June 2023

I catalog what I cannot capture:
the sun, its ragged stumble into rockface,
the precise elevation of this plateau or the next,
the sea, of course, against which everything is measured.

My tools are insufficient, inexact.

For instance: there is no way to measure
the peak against the distance from the tip
of one ring finger to the…

I haven’t been touched
in months. My mother appears in mirrors.
Her cheeks full like roses to plant
my lips against when she wakes. We huddle
under heavy razais, paisleys to our mouths. Delhi creeps
in fingers of smog through windows. My father
likes to leave open the windows. Towel
to his waist, he stares out like an inmate, saying…

It was the little Bible I had on my lap—the New
Testament. It was “white patent,” like my shoes.
It might be a clutch purse, I felt,
and I was being admirably still and quiet

with my white patent-leather clutch purse,
pretending I was a fashion model, praying
when the preacher said to or singing the hymn
Daddy led, holding my clutch…