Lost Column

For Richard de Zoysa

Bite marks on the wall,

boot stains on the rug,

your crumpled red tee shirt

chokes on the wrecked bed.

They sniffed around in your room

for hours,

clawed through the shadows,

lifted prints off your thoughts,

left with your satchel,

spilling words along the way.

No scrapbook of your columns,

no tin box of your poems,

no pirith chant,

no séance.

In the belly of the jungle,

on a pyre of tires,

they erased you

word by word

• Indivisible - An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, The University of Arkansas Press

The Burnt

April 1971, Sri Lanka

Silent as the low-tide,

tarred smell of the burning flesh

of old tires, oozes through wattle walls,

clings to our skin.

Knelt by the cinders, Amma scars Garlic,

spreading the bruised cloves

on four corners of each room,

but the reek snakes through the ceiling, 

eat into our bones, like asbestos.

Athamma prays to her seven gods

lighting seven lamps with flickering wicks

like her lips,

Amma looks for the rosary among her trinkets,

one more god won’t hurt.

Beyond the shuttered windows,

muffled Jeeps roam, duffle coats flutter,

goat hoofed Satyrs

knock on doors, calling out names.

Athamma hangs her talisman on the doorknob.

In the dawn, the radio unchains 

the curfew for two hours.

We queue up for dhal and white bread,

hobble across courtyards

sift through the empty sarongs.

Touching the missing we utter their names 

like a mantra, a lament,

they cling to our skin.

• Best of the net Anthology - Sundress Press

Cowboys

His dark skin glistened like a bottle bottom—

button eyes cindered knee-high— beside 

my white horse. We galloped away 

chasing the renegades, shooting from our hips.

Elastic waist pants slipped down 

our kindergartner behinds­­­­­—  

We were all shades of brown then.

We prayed to the Hindu Gods

in the Bellanvila Buddhist temple.

Tonto carried the offering—

fruits and incense flowered 

over his head in a rattan basket.

We smashed coconuts, dotted 

our temples with kumkum—

sat all-night on paduru mats 

enfolded in the pirith chant 

tethered to a holy string.

We didn’t know then— 

one-day they would come 

carrying voting lists, sticks and stones 

fire bottled in their fists—

looking for the others among us.

In the distance, the roofs burned 

like camphor

but with no scent.

I lost track of what happened

to my dark mask, white cape

those ivory handled pistols.

I thought I’d saved the world.

• Malpais Review