one town and raised in four others
before I was ten, I feel like the earth, unable
to say where I started. Was it night first…

Read the whole poem here. This story and all its unequal parts are on the new blog, along with some readings, so it will be a lot easier to catch up on previous episodes, if you haven’t read them already. Do follow that blog/subscribe via email for updates. And if you’d like to be a guest reader or link your art, drop me a note! Or if you too are writing your story on your blog, let’s create a unique blogroll of poetic memoirs.

The Way It Works, Or Doesn’t

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 8 Comments

the way it works, or doesn’t,
one piece of evidence points to another, on and on, even as the search
changes and the seeker
becomes another person, then another;
but not all things are clues, some things just are,
they don’t say anything, won’t go anywhere,
your breath on my skin was not a portent, but I didn’t know that until later,
until it was too late to stop moving,
until it was too late to stop crying;
some things we take along with us, half carrying, half dragging,
their screams incoherent, their eyes streaming, bright like dying stars,
by the time I realised I had found myself,
by the time I figured out why there were no footprints to follow,
by the time I came back to where I began,
where it began,
my head was pounding,
there were welts on my soul, the shape of your fingers,
something you had said was still a bleeding wound;
your walking away was not a sign,
not a symptom of an incoming deluge,
my clothes were wet,
there was water in my shoes,
there were no clues, not even rain,
not even a ripple,
some things just are,
some days, it doesn’t work,
we cannot walk on water

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First posted this poem here on this day four years ago. This poem still seems relevant to me, especially as I  work on the new series. Four years is a long time but is also just yesterday.  

A story in many unequal parts, some missing – 13

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ Leave a comment

Gathering reflections from a river
gone by. Remembering like a
reluctant rain. The day…

Read the whole poem here. This story and all its unequal parts are on the new blog, along with some readings, so it will be a lot easier to catch up on previous episodes. Do follow that blog/subscribe via email for updates. And if you’d like to be a guest reader or link your art, drop me a note! Or if you too are writing your story on your blog, let’s create a unique blogroll.

Half past dawn

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 2 Comments

saturday morning, ashen, as if this monsoon has stapled itself
to the sky and will never leave, the deluge will wash away

everything, even sins, even sinners, the levitating fear that
woke me up before dawn is still rising, though I’m afraid the moon

will be much too cold to touch, the numbness with which I greet
the news is surrounded by a hollow moat that aches as a flaccid

sun wakes, how much more, a woman is killed, a child is raped,
hurricanes line up in the ocean like planes waiting to land, maybe

if the earth opens up like an orange, so we can fix it wedge by
wedge, stripping fibre, spitting out bitter seeds, biting into

summer, remember the juice running down our chins, we were
laughing, not a cloud in the blue, the sky schooling us to cover

our blemishes, it is raining again, someone is gathering clothes
hung out on the line, blue jeans, wet as fear, the saturated ground

is refusing rain that pours and pours, the sea, filled with storms,
is refusing water, so it waits, turning the colour of absent light,

a bleeding orange, unwedged, how much more, the hollows ache as
they drown the dead, but we are laughing, wiping juice on our collars,

pointing at the untainted sky, the moon, wrapped in cloud, is cold
as ice, summer burning my throat, saturday morning, half past dawn,

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First posted this poem here on this day five years ago. Everything seems the same, chaos, gloom and the late-season monsoon fury. Change is no longer the constant.

A story in many unequal parts, some missing – 12

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ Leave a comment

The moon is different. She knows
that molten mother-of-pearl is on
loan till dawn. She lies…

Read the whole poem here. I’ve created a new home for this story and all its unequal parts, so it will be a lot easier to read and catch up on previous posts. Do follow the new blog/subscribe via email for updates and for links to readings of some of the poems. Drop me a note, I’d love to know if you are tracking this story!