Aimee Nezhukumatathil


Runaway Dachshunds
Central Kansas

No sign of lake or puddle for miles but: a speedboat left in a
wheat field.
This journey
is worth many fish. Two dachshunds meet at a rest stop
and run away together into
the wheat. Where do they think they will go? Perhaps they
want to travel to a land
full of soft neck meats and cheeses. Oceans of blue-sueded
pillows.
This journey is
worth many fish. And what of their former owners? What will
comfort their eyes
shot through with thin blood? Who but the wheatbuds will
hear their muffled wails?


While I Vacation In Bangkok, I Respond To A Student
E-Mail Asking why He Received A “D” In Creative Writing

I do
a fingernail dance
at you.


Cocoa Dance
St. Lucia

You step on the cacao bean and all the shells shimmy off
like a slip. You polish each bean, some beans stick between
your third and fourth toes and still the air seethes with
parrot calls. You dance and dance for the cocoa cake you
need the cocoa cake and so you lift your hands above your
head a scarf on your neck like a wound happy in the sun.
The wound breathes open with each step. You need to rub
the seeds under your high arch, so smooth and wet like the
belly of a fish. Make these fish swim the dirty river: step-
splash-step. It’s funny now: you with your hands still in the
air, waving for balance on top of this heap of beans. You
semaphore a rescue to a passing plane there is no rescue
from this dance. When you come home, you tap your shoe
against the wall: nothing. But later that night you will swear
you feel a shake of beans between the sheets—even when
you sleep alone.


River Phoenix
(1970-1993)

I want to shake the hand of the blind policeman
who can recognize over three thousand thieves
just by their voices. But what if the thief
was a giraffe—the quietest animal on land?
Surely all the shredded acacia leaves would
point you or I in the right direction, but what
is the sound of hunger, no matter how spotty
the reach? In ancient Egypt, spoons were
shaped like fish—like splash and fin—
and maybe that is the sound we all listen
for. What is the sound of a young actor who
had eyes like a wise fish, who died
in the knife of a sidewalk? I still have
his old movies and can barely believe he is gone.
It’s a crime, really. Someone should follow
the trail of wild apricots. At least you might find
a sorry giraffe that just needs to stroll home.


The Carcass of Beef
after a painting with the same title by Chaim Soutine (1925)

As soon as I walk by the butcher shops with all manner of
carcass in the window, I find myself hurrying past. I have
no idea why I do this. There is no pause to consider the
length of roast duck, the sweet drippy links of sausage. I
can’t bring myself to look past the carcass of beef to the
young family inside. Where does the butcher’s daughter go
to school? Where is the stained sock? I know each morning
she washes her hands with a steel spoon to get rid of the
garlic and penny stink. I was that girl. I washed just like her,
ashamed of my father’s cooking. Pleated skirts and grosgrain
hair ribbons reeked of curry. I washed until my hands were
pink as meat. I wished so hard that I’d be lifted right out of
my home, my block, up and over all the cacti jabbed into the
sky— I wished so hard this smell would vanish, and one day
it did—

-all poems previously published in 2nd Avenue Poetry