Smitha Sehgal
Race Horse nee Fire Fly
Horses are fireflies. They can only draw water
from the well, and cannot plant seeds of thirst
in the back of your throat. They choose to hide
in the cupboard than be the battle.
Genetically a mild season grows
on their tongue. Any storm could wreck them.
Time uproots trees from the mouth of light.
I am a believer of lies forged in iron.
The walls and cupboards move around each day
playing Ring a Ring o Roses.
Flower pots trudge from the eye of the sun
to the gloom of the earth’s hollow
where snakes nest. When the train slows
on the tracks journeying through
the hackneyed earth in those hinterlands,
light parts way with shadows
and the scent of evening lingers on the granaries.
The culvert of infinite woes breaks
into a chatter of marooned water.
Sea births the residue of salt.
I smell placenta.
Come imprint your hunger
in the blood clots of summer
on the whitewashed walls of my barn.
A Deer Could Paint Grass
A deer before headlights unwinds
a song in her head. Run says the forest. Faster
says the night. Caesura says the moon. Take us
along says the stars. Night cuts in, blue as frost.
Deer cannot smell grass now.
She is draped in summer singing in the leopard eyes
of a night truck. Fix the frame of slow dawn
and nail it down. Or else, a deer could paint
grass. Tall stalks. Interspersed with sorrel.
A forest could wait. Long strokes of viridian.
Add a lake for that interesting bit.
Slip in a mandarin dragonet. Invite the leopard for a dip.
Warblers sing under the canopy
concealing the naked lies of moon, they hop over,
endlessly thrashing scum of loyalty.
Holding lanterns, lone brides illuminate the night
to receive lovers. Unseeing sleep, a pearl’s eye.
Deer wears her burnt skin,
becoming leopard.
In a strange forest she washes and wrings
her spell in a bucketful of sun. This
is a disguise. Linseed oil on her brushes,
she walks down the night road.
Slow. Boulders guard the lake
beyond landslides.
This time leopard knocks twice over.
Cautious. Empty forest.
Light floods inside the song of a deer carcass.
Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional and poet who writes in two languages—English and Malayalam. Her poems have been featured in contemporary literary publications such as Ink Sweat & Tears, Panoply, Marrow Magazine, Marathon Literary Review and elsewhere.