Brooming as a Metaphor to Parenting

You could paint

her and proclaim

she wears

her raggedness

like organza. Or pair

her with myths

and proffer

on a platter

austerity, abnegation.

What once had been yellow

is washed out, what once

had been whole

is not.

The seams are restitched

with seasons fading to reasons

of lack, of lackadaisical days

drunken in unconcern

and abandonment.

What once had been daisy

is a stalk

of desert. What once had been

moon is coined dull.

What once had been a child

is a broken child. And no, they aren’t

one, they aren’t even

or two, they are so many

that they stay in pieces

under legs

and limbs of

brooding, unbroomable moments.

We Err Naming Our Rivers

I.

We are ensnared in a consternation

of distances. I am at a loss to point to

the weeded bridge you can walk to meet me.

II.

You keep your river without a name.

You wash it like muslin, dry it like silk,

feather wrong side out. You fold it like

a message: an inland letter at numbered

flaps. You slide it by moth balls, basil.

III.

We name ours. We think naming is reaching

out to own. Being lazy with laundry, we have

piles unwashed rivering down the ghats.

IV.

We are pigeons. Every apartment window

is a home now where we cry into its owl-eyes.

V.

We have lost track of rivers, so you will not

reach me following yours.

VI.

My mother reaching out to give me a corner

to write in her inland letter to my grandpa.

All I have is a flap. Let’s hope to close this

distance by crowding ourselves into it.