SANJANA NAIR


DEATH MAPS / EARTH BOUND / MATING RITUALS

Death Maps

It has been a year since I left, and last week
somebody noticed. Somebody recognized me.
Strange, that dreams do not let us forget where we have failed;
it is the way the years start to spell themselves out:
I could have been a rock star
I might have been a dancer
it must have been a dream.
We’ve all read about the Valley of Dreamers,
heard the rumor it exists, wondered
where we could buy the maps.
And later, when we finally bought the cars
that could have gotten us there, only later
after the questions of maps and professions and lovers
had been answered with the finality of a coin dropped,
only then does it come clearly:
the faces of the ones we forgot, the dreams left
behind to make ways to live, the voices all saying
pick only one of everything until finally we see
the maps inside of ourselves gone to terror,
the ones that awaited the attention of
the missing cartographer’s craft.
These are the maps of dreaming that go
to the deserts within us, losing the lines
that should have been drawn,
the lives that would have grown.

[reverse]

Earth Bound

In the mansions of our hearts
the funeral wreaths bloom.
Here, hot stones burn
with the lichens that cover them. Skulls
become cradles for colonies
of small, fire ants. Red falls apart
and white halos lie beneath.
And here, for each small, solitary
voice ringing simple bells in the dark,
for each lonely pair of unsung lungs,
there is still the colony,
of every single one of us, behind.

[reverse]

Mating Rituals


The pigeons are spinning again,
turning on top of the “o” and the “e”
of Clover’s Deli, innately driven
they turn on their tails again and again
over the heads of customers who clack by
on slick summer pavement, freshly
washed down by Clover’s granddaughter.
Heels dripping water, the strangers
forget to look up. They do not recognize
the matings in the sky. Bowing their heads
close to their companions, close, they whisper
about messed up, morning-made beds,
whisper about Grecian bathrooms in marble buildings;
they whisper to forge against fear and
their feet tap on. They do not even leave
water-marks from the puddles
they have just passed through.

[reverse]