What are the consequences of silence?

Bhanu Kapil

53.

Red Canna, I see you. Edge of. What I saw: a flower blossoming, in slow motion. 
Not specific enough. Okay. No. Cannot. Red Canna, I veer into you. I am not in 
one straight line. Red Canna, I see you. 1904. The University of Arizona Museum 
of Art. Opening in slow motion: are you okay? Are you okay? Can you hear me? 
(I can't)

That's how it begins: impenetrable.

The book of two words I happen to see, out of the corner of my eye, on a wall. Such 
slowness.

These words took years to arrive.

Pilgrimage

The arch of my foot aches.

Soon, we’re walking through nettles, a yellow paddock,

fresh ginger packed between the gum

And tooth.

In excess, sugars become fat, a kind

of sealant. Organs bleating

On the forest floor.

A first step.

Bhanu Kapil

2023

Humanimal [I want to make a dark mirror out of writing]

47. I want to make a dark mirror out of writing: one child facing the other, like Dora and little Hans. I want to write, for example, about the violence done to my father’s body as a child. In this re-telling, India is blue, green, black and yellow like the actual, reflective surface of a mercury globe. I pour the mercury into a shallow box to see it: my father’s right leg, linear and hard as the bone it contains, and silver. There are scooped out places where the flesh is missing, shiny, as they would be regardless of race. A scar is memory.

Bhanu Kapil

2008

Poems

What are the consequences of silence?

More by this poet

Pilgrimage

Collude

Humanimal [I want to make a dark mirror out of writing]

Poems

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What are the consequences of silence?

More by this poet

Pilgrimage

Collude

Humanimal [I want to make a dark mirror out of writing]

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