No Man’s Land Ghazal

This story of the Gurkhas—the new republic—we shall rewrite with ash. 
They burned the letters, Love. Above your signature, write: With Ash.


Marigolds cut. The moon full on the window. The phone rings:
We know where you live. A boy’s voice polite with ash.


Enter a needle, exit a plowshare: the priests have gutted the temples.
How could we, without poisoning the gods, purge the parasites? With ash?


For every smoke jumper who became fire, a firefly Morse codes a line. 
The only thing missing: Anna’s hummingbird to recite with ash.


They sold the Mechi. The Kali. (Soon they will lease Sagarmatha.)
We woke up on no man’s land—our ancestors’ epitaphs white with ash.


Insomnia? A cup of rain before bed. Acid reflux? A teaspoon of lophophorus 
song. Homesickness? Smother a hectare of searchlight with ash.


I used to cry every night. Now there is no I said the Sadhu, exhaling 
a rope of smoke only the suffering, his forehead erudite with ash.


Stray dogs pee on the memorials. Where our fathers were slain,
a supermarket. The martyrs have given up on us: The flag contrite with ash.

Curfew. Over the loudspeaker: Draft the constitution by dawn.
Armed with only skin and tongue, we wrote on ash all night with ash.


Forty-nine nights under the bodhi, bones translucent, the Buddha opens his eyes:
The Middle Way. But Beloved, the heart trembles—now lead, now kite—with ash.

Read more from Issue 18.1.