Major Arcana

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / 1 Comment

0

Void. Sight of conception. Joyful. Nucleic.

I

Telekinetic. Mind made matter. Prefigurative.

II

The witch understands what the king cannot. Listen.

III

The orchard flourishing; the rivers replete. 

IV

I see a city in this place.

V

The king’s council. The prophet’s apostle. Does order bring meaning or control?

VI

She, he, they. (re) join, rejoice.

VII

Drive. You know the way.

VIII

The unbreakable within holds fast.

IX

Still. Solitary. Enter the temple. 

X

Tomorrow is the next reality.

XI

Settle the bill, or pay the price.

XII

Suspend your disbelief. The rope will hold. 

XIII

The worm-infested fruit becomes the soil.  

XIV

Rivulets in dry earth will find the sea at last.

XV

Where your self-loathing dances. 

XVI

Unmake this world. It is done for. 

XVII

From your bruise, the blossom.

XVIII

A wish, a whisper, a word, a wonder.  

XIX

I live in the light. 

XX

The meaning in the past makes the map for the road ahead.

XXI

One

Trouble the Troubles

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
2020

Alone in broad daylight, 
my mask pulled tight 
A neighbor's breath is near. 

My loves, all turned to ghosts,
go nowhere fast,
Their pain will last for years

Police murder George Floyd
Anger erupts
Summer streets are seared

Black lives taken each day
We say their names, 
Uncertain who will hear

2021

New year’s insurrection
White power play
Dog whistles call and cheer

No consequences seen
Emboldens those
Who love the king of jeer

Ida’s remnants arrive
Tornados bloom
Sirens jar inner ear

Vine street expressway flood
A river born
We drown in nature’s tears

2022

Don’t say gay Florida
Control what’s taught
Deny that we are queer

School active shooter drills
Are make-believe
Until the news appears

Supreme court overturns
Roe versus Wade
The right that we hold dear

Proverb says that hindsight’s 
20/20
True, the nightmare is clear


_______________________

Awaken us from terrors!
Our movement without peer
Our future glowing brighter
Toward our vision steer!

Black joy is multiplying
Queer liberators rise
“Me too” chorus resounding
Lay bare the kingdoms lies

Old paradigm collapsing
The capitalist plot
The workers are uniting
Unlearning all you taught

Clarion call of poets
Truth murals on the streets
Afro-futurisms thrive
Revolutionary beats

The virus multiplying
Not just the kind that kills
Infectious liberation
Rewiring our wills

We’re troubling our troubles
We understand the cage
Revealing all that’s hidden
Transmogrifying rage

Not something in our future
These seedlings in the earth
We cultivate this garden
Midwife our vision’s birth

In the Egg, Pt. 2

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
Are you in the egg, 
or are you just cracking up? 
You need a break…through!

Ha! What a chicken. 
Make sure you are fully grown
before you breathe air.

You must know how to
filter out the good from bad.
Edible? Deadly?

Get close to others,
yes, and learn to read. The signs
say, “keep your distance”.

Seasons of No Pt. 1

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
When I tell you "no"
Mind the autumn bird feeder
You empty the seeds

When I tell you "no"
Six more weeks of harsh winter
Icy, treacherous

When I tell you "no"
Spring rains are far more likely
to drown the new blooms

When I tell you "no"
You spread arctic wildfires
Unnatural wind

Stroke

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment

Three days ago you were at my house, 

observing the faulty dishwasher, 

patiently deducing the cause of the 

brown gunk building up inside.

Care-full. Loving. Daddy.

—

Today, I am in the shower

Right hand presses soap suds 

down the curve of my waist

“Your mom called. We have to go.”

I still need to put oil on my skin. 

—

I sit in the passenger side front seat,

the phone pressed to my head. 

495 is faster these days. 

Spelling aloud:  “N as in Nancy. 

V as in Victor,” like you used to do. 

—

It’s bitter but my coat is too warm. 

Hospitals all over-capacity. The surge. 

A black fence bi-sects the apron lawn.

I lean on it and answer a call. 

Your brother is crying in Goa.  

—

Texts flow like ants at a picnic. 

Most of them don’t matter. 

I still read them all:

“Mom needs a snack.”

“Where’s the medical directive?”

“Call your senator!”

—

Sick people treated in the hall,

beds outside your room. 

The new nurse has long black hair 

pulled into a braid, apple cheeks. 

Her smile is warm behind the mask. 

—

You are asleep. I need a bed. 

Mom’s car is unfamiliar

I drive without headlights. 

No cars on the road at midnight. 

This time, we dodged the bullet. 

Divine’s Dream

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
The sun never rises, never sets.

We turn away, towards,
close our eyes, then open,
forget, then remember
genuflect, stand erect and bend back,
wander away, test the tether, then retreat,
and think it is the sun who has moved. 

True. She moves, like a child at a carnival,
holding her parent's hand, chasing her siblings,
gasping at the wonder and terror of this colossal playground.

And when, at the end of time, her body heavy, her eyes unseeing,
she is lifted up into the arms of her makers, rocked gently but firmly, and wrapped with care, we are no more and no less than the fragments, flares, and fractals that flash in her minds' eye in the moments before sleep.

I am content to be a Divine's dream.

Dedicated to bell hooks in her time of transition.

Choir

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment

They are exalted kisses reaching up into the heavens.

They are clarion oxygen invisibly bound to an iron core.

They are treetops rooted, reaching – wings’ resting-place.

They are magma veins pulsing beneath, between, and beyond.

—-

Synchronous harmony.

Emulsified spectrum of visible light.

No one piece exists in isolation.

They are the whole damned choir.

Dis. Connected.

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment

Testing, testing, one…

three. Can you…

I have something…

…share. Something to…

——

What? No, you’re…

I missed…again?

Hold on, hold on…

Ok. Now. Try again. 

——

I’m… lost you.

I lost. You. Lost. 

…try to re…?

…still be here?

——

Where is here?

No where. No air.

No breaths. Nobody.

No bodies here.

——

Ghosts in a graveyard.

The sounds of an ocean

In the curve of an empty shell.

thin place

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / 1 Comment 
Night ghasts dance salaciously
to the beat of heart songs. 

Death roams silent streets 
and I remember birds.

A lust for freedom
binds me to greed 
and self-love.
 
The fires of hell lick my feet. 
Angel wings caress my cheek.

In this thin place
From head to toe
I burn.

Enough

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
In this moment I am... 

heart and mind receiving words on a page. 
wife pillowing sleeping husband's head in my lap.
ears attached to soul soaking in sound and singing along. 
woman with aching hips finding ease on the couch.
mother kissing daughter who is wearing my old dress.
human caressing canine-friend nuzzling my thigh.

enough.

Cancelled

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
Undo. Unfollow. Unsubscribe. 
Cancel. Delete. Erase.

We don't like you anymore. 
We don't want to know who, what, why you are.
We will no longer feed you with time, attention, or money.
We do not acknowledge your existence, past, present or future. 

We are not now, and will never be you.

You are the mistake we will never make again. 

Because if we do, we will be cancelled too.

Learning to Rest

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
Sand colored shades hid the playful sunbeams that warmed the chapel windows.

The room darkened like a forest floor at dawn, diffuse speckled light in the shadows.

A silence full of breathing souls echoed faintly through the halls of worship.

A reassuring hand gently caressed each supine spine, encouraging us to release the day.

Heartbeats slowed leaving space for the mind to wander and sleep to seep in.

One mat per child spaced evenly along Hope Lutheran's wall, we learned to rest.

Another world

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
The witch and the sage are one. 
Inquiry in place of inquisition

Herstory is known to all
History listens with reverence

Travelers and traders 
Expand hearts and minds

Territories left unsullied
Trust flourishes on the vine

Our voices woven together
Make meaning emerge

Truth is a living tapestry
Rugged, fertile, tangible

In another world

American Spirits

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment

White-supremacy, the original American Spirit, just won’t let us go. I get it. I used to smoke too. It took me a dozen tries over fifteen years before I quit for good.

Every time, I would start out committed, self-righteous, reciting the evils of the devil divine: “Gives you a false sense of security. Addictive. Lining the pockets of the filthy rich. Hurts the people around you. Toxic. Will eventually lead to death.”

Until one day, I’d be stressed, and a ubiquitous hip-height concrete outdoor ashtray full of half-smoked butts would whisper to me, “You need us. We’ll make you feel good. Strong. Like life is easy again. No one has to know.” And so, without a thought, I’d put my lips on someone else’s lipstick-smeared cancer stick and suck in deep.

For a moment all felt right with the world. A pretty lie, on an ugly day.

White-supremacy, that oldest of American Spirits just won’t let us go. I get it. I do. Really, we just needed one more pull.

Linoleum

Featured / Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment

Resilience

The black and white squares gleam in the tree-filtered light that pours like sweet lime juice through the kitchen window.

Silently shining, the tiles reflect children’s socks sliding, diapered bottoms pushing off to find freedom in motion.

With a sturdy softness, the weathered floor braces the delighted soles of cooks. The cheerful eaters dance, drawn in by the scent of roasted, ripened love.

Somehow always comfortably cool, despite the baking from inside and out, the humble platform invites busy body bones to sit, stretch out, tell tales or just listen.

This unheralded dais is, in fact, the place where life happens.

Depression

The weakened rays meekly dust the floor with a remembrance of light.

Icy fingers dampen the spaces between old wood beams and the graying cracked cover.

Feet of all shapes and sizes shuffle listlessly along its spine, longing for the ready warmth of rugs and slippers.

The daily meal seems distant, dull, made without fanfare. Eaters emerge reluctantly from their darkened rooms to consume and retreat.

Inside this cold silence, the sullen floor sags, certain the wood beneath it has turned to rot or dust.

It should not be trusted to support anyone.

Retreat

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
Most of the livelong days 
Test themselves in the sea 
Tossed about by the waves
Inelegantly body surfing
Sand-scraped knees

The hapless weekends 
Make disoriented attempts
To arise from the surf
Find a foothold in seashells
Avoid the jelly sting

Each Sunday turns
to face Monday
Gasping for breath
Slapped in the face
By an oncoming wave

But once in a while…

The days unwind themselves 
Like a sunbather
Dripping onto a beach towel
Unhurried, relaxed, content
To be made toast

Tornado Seeds

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 
I dream of the children of the rising seas
The wildfire born, the tornado seeds
Conceived in the hands of the run down clock
Betrayed by their ancestor’s greed

They live on the edges of forgotten towns
Main Street hunters, suburban farms
Raised by necessity, grief, and change
Schooled by the silenced alarm

At night they gather, chant freedom tales
Of shining light, and hammer and bell
Prostrate to surviving beasts and birds
Remembering all those who fell. 

I pray for these wildflowers of heat and flood
Find rivulets, run deep and wide
Resync your heartbeats with earthsong
Let your energies be sun-tied. 

The new world is yours
Tornado seeds
Disperse
Alight
Be

Hip Opener

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment 

My pain dwells in the space 
Between lower back and upper legs
Where the holding meets the doing

The hinge that screams 
For oil, for ease, for new
Screws to tighten up my will 

I have opened these hips
Again, and again and again
To engulf some and release others

My hips cry, oooooh. 
What have you done for me lately? 
I wanna be the one in control.