{ deep ear to ground
& flowers growing like fingers into sky, beckoning—
a heart comes out of sky as blue as love, with skein of tremors opening its eye to us—
& heart sees heart like a beckoning—
like furred cheek meeting in sorrow in trance—
like roundness of drops from eye imprinted with flowers & all that is moving on earth—
like current moving in water, that is water, that is body, that is wind & sound that wind makes, that is birdcalls you can hear
*
& all forms collect here, on this ground
ancestors beam their love at us
ancestors like milk running on our faces
& sound cups our faces & drinks us in
sound’s breath
we’re breathing
we are elemental
of deep inhabiting
“e” in flame, head thrown back
*
like birds
when ash falls from our tongues, its own breeze calls out & we smile like morning about to sing itself into existence
i flip over an old leaf & in its venation, a name: mine
love crawls like an infant
what was said was a name spell, & leaf asked me to unhide—
who wrote us into leaves?
who can read us?
who held apart mouth of cave so we could enter, like bears?
who called out to glyphs of light on walls of cave?
who filled our eyes with charcoal to see pain of others?
of heart of tiger
who planted rice medicine, salt medicine, seed medicine?
whose songs tipped with metal of ash line our mouths?
who hears these songs? who wrote them into existence?
you live on wire like birds, your old souls see us in the bead of your eye
& thus unto wisdom we climb fences of our heart
& wave
in that vast ocean, sheshanaga uncoils
*
a time came when this was all that mattered
How We Emerge
(For my mother’s sister
O, my sister)
She is strong
He tells her, you are nothing
He slaps her
He curses her
She is proud
She can still smile
Eyes saucer-wide
She grows up
a beautiful 24 year old
Instead of authority, she has
a broken spirit
She quavers in-
side, she laughs
Some man, chosen
to be her husband—
has the money / has the politics—
chosen to crush
her soft vital
consecrated spirit
There, in dust,
I kneel before this
beautiful girl
Show her pieces of my own
brokenness
that make my mosaic whole
Finger tucked in finger
we walk out
Others before us have made this choice
Walked out
We keep walking up mountain trails
where nightingale has ripped her heart from her chest & hung it from
a tree
We keep walking up to the mouth of Ganga
Our faces are raining
Collective waters
We draw faces of ancestresses in the waters
We are both beautiful
& life stretches ahead of us
We hold our strength inside, quiet
& when voices call us back
call for us from down there
below the mountain
we continue to walk up
we have a trail to follow
Of grandmothers
who with their sisal sticks
carve old faces into cordons of memory
Something about our own story
wakes up & turns
towards us with streaming eyes
We swim in the stream
spinning double helix
tales mutating into tales
tails flicking underwater
in molecular memory
We travel to the mouth
that first formed,
first spoke
*
We who tell the story
still live
What is remembered lives
This body remembers
Apex of mountain looks out on trees
Sometimes we hang upon branches
bodies effortless in wind
We are the ones
that scare terrors of night
Guard the village
unthanked, unknown
Then we rappel down
Then we return
to our bodies lying in the bed
dreaming
When the call comes
to become the voice of ancestors
we who are hollowed
fill up
with hallow teeth
We are the ritual
performers
not only of domesticity
*
Ash rolls on tongue
A pearl rolls on tongue
I curl it into a sound
you recognize
an ancient susurration
Mountain dreams
Mountain was growing
out of me
before I even learnt to crawl
Its paths lit & flowing
I dream of the mountain
& scoop strength into my belly
turn to live
in the world
flesh & bones
spirit collected
in roots
part-woman, part-nature
always emerging
seated on chaos
partner to form
Monica Mody is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press) and two cross-genre chapbooks. Her poetry also appears in Poetry International, The Indian Quarterly, Eleven Eleven, Boston Review, and Yes Poetry, among other places. She has been the recipient of the Nicholas Sparks Postgraduate Writer-in-Residence Prize from the University of Notre Dame, Naropa's Zora Neale Hurston Award, and the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing. Monica holds a PhD in East West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. She was born in Ranchi, India.