• Sati

    A woman’s cry -
    I am swallowed
    by yellow teeth.

    Sacrificial choir moans
    discourse. I
    hold your heart;

    arteries gasp air;
    red stringencies pump
    for kisses,

    but I told you
    that you could find
    our ashes with your comb.

    Gray lips and powder tongue
    wrapping like lovers
    around survivor wood,

    you throw my head
    to dust a lotus bloom
    where gray stillborns wait.

    My arms reach
    into your nose -
    breasts littering your clothes.

    Your chest is a hole
    above the bone-cage of ribs,
    and you pray never again.

    O deist, you knew
    long before that my forehead shrunk
    from that circle of sandalwood;

    I could not stand
    to clog my third-eye
    with your yellow finger-paint,

    where mother is a shackle
    drooping snake around my neck,
    and your breath

    is the cutting ornament by my ear.