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The Emperor in Hindu Kush
1
Farghana
The clear air crackles
over the steppe, trembles blue
on a pool where breast
of a bird skims the surface.
His tunic is splattered with mud,
ropes of hair fall on eyes
turbid like a dark lake.
He reads the horizon
as one would a poem, counts
the hills fading purple at distance,
considers
he’ll pitch his kingdom
where blue gets ashen grey.
2
Samarkand
The breeze from the hills
blows between walls of the mausoleum,
ascends on ribs of blue-domed
prayers and wraps him in a stupor.
Gardens like young maidens
who open their blouses, bare
pomegranates. City pants
in sharp cries of battle,
the young emperor is the dervish
spirited by a passion for the land.
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3
Kabul
The northern wind
from the Hindu Kush
rattles the talisman
tied to the door.
Dead skin from wintry nights
in the desert fall into golden dust.
Smoked rhubarb
fill the hill-country blue
with traces of silver and lapis lazuli,
and fields stained red with madder roots
spread like a shawl of heaven at his feet.
The Begum in Hindukush
4
She has to loosen
the blouse
to breathe
especially when the cassia
blooms
against the mauve breast
of the evening sky.
A flash of umber
stuns the metal sky,
the earth burns the champaka,
embers embed in the cornea
where a crown flower
craves for wings.
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5
To telescope life
she has to see
lime trees in bloom,
a flock of geese snip the sky
in neat halves,
goats on the field slice earth
in arcs.
The Jupiter blinks
on the petals of tree jasmines,
on seed sacs - jewels of light -
sexed by the inebriated moths.
In the flowers
electric with the magic of the night
the moon has blossomed.
Mineral Marked Hill
6
A furrow runs all the way
Across the bruise.
Can a salve soothe
The soreness where his lips dig,
Burrow in her skin, drawing lines
With minerals found on the hill
They climb sick with love?
Ash blows over the field
Blinding the eyes of flowers.
Paper kite on the tree
Rasps in a deep breath:
A gasp in his throat where stabs
Of her words leave marks.
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Uma Gowrishankar © 2022
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Uma Gowrishankar is a writer and artist from Chennai, South India. Her poems have appeared in online and print journals that include Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020-21, Poetry at Sangam, City: A Journal Of South Asian Literature, Qarrtsiluni, Vayavya, Hibiscus: Poems that Heal and Empower, Shimmer Spring, Buddhist Poetry Review, Silver Birch Press, Entropy, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Curio Poetry. Her full-length collection of poetry ‘Birthing History’ was published by Leaky Boot Press.