As temperatures dip, grab a cuppa and enjoy the soothing, balmy poems of Meena Alexander.
Here are my top 5 picks of her poems:
5. Lychees
4. Cadenza
3. Sometimes I’m in a Garden
Sometimes I’m in a garden by a tree
whose bark is burning into alphabets
but then I struggle to a waking place
where I must die a little
tell no tales.
I search the crudest discipline of space
a single room in which I am alone
on its concrete walls I trace
a curious alphabet
articulate with flame.
There I pace, gesticulate
and wait.
Its slowly that I’ll find the gate
back to that featureless garden,
slowly taste the blade
scraping my heart’s blood
into poetry
https://meenaalexander.com/stone-roots/
2. Syncopation
Be fearless with density
You whisper to me
It too is an accumulation of longing,
A sideways swipe at the stars.
We are leaving one
Language for the other,
Always and ever –
What crossing enjoins
Waves of hope,
Bitter notes plucked from sea foam,
Beauty’s tribulation,
Virus of the possible,
Arco of love
Slow fingering of desire,
Our saris packed
Into one battered suitcase
Old leather rinsed
With moonlight as underwater
Continental plates clash
And on a sodden deck
He rises,
Cloaked in amaranth petals
A big man, his wounds
Molten.
What spills
From his lips?
Can Krishna
Hear him calling?
https://meenaalexander.com/indian-ocean-poems/#blues
And my all time favourite sensuous poem:
1. Darling Coffee:
The periodic pleasure
of small happenings
is upon us—
behind the stalls
at the farmer’s market
snow glinting in heaps,
a cardinal its chest
puffed out, bloodshod
above the piles of awnings,
passion’s proclivities;
you picking up a sweet potato
turning to me ‘This too?’—
query of tenderness
under the blown red wing.
Remember the brazen world?
Let’s find a room
with a window onto elms
strung with sunlight,
a cafe with polished cups,
darling coffee they call it,
may our bed be stoked
with fresh cut rosemary
and glinting thyme,
all herbs in due season
tucked under wild sheets:
fit for the conjugation of joy.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/darling-coffee
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