Compulsion

I take an hour to wear shoes,
Scrub my body
All day with alcohol

Until the skin burns.
I tunnel through the years
To the burrow of the circus.

The trapeze artists weave from a bar
To a bar and jump
Into the net that bounces them

To space again and again
The way my father lifts the plate
And places it once twice

Until I take his hand and
Lace his fingers with mine:
Now both of us slaves

To commands from a dark world.
Stymied by the Ferris wheel,
He tugs the buckle of the bag,

Opens closes opens closes
In the time others finish rides,
Smear lips with cotton candy.

The Journey

Walking down the corridor, you ask:
can music do that – curl the tongue around
the stitch of ache – when the notes touch
the ceiling of the hospital room? The night sky
rotting green burns at the edges with city lights.

You wear black, rest like fractured old wood
on the migraine flare which flames your body.
I gather your feet to trace the rings of age, sluices
of calcium whorled in volcanic blooms.
I cannot peel away your dreams:

they march one after another down
the jungle path to snake across my feet. You and I
pack grief in Samsonite. As I haul the suitcase
into the car, I cannot say what weighs more—
all that you carry or that you leave behind.

Consumption

Petals from the prints of red hibiscus
crinkled, the stamen
fell over
the padding of the breastfeeding gown.

Buttons unhooked,
she squeezed her nipples,
engorged breasts caked with milk
decanted
existence into the shell of grief.

The diminutive father, his skin
parched, stared
at the new
life guzzle with insatiable

hunger. The cells powdered in the pith,
being became dust
in the palm of the son she fed.

Uma Gowrishankar is a writer and artist from Chennai, South India. Her poems have appeared in online and print journals that include Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020-21, Poetry at Sangam, City: A Journal Of South Asian Literature, Qarrtsiluni, Vayavya, Hibiscus: Poems that Heal and Empower, Shimmer Spring, Buddhist Poetry Review, Silver Birch Press, Entropy, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Curio Poetry. Her full-length collection of poetry Birthing History was published by Leaky Boot Press.