Saturday, August 12, 2023

THE PERFECT HOME

by Indran Amirthanayagam




while Lahaina, Maui burns August, 2023



May I imagine the scene? Do you

agree? Coffee in the studio, light

streaming in, brushes and easel,


a multi-hued cat? But flames

are rising at five hundred yards.

Oh to leap beyond particulate


matter, to dream, go native 

again, python wrapped  round 

banyan branch, peeping through 


the window while monkey hops 

over the ledge and books, 

to the sugar bowl, scatters 


the grains, attracting flies, 

mosquitoes, the ubiquitous 

roach. Paradise does not look 


sweet. Fireball blows up history, 

belief, certainty, and cars,

drivers burned at the wheel, 


while thousands of miles

away as all birds fly,

by pure chance, living


on the mainland, in another 

corner of  the great expanse

of the once blue ball,


I try in vain to catch 

and douse embers flying 

this month’s perfect storm.



Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books)Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.