by KIRUN KAPUR
At dawn, the grackles have discovered something they must say to you.
I slip from bed. Lay out two cups. Old habit: prepare Earl Grey for you.
These years of plague, these years of loving who we love through screens—
Now even the most desperate heart straps on a mask to pray to you.
The storm clouds scroll. The news assumes a new doomed shape.
Great Writer, have you put down your pen? Our grief is a cliché to you.
Friends call to say with tourists gone the sea turtles have thronged
our childhood beach. If you were here, this is the joy I would replay for you.
Pyres pock your city. The losses burning day and night.
Fire after fire—it’s like my heart is on display for you.
Valmiki found his meter when he cried out in distress.
This poet, daughter, penitent looks for a shape that lets her stay with you.
From Issue 12
KIRUN KAPUR is a poet, editor, teacher and translator. She is the author of three books of poetry, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist (Elixir Press, 2015), which won the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize and the Antivenom Poetry Award; Women in the Waiting Room (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Poetry Series; and the chapbook All the Rivers in Paradise (UChicago Arts, 2022). Her work appears in AGNI, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. She serves as editor at the Beloit Poetry Journal and teaches at Amherst College, where she is director of the Creative Writing Program.