Night is a rotten dream.
The ātmā abandons a ransacked
body, pus from an abscess.
A body with no shadow
chews the bones of night.
Night sings like a banshee
to name the dead. The dead
whisper spirit is not matter, body is
not bud. Doctors rest their knives,
prescribe prayer, goad forgiveness,
and leave her body behind.
A white pocket containing pulse
gulp and flux. Fathers sit
cross-legged in her lungs,
fingers circling their throats.
Clocks hammer an end
less suicide note on night’s paper.
The night is nothing but a hole
in the ground. With sage fumes
in the streets, a bullock cart of corpses,
and a burning scarecrow as her guide,
she writes crematoriums’ flavor
of woodsmoke, the coffin of light,
her thirst, fire’s exodus into itself.
Her body shudders like a dancing
child. All night long she writes,
with wax, wick and bone
she writes the ashen night.
Karan Kapoor is editor in chief of Only Poems. A finalist for the Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, his work has appeared in Agni, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, and the Los Angeles Review. www.karankapoor.net
Photo by Kirsten Kluge on Unsplash
