Monsoon Magazine, Vol.1.2., V ikas Menon

volume1.2

Vikas Menon

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FOR PANDIT JASRAJ
Wet silence of a monsoon morning,
water drumming heavy, broad bellied leaves.

Above, the blue white muttering sky,
a swan sibilant hauteur,

the heron's arc.

WAIT
Wait--

until you've seen the leaf's veins spread across bark and limb,

until you've heard the ache between a note and its cry,

the sigh of gravel lost between the rails.

Wait, until you've tasted cold rosemilk and ashes,

and the musky lemon of your inner thigh.

Until you've cut into your skin wire-thin wounds,

smelt that pungent desert bloom,

wait, until Mary shrouds your mildewed wall

and Ganesh sips milk from your spoon,

wait, do not die.

NYC: 1995
I see
a thousand orphaned Karnas
on the streets,

betrayed by their own blood,
teased with hope from billboards,

pierced with cathode rays,
we curse them to final failure,

earth stripped
from our usury.

Like Bhishma,
we too will fall to an uneasy rest

on arrowheads of the past,
the lancets of memory--

a child's bullet lodged
in our backs.

BENEDICTION II
after Rumi

Tonight, the moon is a scythe--
stretch
your neck beneath it.
Tommorow, it will grow into an silver almond--
place it
on your tongue.

Vikas Menon has been published in the Brooklyn Review and Triquarterly, and has work forthcoming in the APA Journal. He received an M.A. from St. Louis University and an M.F.A. from Brooklyn College. He currrently works with the Developmentally Disabled population of New York City and lives in Brooklyn.

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