Rajiv Mohabir

For Kazim

Sunrise ocher marks
the river's forehead,

wet dhotis betray supplicants
bare as opaque windows,

their secrets. It's no secret,
my petals wreath

my crown in marigold, a glow
I've nursed into nova

when I cracked, from drought,
my pericarp, thirsty for God.

I have always been
a honey man,

coat of a langur, pilgrim-
body of fruit-

offering cast onto the tongue
of deity I prayed would move

in me. No sweetmeat
to sugar the idol

carved of me. The devout
fill brass kettles,

fill God with God,
to offer running water to Sun,

as mantras insist
from the temples;

the adhan's pollen drifts—
yes, God is great.

Along the ghats
umbrellas bloom in red,

I breathe into nostrils of marble:
The name of God is Truth—

vendors hawk neem branches
to scour mouths in bitter.
...

coolie naam dharaiya ham tej pakare
jaisan chhuri kate hamke Guyana mein aike

With this whip-scar iron shackle name Aja
contract-bound, whole day cut cane; come night he drink

up rum for so until he wine-up and pitch in
the trench's black water and cries Oh Manager!

until sugar and pressure claim his two eyes.
The backra manager laugh at we — so come so done.

I was born a crab-dog devotee of the silent
god, the jungle god, the god crosser-of-seas. White tongues

licked the sweet Demerara of my sores. Now
Stateside, Americans erase my slave story;

call me Indian. Can't they hear kalapani
in my voice, my breath's marine layer when I say?

They made us hold the name coolie
like a cutlass it bit us coming to Guyana
...

then the drunk teen scatters
a cascade of copper on cement,
the old Uncle yells, eyes silver
eyes in disbelief, Pick up yuh
paisa, na man! no worry
on this slate day youths dem
speak no Hindi to know paisa
means money, a taxi speeds
by blaring chutney remix
Kaise Bani and you remember
your Aji dropping her rum
at Aunty's party to jump up
and your mother's awkward Hindi—
you bit your fingers with each roti
she rolled, each mantra she taught you
floods your throat in front
of this puja shop on 127th and Liberty
front strung with plastic marigolds,
a replica strung of polypropylene
like you are now and not like
long time when Par-Aja came
from India, you are a forgery
that will one day burn
not on a pyre but in an incinerator,
not on a riverbank, but
in a crematorium, your prayers
in Hindi accented in English alveolars
neither devas nor prophets
recognize as supplication
but on Liberty Avenue
in the waft of a spliff drag,
and sandalwood a coolie Uncle
in a kurta mouths Marley
as you walk by
you start to sing praise
to Queens where you are
Chandra's son or so
and so's buddy ke pickni,
where you wipe oil from doubles
on your jeans and cuss up
the car that backs into stacked crates
of strawberries, to where you
return after three years
and Richmond Hill opens
its coolie arms pulls you close
and in your ear whispers
dis time na long time.
...

jaunse tu bhagela ii toke nighalayihe
je andar rahe tohar jahaaj ke nast karihe

The remnant of hind limbs puppets an origin
play that strings baleen to terrestrial

ancestors. Occasionally whales sport hind legs —
as in Vancouver in 1949,

a harpooned humpback bore eighteen inches
of femur breaching its body wall. Disconnected

from the spine, what is their function but to rend
the book of Genesis into two? Why regard

scripture and exegesis as legs and fluke,
sure to fall away, and not eat beef or pork? Why

do I need Hindi in Hawaii as a skeletal
structure, a myth to hook my leviathan jaw?

What you run from will swallow you,
what's inside will splinter your boat
...

hathailiyan ke mehndi halki hoike gayaab
ii sarirwa mein bhala kaa tikaav

You will your house of clay and breath
a fortress. One day, ash and smoke will play fire

games in the courtyard. Remember this hovel
is of five senses —

Does wind stay trapped in a room when its windows
yawn? Without country it flows as river water,

a traceless origin. How can this structure
of earth and bone be home? Says Kabir, "However

beautiful — gold or silver — when the cage
door cracks what bird stays inside?"

The palm's mehndi lightens then disappears;
what permanence is in your body?
...

After a century, humpbacks migrate
again to Queens. They left
due to sewage and white froth

banking the shores from polychlorinated-
biphenyl-dumping into the Hudson
and winnowing menhaden schools.

But now grace, dark bodies of song
return. Go to the seaside—

Hold your breath. Submerge.
A black fluke silhouetted
against the Manhattan skyline.

Now ICE beats doors
down on Liberty Avenue
to deport. I sit alone on orange

A train seats, mouth sparkling
from Singh's, no matter how
white supremacy gathers

at the sidewalks, flows down
the streets, we still beat our drums
wild. Watch their false-god statues

prostrate to black and brown hands.
They won't keep us out
though they send us back.

Our songs will pierce the dark
fathoms. Behold the miracle:

what was once lost
now leaps before you.
...