A R J U N  R A J E N D R A N  |  Monsoon 2014

Infection

The doctor found a museum of wax 
in my ears: a microcosm
of people and things from the past 
including a board game played
with tamarind seeds, a whistle:
orange on one side, green 
on the other and shortcuts to graveyards
like the one where my grandpa
was buried when I could barely speak. 
After all that oil, the soft ends
of feathers and the cruelty of nibs,
nothing remained of the fungus; 
but I was again able to hear sparrows in the attic
or a storm mimicking my mother
tongue’s laundered phonetics. 
As an adult now, if I let the wax
build up in my ears, I’m sure it’ll only
resemble lonely park benches
and faces of fast-food employees
in obscure towns along the highway. 
The color of the fungus will neither
be orange nor green but that of a sky
above chemical plants-smoke
so thick the moon resists its presence.

*

Arjun Rajendran's first collection of poems, "Snake Wine", was published by Les Editions du Zaporogue in February, 2014. He lives in Austin, Texas.