Two Poems by Mihir Bellamkonda

Listen to Mihir read New Orleans:

Listen to Mihir read Dallas:

New Orleans

1. River

What a noise you make;
I do not wonder you hide in your slouching city
from the solemn and vanishing stars.

I understand. I too have broken my bounds in anger and joy,
swollen my body in the spring rain and raced
into the triangle of my desire.

In truth, I envy you.
Your multiplicity, your upward movements,
your endless colored beads

arcing through the air with the confidence of gulls
who tear my skin for food and then curl 
into my curves for sleep.

In truth, I have adopted you for my purpose.

Only remember I have capacity enough for the ocean;
your breath would fit within my shallowest reach.

2. Player

I wanted oblivion in my youth,
wanted her as my friends wanted her:
without understanding what flat eyes meant across the bar.

I said her name before touching the strings,
bought bottles to burn away her distance,
pressed sleep to my twitching mind

that I might find her in the interstices
of dream and waking light, in the hollow body
of my cheap guitar. And

I played. Listen—I played like no other.
As an old woman 
I know my ends.

Not dissolution into music or love
but a sigh before applause,

a long look across the pillow 
at the beloved body I cannot hold completely.
Peace. It’s peace now I want, as others before me have wanted.

It’s my hands now that shake, as high notes and leaves

have shaken. My mind is sure
though the veins burst from me as dark rivers.
I tremble from bank to bank. I overflow.
The doctor calls it a human behavior

and traces the cause to whiskey. O, peace—

Music still plays in the drunken rooms,
new chords for old songs.

I wish for all a half-death, the body
neither vanished nor tangible.

3. Bottle

Of course I have wanted to kill,
and tasted like it. Of course I have wanted to love,

as all objects want, in differing ways,
their own consumption.

I burn, yes, but within decision,
within the bounds of the willing body,
as few things burn.

If this love I can pour into you
is a narrow love and easily forgotten, 
if the laughter spills into rawness,

remember you chose me from the shelf.
We burn together, or not all.
Of course I have wanted to love.

To press myself to you and warm
the fingers, the luminous blood around the heart;
to adore you from behind your eyes.

And so that I may leave a mark on this world,
for my immortality:

set me down when you’ve finished.
A gentle noise on the table. And for both of us,
an empty rest.

Dallas

1. Father

The dog is ash and mud-brown, sleeping.
It did not know the time. The airport had no clocks.
Don’t ask questions. 
They’ve changed the maps, added orange cones. 
The passengers don’t ask questions. 
Carve of the concrete blocks your fortune: 
a pint of cheap aluminum beer, a bouquet for whoever demands.
A child, a price called tuition. Trace for the crowd 
cowboys’ eager rope, beg their love, take their money.
God made the roads in circles, like dogs
chasing tails. Like clocks and fallen leaves.
I could send you crashing against the benches’ metal teeth
I could scream louder than your mother,
louder than you, cast you out
with a question that isn’t a question.
I could send you crashing through the city
counting the uncountable trash.
After your confession, I see my own father’s ghost
at the foot of the bed with the dog while your mother hides in her yarns.
I hate what you’ve done to this family.
Your skinny wrists breaking against the lawnmower, 
your feckless humiliation, the letters I signed for your liberal school.
Your pink toys, that high-pitched feedback from the news.

2. Son

Dreaming, dreaming, a mother’s faded colors,
a child’s defiance. Iron covers for the drainage. Silence.
The rubber soles of strangers beat the graffiti into ash.
Roots crack concrete every summer.
Trees are arrogant here, uglier than grass and
shedding every year like a hoary cancer. 
The hardware store raises its prices on their essentials: primer, saw blades
to hold against your face and call yourself man.
A young pine that will not fall. An angry brown
dog: stand tough, get mad. Vomit. Vomit.
You made me this way, hungry, eyes just like yours: 
unsmiling, thin mouth reciting Stemmons, past Love Field, 35-East, crying
because I saw a man who looked Iike you.
~~~

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