Ansel Oommen

January 2016 | poetry

Fugue

I lived ambling through a dream

It was nice– the scenery was pleasant

And in my naïveté, I lay

Anesthetized

Sniffing poppies

As the clouds scrambled for the east

They warned me to follow them

I laughed; they were mad

Did they not know they were part

Of a story I composed

A poem that I had penned?

If when the storm approached

I’d easily rearrange my horizon for a summer day

With a balmy tale I had known so well

When the squall had finally passed over

It abandoned me forlorn

In a bed of splintered bones

And tormented limbs

Hemorrhaged in my own stupidity

The Augury

Sitting by the window sill
All was quiet, all was still
Watched a black widow kill
and ply her craft in the ceiling corner

Weave in, weave out, a bobbing shuttle
proof of death’s defamed rebuttal
administered a stitching subtle
A handkerchief without a mourner

The hand upon the spinning wheel
Feeds the thread a measured deal
No more, no less, no inch to steal
from that that knows no foreigner

Finished full of lace and frill
the handkerchief, an airborne will
moth of cloth, the spider’s fill
what Death had had for dinner

This poem was originally published in April 2013 in the Indian Review.

by Ansel Oommen

Ansel Oommen is a freelance science/garden writer, artist, and former student of the Institute of Children’s Literature. His work has appeared in Blueprint, Visual Verse, Intima, and Redivider, among others. Discover more at: https://www.behance.net/Ansel

Grilled Miracles

January 2016 | poetry

My daughter looks at the sky
as if her real life might fall out of it.
Air pressure shifts
hope in her bones.
She sleeps long in the afternoon, confident
of her basic knowledge of gravity.

You have no faith, says my son, who claims to see
iguanas dance in Copán.
I saw too much to believe anything, I tell him.
I just watch a day
of no surprises.

You should see them fly, says my brother,
throwing grenades into the lake.
Fish spurt like fountains, a short day’s work.
His ambition overcast.
Explosions deep inside his hands.

You must stay strong, says my husband,
who marches his prosthetic leg
to the top of our hill each day.
I save my strength for death, I tell him.
My eyes closed, my breath too slow.

Today it rained fish,
cold flashes from the sky, caught in
silver agony. My son, my husband,
my daughter, my brother made a fire and
I savoured, in small bites,
the taste of grilled miracles.

by Catriona Cameron

Catriona Cameron is a Scottish writer who travels the world. She writes about the different countries where she has lived in ten years of travel. Her writing has been published in Guernica, Kweli, Magma and Tiferet, among others. Connect with her at www.luckydiplife.com.