by
Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Beyond earth, ether
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Light as in the shade
when leaves pigment into the shade of xanthophylls.
Let us be of this world but make another light ourselves.
Does anyone not see that lightning forked open the city
yesterday? Driving by a narrow alley,
all I can see are leaves sprayed with rainwater. I think of abstractions.
The wind is like a mother fanning her child to sleep
when the electricity is gone. I feel wind stroke my brow
into a gentle lullaby. The world is not all changed,
but so much better. The thing about the world is that
it goes on, whether you watch or not. Sometimes
I think about the world with all its tainted glory
as a hot-air balloon moving further away in the expanse
of galaxies. The sun tidies itself up day after day,
hangs in the sky, shows up. The moon washes itself
in tides as it rises after gloaming. Then there is a portion
of the sky where birds are released into, with their fennel
hued wings, into a golden hour that no matter what, shines.
(with a line from Dylan Thomas)
smog poem
i.
syringes of smoke led free
in the air
counter-narrative
for love poem
in the age of climate-change
ii.
yet a sunset
birthed out of
an intermingling of dust & light
diverges slant toward the seas
& lovers kiss beneath
fervent dew
etherized upon the eastern horizon
in its horizontal cumulus
iii.
this encumbered globe
bartered into thick boughs of trees
& soil & seed & sunlight & surplus
becoming a thinning veil
iv.
the eiderdown is full
with translucent
breaks in the sky
v.
a highway
littered with cars
commuters with scant breaths
in the valley
of opportunity
vi.
homebound, they return
through the garden’s
vi.
sleet of smog
over
the hydrangeas
chrysanthemums
& pruned grass.
vii.
an owl hoots
atop an empty branch
with closed eyes
meditating over
dust figments through
the rays of a streetlamp.
viii.
landscape of fungi-green
hedges
viii.
smoke rises from
autumn leaves, burnt
over the outskirts of town
ix.
night —
the landscape of elegy
x.
a procession of cicadas
chirp into
last embers of the dark.
Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a GREAT scholarship awardee, and has earned a second postgraduate degree in literature from England. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her chapbook Home is Hyperbole won the Boston Uncommon Chapbook Series (Boston Accent Lit). She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal and reader for Palette Poetry.
