Port of Spain

In a December poem, ghosts hung by my window

in Trinidad & Tobago, whispering in a low hush

of Creole, my father’s siblings, long-dead spiteful

children. Earlier in the evening, they iron my neatly

folded sorrows, hot coal glowing in their eyes,

they command that I write down the names

of my progenies on the leaves of olive trees.

A missing link lingers by the gothic door

of the house of volcano that opens a green eye,

reads fate lines on my palm-

I could become mist or rain, I choose to be rain

in the swamps of liquid Caribbean moon.

Potholed streets gather the ammoniac smell

of dreams opening into silence, a cluster of poems stir,

waking from a trance.

Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional and poet who writes in two languages-English and Malayalam. Her poems have been featured in contemporary literary publications such as Ink Sweat & Tears, Panoply, Marrow Magazine, Marathon Literary Review and elsewhere.

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