You are the soft-warm
Blood-calm,
The splot and the lick,
The wet-mouth pulse.
The salty freeze of you,
The seizure, the cradling,
The deep-light hold of you,
Pale sun glimmer, glass-shard
Ferocity of you.
I have never been held by
This many hands before
This much seething
Ice-veined life in you.
Sink me, drag me below your
Horizon-line honesty,
The love and the death of you,
The salt fleck, white fizz,
Retreating gulp of you,
That spits me back out
Hungry, restless,
Soil-sick.
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is a Dublin-based arts manager and writer from India, who has also lived in North America, Sweden, Turkey, and the UK. She has been featured on The Moth and Mortified podcasts, with work aired on NPR and Irish radio, and regularly performs her poetry at literary and cabaret events in Ireland. Chandrika was selected for the Irish Writers Centre XBorders programmes in 2018 and 2020. Chandrika’s poetry is included in Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets from Dedalus Press. Twitter: @ChandrikaNM Instagram: @Chandrikanm.art
More work by Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan
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