Digging Press

Prayer of a Bone

by Sreekanth Kopuri

When the winter snows, I 
long to die a while for a 
swath-wrapped rebirth  
of that winter-born clock
against the sooty clouds of 
the day’s insomniac barrels,

wait for the morrow under the 
cedar elms with a stone face of 
an Ezekiel against the wind of 
perversions that blow over the 
leaves of the ageless testaments 

and lift my arms to that ancient 
light house for life’s perfect
rhythms to raise my voice
from the burnt marrows inside 
my death-white calcium armour  

and chip off the dark words 
that once held the hands of 
the Bell Jar(red) embryos 
of my jilted sister and the 
“Ravens” – the drunken 
pages of Baltimore’s pride.

When the Nelapattu Flamingos
of Andhra Pradesh return their
westward home from the burning 
winds of the Indian summer
I long to be the sky’s pulse in 
the music of their wing beats 

I throw my old steel watch 
into the sea and wish to go 
to my time stilled cradle to
retrace those fallen dreams 
all the way along the wrong 
footprints to re-sow them in the 
unsoiled heart of the earth and

when the hoof beats of nations’ 
revenge write the language of 
hatred on the sands of time,
I wish my breath to flit like 
a humble butterfly drawing 
the meanings of love in a 
language that stands between 
the hatred of the living kings.

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Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian poet from Machilipatnam, India and current poetry editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine. He recited his poetry in University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, Heinrich Heine University and many others. His poems appeared in Christian Century Arkansan Review, Chicago Memory House, Heartland Review. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of Golden Book of the year 2022 & finalist for the Eyelands Books Award Greece, 2019.

Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com.

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