Comeback, and: For Anjoli Roy, and: Coyote, Gravel, and: Isolate, and: Dream of a Beached Whale Rajiv Mohabir (bio) Comeback Returning to Bellingham Bay,humpbacks lunge into krillclouds. Cetacean resurgence stuns August mackerel shoals, northernblooms now at silver capacity.Whalers once drove rorquals to markets as lamp oil and umbrellas.What is a body but to be rendered— In 1907 five hundred white menshook East Indians from prayer, broke dholak drums, pushed outwho they called Hindu Hordes. We are still being flensedof papers, striped to the quickin public. And yet, in America's thieved straits I sing dark-bodied chutney. Listen, the Salish Salt again hums.Off Semiahmoo Bay, see a cowteach her yearling to blow [End Page 49] a toroidal vortex. Despitewhale irons, ruin, despiteexpulsion, Get Out scrawled on our temple walls, we return.To our summer qawwali kirtan, we return, whileflukes beat the drum-skin sea. For Anjoli Roy What is nostalgia but a ship's keeninginto a capelin shoal, silver as springgrief. The sun somewhere hiding under cloudcover, so steel light glows from the photoyou hold of which shapes you have tried to befor others. Like Mary searched, whatdeity rests behind stone—the dyinggod is a winter tree. A crown of leavesfirst brown then gone. But like any seasonof whales, a comeback arrives soon. The treecoronated in emerald. The cornersof your house must first fill with ghost shadows.Without absence what value has cloudlesslight? Without silence can whale song return? [End Page 50] Coyote, Gravel I strip down to my erectionremembering the thirty-something who cruised me at the urinal—I am a lonely fool. Yesterday I followed a coyotebehind a pile of granite gravel. Who is foreign here?This coyote adapting to human waste, or the stonesthat don't recall being a cliff— Which of us coils poemsunable to recall to page the trade winds' balm?Magical thinking corrals me to the epic in whichthe god is god and not hewn stone—My god, I want to be led. [End Page 51] Isolate come night I let in the colduntil the ti plant frosts and brownsand I am cruel to imprison him in Bostonfor lusting after self-reflection * I have stopped listeningto music for a seasonthe drum beats a pulse of grief into me * a friend saysgrieving cultural loss is real grief I've mortared mineinto a house Papered the walls with hypotheticals Each morning I lift my blindsastonished by gray untilI am window-like neither inside nor outunable to control what moves meor stirs beyond casement [End Page 52] * A supine red breastbrush strokedthe feather's each vein matte and soft the window cracked lets inthe breeze of morningsong Dream of a Beached Whale A hurricane strands a humpbackthat croons from land, soonto bloat in surf, unable to bearthe weight of meat, lungs goredby rib. Beneath, copepods and powdered mollusk shellsperform their diatom orchestrain tiny voice, as salt packs themtighter together. You uttera spell of letters: mysticetes, and corals sprout from your pharynx.Clown fish scintillate in anemoneas if to say, O eye, be drawn bythe wild, fire-color you will be.Your body opens into a coral reef, triggerfish and wrasse playamongst the polyps of your chestuntil you roll back onto the beachnext to the other vertebraed creature.Your voice carries its noise [End Page 53] to swirl in starlight long afteryou shake into clay and teemwith microbial life. Burningin the tryworks of blubber, ashorein sun, helpless you voice too, the fire song that steams in airas a shadow cry. One day you willluminesce until you bleach into rockdust. But now, you can do nothingyourself except dissolve, balaena beside you, melodious elsewhere,but guttural here. Not mysticalballerina a name masked in cognates;you ask, Balma, is this my voice orthe rorqual's? Water, wave, grit of whelk and conch...
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Jan 1, 2023
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