No Woman (Trenchtown Blues)
I am learning to live again
in the romantic sense, to eat sardines
from a tin and bread and yogurt
from Trader Joe's. I cut garlic,
ginger and onion but don't make
curries. No one to eat them
in confinement but me. My mother
lives in the middle room but can
only take soup, Campbell's
or some Italian variety. I have
poems to write; must make
my bed still, gather clothes
for the washing machine,
the day-to-day reviewed,
the shared duties contract turned
into one for a sole propietor,
individual tax payer, but head
of household still (My mother).
I depend on the car, the store
and money, a job. I still have
the latter, typed at a distance
from the city. I am lucky. There
is no better time for this refresher
training in living alone. I will return
to the stage blissfully experienced
and leaner given that I don't make
rice or pasta, and eventually or sooner,
I will die, if not from old-fashioned
botulism or our new world plague
but from a broken heart, dare I say it,
that did not heal fast enough. Do excuse
the bathos. I don't fancy bathing this
morning, rubbing my back with the back
of my hand, a contortionist, ideal example
of the nuclear individual, with money
and poems, but no woman, crying.
River Walk
I walk the river every morning. After rain
the water turns muddy and churns, forming
a small rapids over the stony bed. I wonder
about depth, whether I would sink
or swim. And what to do with my I-phone
in case I decide to jump? The Japanese
man fishing on the side, would he give up
his bait and dive in after me as I float away?
Too much to ask. Let him fish in peace...
and let me get on with my dying
in a less public way. Back at the house.
In the room of my mind.
Prodigal
The flame burns in Paumanok, streaks the White
Mountains, flashes across the Adirondacks, splashes
in Cold Spring, wherever you wish to light, the candle
is infectious and the world catches fire, banishes
pandemics, replaces Covid with something older,
grander, love, my child, baby face, love in a blade
of grass, love in the stag coupling with the doe,
in these words typed directly into the heart of
absence, without absinthe, with hope and bubbling
joy, with insane optimism, that tomorrow like
today the prodigal children will come back home.
They are here now and I am soaring over mountains,
hurtling through the sea, a human bomb
exploding into ten thousand rose petals of shrapnel.
From The Runner's Almanac, Spuyten Duyvil: New York, 2024.
Indran Amirthanayagam
Indran Amirthanayagam is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, youtube host and diplomat. He is the author of 28 books and translations. For thirty years he worked for his adoptive country, the United States, on diplomatic assignments in Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Amirthanayagam produced a unique record in 2020 publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty eight poetry books and translations. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com); writes https://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the
Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the 2025 Matwaala Poet of Honor. He is also the IFLAC Word Poeta Mundial 2022. Amirthanayagam writes indranmx.substack.com, hosts The Poetry Channel https://youtube.com/user/indranam. New books and translations include Seer, The Runner’s Almanac, Animal For The Eyes and Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port ) Indran publishes poetry books at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com). Amirthanayagam’s first collection in Portuguese Música subterranea just appeared from Editora Kotter in Brazil.
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