Three Poems by Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Abecedarian for Aubade for Green
At the vegetable market this morning
before anything else, I pick moringa
clear as sugar maple leaf green
do I know what I am going to prepare?
earth turning into green vegetation
fades into a mammoth of recipe books
given by my mother and grandmother
holding the green blessing
iconography flashing across my mind
juxtaposing sambar, Sindhi kadhi,
knit into a prayer of eating together
look, your hand has brought another
map, the vegetable margins your arm
not long ago, when my mother
ordered moringa, the shopkeeper
picked eight bunches of flute-green
quickening his steps to wrap the vegetable
remnant rainwater dampening the street
scents still familiar in memory
today is a feast for which we are preparing
unmooring the harvest we hold
vacating the trolley of the green plenitude
we walk imagining the green fields
xenolith of movement that brings
year after year, the holy in our mouths and
zephyranthes blooming after thunderstorms.
Rainstorm
When you return to a village where you grew up,
you belong to every village; the people are your own,
the citronella sky— these sunsets
have passed between us like an exchange
of fragmenting cirrocumulus
becoming the sky.
for my father
Plinth and Oratorio
When I was a child, I noticed the moon followed us everywhere we went into the city,
In Plymouth, peel an orange like the city,
and there is no explanation for the magic of things, the holy spectacle we witness into
like envelopes of breeze. story unfolding each voice, now known?
Everywhere snow, the way it falls on the ground, covering everything— remembrance
the sky. a sea is No water unfamiliar. History
the landscape. I hold a bowl of fruit and you make a smoothie out of it, the different
When I was a child, the moon followed everywhere into the city,
berries still unified in a solid color. Often, we cannot tell them apart. This coagulation.
Everywhere snow, everything— remembrance
of where we walked along the side. In Plymouth, I wanted to peel an orange like the city,
the landscape. a bowl of fruit the different
the sky. What miles when a sea is proximate? No water unfamiliar. History arriving
the magic of things, the holy spectacle
like envelopes of breeze. What story unfolding in each house, each voice, now known?
berries still unified This coagulation.