Five Poems by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

 

Deciduous

 

I

She searches for absolution

in the first bruise of dusk.

Slivers of cadmium

eat into the patina of the elms.

Back then, they were silver moths,

flitting in the fog of wayward love.

 

II

She razed everything in her path—

everything that showed her a bud

of kindness. This is how

he remembers her. As torch.

As ash. As loathing. As ruin.

 

III

November moonrise.

She is a dying ember—

a russet shame in the rye grass.

 

IV

Old sins dissolve in this lake of salt.

He sleeps upon dead leaves—

a bed of mottled regret.                                                                                             .

Bokeh

Thistle clambers over tilled cheekbones.

Four decades of sunless pupils—

twin raindrops spewing lucid confetti

whirling in soft bokeh.

 

Come, listen to the whispers pierce—

overlords weaving their way

in the darkness of eustachian tunnels.

 

But believe you me—I am primal earth,

too seasoned now to embrace this ruse,

perennial deceit—promise of buds,

hidden behind the bristle of burrs.

 

 

Icarus

 

Freefalling through a cloud of doves,

wailing for wings to sprout—

 

scapula breaking in barbed skeins

of wind. He sees a circle of baobabs,

 

flames of the forest, vales of stupor lit

by fading lanterns—memories spill

 

from kaleidoscopes, lucent dawns

in every swivel, silken silhouettes

 

of seabirds, portia trees, vermillion petals

gale-scattered within the splintering psyche

 

of this ammolite angel

cleaving the tranquil sea.

 

 

Kintsugi

 

my name—fated to be maimed—

shell cracked, dismembered,

crumbling between jaws—pungent pulp

on tongues and taste buds,

mangled in mouths that sometimes

condescend to try, others

that purse with mockery

mimicry

 

how futile              this wasteland

endless correction

 

how to plead          how to bargain   how to be seen

shed alien halos stitched

to shadow, crawling

on all fours, piecing together

these shards each time

they shatter—soothing myself

with a kintsugi of my wounded syllables—

this name—my name—that means

ocean born, waves of unbridled passion—

swelling, ebbing, receding.

 

 

Endings 

 

Natal skies—vault upheld

by sagging chalazae,

flag and flail.

 

A crunch of shells

stokes the silence,

a reverberation

in soot-heavy dusk.

 

Muted eyes watch

over deepening voids,

yolk of ghostly suns

trickling down

a carcanet of thorns.

 

 

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist who was raised in the Middle East. She serves as an editor for Authora Australis. Her works have been published in various print and online literary journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Bracken Magazine, and Black Bough Poetry. Her poetry and art have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and nine times for the Sundress Best of the Net Awards Anthology. She was long listed for the 2022 Dai Fry Memorial Award for Mystical Poetry in Wales, UK. She won the 66th Moon Prize awarded by Writing in a Woman’s Voice Journal and was a finalist in the Glass House Poetry Awards. She is the author of three micro chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project. She lives and works in New South Wales on the traditional lands of The Eora Nation. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings