from “The Voice of Sheila Chandra”

Breaks is constant was like
The river light on the river
Riven that remained a rift
An old rill that sounded
She merged with the vibe
Ration of the drum a hum a
Home womb and um
She OM moaned in the loam
Dark earth come Sheila
Dame ocean dome this poem
Roam to tome tomb foam
Original fountain that fed
My mom Zam-zam when I
Was born

*

Who can in syllables like
Sheila Chandra moan us
Covered in a blanket of sound
This like clouds bank of stars
Keeping us from eternity
Which under the blanket seen
Like Sanjay a dancer who I
Somehow look like was mistook
For three times in one day
twenty years ago but the story
still resounds some woman
at a festival saw him perform
swore I was he I said I wasn’t she
Did not believe

*

Me brass bowl soul swindle
Through years no identity theft
I want to move like that off the axis
Of the spine into where and where
Sanjay said I am not him and what
Does all this have to do with the voice
Of Sheila Chandra her having lost
Having now no longer sound
Now a constant striking into chaos
That note that flickers through
In abstraction one is one or zero
And confused the ear does not
Focus neither opens nor closes
Always is

From The Voice of Sheila Chandra (Alice James Books, 2020). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.