Building

By KANYA KANCHANA

“Raise high the roof beam, carpenters.
Like Ares comes the bridegroom,
taller far than a tall man.”
—Sappho

 

A brief architectural brief 

Give me 
a circle, a halo, a circumscription, 
a sphere of eleven dimensions, 
a list of lists,
a key. 

Give me 
a thunderstorm poncho, 
an endangered turtleshell, 
a backpack no heavier than 12 kilos, 
a cave. 

Give me 
a terrace of food, 
a garden of songs, 
a communal lovebowl, 
a lab. 

Give me 
the bones of mammals, 
their tendons and ligaments, 
their shrinkwrap of fascia, 
a ship. 

Give me
a compendium of excruciating minutiae, 
a harem of small kitchen appliances, 
a nest of mynahglitter, 
a web. 

Give me 
the unfittable fit, 
the face of the mask, 
the toomuch that I ask— 

Give me 
or go home.

 

Kanya Kanchana is a poet from India working on her first collection. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Anomaly, Asymptote, and elsewhere. Her translations have appeared in Exchanges, Asymptote, Waxwing, Circumference, Aldus, and Muse India. Her flash fiction has appeared in Litro and Paper Darts, and is forthcoming from The Conium Review. Her work was shortlisted for the 2019 DISQUIET Prize and awarded a 2018 baseCollective Residency Scholarship. Kanya is also engaged in practice, teaching, and Sanskrit philological research at the intersection of tantra and yoga and is currently doing her MPhil at the University of Cambridge.

[Purchase Issue 20 here.]

 

Building

Related Posts

Hall of Mirrors

November 2023 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan and Gabriel Spera

GABRIEL SPERA
Gracefully we hold each other / architects and optimists / always at arm’s length like / congenital dreamers / tango masters slinkily coiled / bright candles in a hall of mirrors / whatever I propose you propose / to conquer repeating and repeating / the opposite.

a golden field of wheat

Thresher Days

OSWALDO VARGAS
The wheat wants an apology, / for taking me this long / to show my wrists / to the thresher boy. // Finally a summer where he asks how my parents are / and my jaw is ready, / stretched open so he can hear about them, / easier. // I may look different after, / I will need a new name.

People gather in protest in front of a building; a man (center) holds up a red flag

Picket Line Baby

AIDEED MEDINA
White women give my father shaded looks./ Bringing babies to do their dirty work,/ mumbled in passing. // I am paid in jelly doughnuts / for my day on the boycott. // My dad leads my baby brother / to the front of the grocery store doors / for a meeting with the manager.