Rekha Valliappan

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Cam Ferland

A Symphony of Echoes

I have trawled the maze of dark chambers
O those years! Refilled with the blue light
Of morning; diluted bubbles of happiness
To help face the day.

Even then
Evening storms gather
Like overripe berries bunching, 
bursting, browning new seasons with
The smell of decay

In the orchard a red cardinal sings
The rage of the wild thing,
Sucking up vibrations of air to 
Hang on the last quiver

Echoes piping in, measuring my days
And my voice is not my own
And the bird’s brittle neck
Pressed into chorus
Empties of sound

And the last sound the
world hears cannot beat out
one last quiver


regrets

i remember the zone of silence,
the confluence of nations 
where the blackouts run
hanging from yellow suns
dappled in dandelions;
they bickering in trees, 
surprising the meerkats, 
the hedgehogs, the roadrunners
with constant chatter without end

many sheeted globes hang obscure
heavy lifting others onto sick branches 
hand signaling after-shocks 
exploding into new geography
flattening meaningless streets

i remember fallen cacti twigs
roads sprinting downhill
houses darkened, fractured, featureless,
dried river beds empty of water
where not a drop can be found
although wanted and missed 

standing upside down
the sandy soil above is my sky cover
the foggy clouds below my ocean blue
i arrange fractal arrays of civilizations
feeding off old bones
feeling the base of mountains move
till i taste the earthquake

o how the gritty clay and kelping heave
accelerating in drifting loops
a weathered face of creased rubble
chasing the sacred fjords of life—
while hunched at the cactoid spines
a globular committee of nations
summon hosts of newly invented gods 
sheathed in stone, terracotta, loam,
a version of our outer shells 
we can never wave good-bye

in the pale blue light

lightning in stasis
crabs claws rise from broken shingles
of a patchy hot day
piercing the stretched sun

how oftentimes past has the sky sheet spat albino snakes
have we trolled inky silhouettes of structures distanced in metrics
how we stood somber-struck by the coma of solitude
when the earth, unearthed—

brash winds break by the handful
egg-shells of death
on coral stained floors
set aflame by ravages of twilight 
girdled
in spiraling—
how brutal grows the word,
how contagious the jags 
rigged in phantoms of coasting caskets 
fluffed by alabaster candles,
i imagine emanations of a slow blueprint
‘twixt sepulcher and chill
forked tongues noosed at the zigzag
weeping, railing
emptying of sorrow—