Poetry

the river teaches me to answer to my name in two languages / ALHS

headwaters gathering morphemes of desire 
like Dravidian rootword dizzy with meaning she cliffdives off the carbonatite
and emerges gurgling (at the mouth); this is a poem about gasps

the boys mimic her plunge and meet her in ha/ollowed caverns
(the boatman says the sun is turning me rose-coloured) her soft exhales 
warm upon their palms; this is how we learn to recite

breathcarved Kannada consonants ka kha ga gha gna
foam clung to her sand-ribs where each monsoon a line map
was drawn and redrawn in fell sentence of one finite verb

etym/iology: I am born on the cusp of two alluvial languages
one aspirated and the other not; I am always in two minds about breathing
I tell her this is why I can’t swim 

amidst the carbonatite cliffs my name is a loanword
we don’t speak of Tamil waiting upon the tongue and weathering
till I have no prayers for the holy river

in the shallows she touches my belly and teaches me how to breathe:
we measure breath against cartographic grief, we brim

she reminds me to make a promise of return when I tell her I should leave

ALHS is a poet and critic from India. She lives and writes on the unceded land of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples. Her work has appeared in Rising Phoenix Review and amberflora zine, and as a pagefiftyone press micro-broadside. She writes The Poemgranates Newsletter and is @amocalypse on Twitter.