Mrinalini Harchandrai
​​​Summer 2017

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City Cymatics

I
Cellular Re-pulse

Frequency: A repeating event per unit time. 
 
Juice of reason
like muscles
flex
in reflex
ambered ant leg
tracks
we too move
apparent as sand
armless eddies
yet carefully managed crescendos
in echelon formation
belie well worked shudders
increasing like Matryoshka dolls
on the plates
of personal landscapes.
 
II
Together Apart 

Frequency: Resonance occurs without physical contact.
 
There was leaking
through the glass sheet
between the skins
of our propriety
where I found
moments strung up
in tinny glints
where pressed bellies
ache and schlop
and bones lie
deep with magnets
and flesh folds
push on themselves
finding self-understanding
like echoes
ricocheting in trenches.
 
III
Whalesong 

Frequency: Sound below 20 Hz is infrasonic. 
 
 
What characters
do you use
if you speak
in numbers?
How does 120
or is it 20
tell me how deep
the sound of you goes
all rattles and clicks
I find my way
studying the length
of your pitch
groping through
murky inks
since we live
in polar latitudes
of trust, decreasing
like Matryoshka dolls
to find mostly
codes, not Morse,
for solos.
 
IV
Cellular Re-action

Frequency: Natural vibrations where the amplitude is directly proportional to force.
 
Sometimes the wind
likes to play in hair
and chimes,
teasing streams
into itself,
pulling for meaning
like a tropical storm
that leaves bullet holes
in shaving cream
resembling pressed piano keys
or words
that make their way
in interstitial spaces
bobbing like alphabet
in soupy marrow
which take the shape
of waxen vowels
hollow syntax
that sit nowhere
and everywhere.

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