The Gurkhas
After Kubla Khan
In Xanadu, sunless troops of Gurkhas bathe
with kukris smiling, thirsty by their waists.
There, soldiers hang their cattle chains
high atop the coral pillars & sing
those hoarse Himalayan tunes stretching
from their far mountain belly, sing songs
that clenched their yak-milked bones
when their war-cry filled the trenches.
Their throaty echoes rumble through the wreckage
of this copper city where the sea slipped
on her feet, shook her flesh out of place, leaking
fat flames & golden pagodas. Listen. Outside
a mother runs like boiling rain holding
a little lilac dress searching the ruins, her
footsteps, blood sprouting rhododendrons, as
she laughs with tears & laughs, her laughter asking
where were you? But this, the heaven that used
to touch the earth, is the country the soldiers
have returned to. Here, the inked numbers on
their chests are shadows jumping on a single
spot. Here, the names of children are
a cold breath shivering in their father’s tongue
lost like the memories of home, forgotten
by the sounds of bullets whistling, of machine
heartbeats, & stories of one-handed men catching
bombs like picking fruit. Here, they lean
backs against sea-black stupas as the sepia photos
of mountain children giggling, float between
their ribs. Here, where the gods no longer live –
neither Western nor Eastern,
the Gurkhas – can you hear them sing
How to forget your mother’s language
After Sophie Dunsby
first – you learn that you will never be your Father or your Mother
&
how you will never inherit the hot black kiss of an iron pressed on your
mother’s thigh the brand of her marriage, she always hid behind her lungi
how you will never learn that the fabric tightened to her waist
was her way of folding new flesh no longer white no longer pale
&
how you will never inherit your Mother’s screams the ones she cupped in the
night swallowing her own silence as the head of her child tilted out of her arms
how you will learn that her evening prayers were music for the afternoon rain
that she was once the girl playing on those wet steaming street
&
how you will never inherit her poor courage stealing the green mangoes
from the hospitals with Nepalese writing you can no longer read
how you will never learn that she ran differently then her whole
body giggling holding those mangoes to her chest shaking with breath
&
how you will never inherit her one dress hemmed by the hands of her Mother
collecting bottles for rupees she hid inside her bones afraid of liquor hands
how you will never learn there is a thirst that makes Fathers thieves
how they eat prayers how they rob their children and wives
&
how you will never inherit your Mother’s need to run
from school afraid of the things she didn’t have –
how you will never learn that it was the pencils neon rubbers and rulers
she would never forget to buy her son
&
how you will never inherit why your Mother no longer ran
how you will never learn why she stopped wearing the uniform
she used to share
The Kindling 