Poetry
the river teaches me to answer to my name in two languages / ALHS
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
headwaters gathering morphemes of desire
like Dravidian rootword dizzy with meaning she cliffdives off the carbonatite
and emerges gurgling (at the mouth); this is a poem about gasps
the boys mimic her plunge and meet her in ha/ollowed caverns
(the boatman says the sun is turning me rose-coloured) her soft exhales
warm upon their palms; this is how we learn to recite
breathcarved Kannada consonants ka kha ga gha gna
foam clung to her sand-ribs where each monsoon a line map
was drawn and redrawn in fell sentence of one finite verb
etym/iology: I am born on the cusp of two alluvial languages
one aspirated and the other not; I am always in two minds about breathing
I tell her this is why I can’t swim
amidst the carbonatite cliffs my name is a loanword
we don’t speak of Tamil waiting upon the tongue and weathering
till I have no prayers for the holy river
in the shallows she touches my belly and teaches me how to breathe:
we measure breath against cartographic grief, we brim
she reminds me to make a promise of return when I tell her I should leave