by Mary Vaneecke
The Flood
I should have killed the serpents
roiling in the river.
One escaped,
coiled under the warm stove,
its scales brittle and ready to crackle
into a spiral of fire like Vishnu’s disc.
The house drowned, kitchen fire doused
in rain hissed, the serpent I failed to slay
slithered into my dream. Poison coloured
my nails, blood drained from my lips
where the cleft disappeared like a rumour.
As the serpent stirred, I watched the water level
rise above my heart, then to my neck,
to scale a beehive of deep and long sighs.
I smelled the earth. Roots of the neem tree
in clumps of clay snagged my voice.
Like a beak, the vocal cord filled, brimmed over
when a turtle choked the larynx.
In the darkness among abandoned homes,
the plumeria was rendered odourless.
Pale with terror, pigeons under the windowsill
breathed lung-full with the bones of the drowned.
Uma Gowrishankar is a writer and artist from Chennai, South India. Her poems have appeared in online and print journals that include Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Poetry at Sangam, City: A Journal Of South Asian Literature, Qarrtsiluni, Vayavya, Buddhist Poetry Review, Silver Birch Press. Her full-length collection of poetry Birthing History was published by Leaky Boot Press.
Mary Vaneecke is an award-winning artist, author, and teacher. Her mixed media art on textiles has been exhibited in museums and at regional and national shows throughout the US, in Europe and Australia. Her work and articles have appeared in many publications, including the LA Times, Quilting Arts Magazine, Machine Quilting Unlimited, the Studio Art Quilt Associates’ Journal, and The Quilting Quarterly. In 2010, her work Homage won the American Quilters Society’s Longarm Workmanship Award for a Wall-sized quilt in Paducah, KY. She is founder of TheMourningProject.com, a huge community art project to draw attention to the problem of infant mortality by collecting 20,000 pairs of handmade baby booties. www.maryvaneecke.com www.facebook.com/mvaneecke www.twitter/vaneecke