Oceanic

"Every thicket has/ a secret and/ every mighty beast/ has a soft underside," writes Nezhukumatathil (Lucky Fish); it's something of a thesis for this book, in which she marvels at existence in a sprawling and miraculous world. Her poems invoke a sense of connectedness with similar animal species ("the movement we make when/ we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face"), while also reminding readers of what there is to glean even from wildly different creatures: "A snake heart can slide up and down the length of its body/ when it needs to." Nezhukumatathil weaves meditations on parenting and family-making among her lavishly rendered evocations of flora and fauna. In the love song "Penguin Valentine," a male penguin waits for his partner in the dark, incubating their egg: "During those days of no sun, does he/ remember the particular bend// of his mate's neck, that hint of yellow/ near her ears?" Considered together, Nezhukumatathil's poems ponder the nature of home, both in terms of individual lives and of broader human existence. "I have been studying the word home,/ as if studying for a quiz, trying to guess/ answers to questions before they are asked," she writes. The collection's mix of free and formal poems strikes different moods, but throughout Nezhukumatathil's voice is consistent in its awe. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Multi-award-winning poet-Nezhukumatathil (Lucky Fish) writes sharp poems that internalize nature and make its voice palpable, using lyrical language to reconnect us with nature's inhabitants and investigate their relationship with humans, personally and culturally. To do so, she often uses simple but alluring imagery in a reportage style: "Whales the color of milk have washed ashore/ in Germany, their stomachs clogged full/ of plastic and car parts." There is a tremendously vivid passage in which the poet captures in cinematic shots the inner wailing of an elephant: "When a companion/ dies, I believe in the rocking back/ and forth, the dry pebble tongue./ I believe in wanting to wear only/ dust, hear only dust, taste only dust." Nezhukumatathil here exploits brilliantly the inherited elegiac connotation carried by the word dust to depict a heart-wrenching mourning scene. Her sensory and dynamic depiction of nature can find some affinities with poems by Mary Oliver. VERDICT Reading -Nezhukumatathil's poems is a practice in keenly observing life's details. The poet writes with a romantic sensibility about a world saturated with a deep sense of loss. Recommended for all poetry readers, especially those interested in ecopoetry.-Sadiq Alkoriji, Broward Cty. Lib. Syst., FL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

DREAM CAUSED BY THE FLIGHT OF A BEE AROUND A POMEGRANATE ONE SECOND BEFORE WAKING UP after the painting with the same name by Salvador Dalí In one second, three hundred and fifty slices of pizza are eaten somewhere on this earth. A heart beats just once. Once, I dreamed you were so near I could smell your honeyed hair and the damp folds in your blue sleeve. I woke up and watered my violets. And woke again. And woke again and again till I could not remember if the water bubbling out and over the small lips of the pots was dream water or water real as a pin. Or the plash of an elephant walking the sea on bony stilts like in this Dalí painting. Here is the mouth of a fish wide with wonder at the twin tigers leaping out from it--roaring with ocean salt till they've soared above a floating pomegranate, a heart full of seed. In twenty-four microseconds, a stick of dynamite will explode after its fuse burned down. Houseflies flick their wings once every three milliseconds. Even that fly is long gone to the other side of the yard in the time it took to write flick. Giant tortoises and compact discs last one hundred years. In one million years, Los Angeles will move forty kilometers north because of plate tectonics. A spaceship zooming along at the speed of light would not yet reach the halfway point to the Andromeda galaxy. One billion years: one ocean born. The time it takes for the last waxy smudge of me to stop loving you. Only at the bottom do you find anything about a bee. ONE-STAR REVIEWS OF THE TAJ MAHAL (a found poem) Too bad it was man-made. As a stand alone attraction I guess it's passable but compared to the McDonald's at Celebration Mall it's just meh. Not for Indians. Very tacky. There was no cloakroom at the South Gate! The garden is also very basic. Every thing is basic. We were ripped off by asking local shopkeepers to hold our bags for us. You will be swarmed, swarmed by street vendors and children swarmed by camels and parking lot goons and children and cheat cameramen and stalker tourist guides and camel children and footwear thieves, so: MIND YOUR BELONGINGS! It's just an old love story. But is it love or hate? I was told to get out with my selfie stick! Don't even think about seeing it under a full moon. This tomb has no rides. UPON HEARING THE NEWS YOU BURIED OUR DOG I have faith in the single glossy capsule of a butterfly egg. I have faith in the way a wasp nest is never quiet and never wants to be. I have faith that the pile of forty painted turtles balanced on top of each other will not fall as the whole messy mass makes a scrabble-run for the creek and away from a fox's muddy paws. I have been thinking of you on these moonless nights-- nights so full of blue fur and needle-whiskers, I don't dare linger outside for long. I wonder if scientists could classify us a binary star--something like Albireo, sixteen-hundred light years away. I love that this star is actually two--one blue one gold, circling each other, never touching--a single star soldered and edged in two colors if you see it on a clear night in July. And if this evening, wherever you are, brings you face to face with a raccoon or possum-- be careful of the teeth and all that wet bite. During the darkest part of the night, teeth grow longer in their mouths. And if the oleander spins you still another way--take a turn and follow it. It will help you avoid the spun-light sky, what singularity we might've become. MEALS OF GRIEF & HAPPINESS 1. I believe in the tears of an elephant. How they stamp the ground and forget they are in musth-- panting--and cinnamon shrubs or piles of sugarcane can't tempt them to stop their cycle of grief. I believe in the broken heart of an elephant. When a companion dies, I believe in the rocking back and forth, the dry pebbly tongue. I believe in wanting to wear only dust, hear only dust, taste only dust. I believe in wanting to touch nothing and wanting nothing to touch you. 2 I believe in the tail wag of a dog. The toothy grin of an apple-fed horse, the shine from the wet in the eyes wild with joy. I like the movements in a chimp's fine fur as he swings from branch to rubber tire and thumps his companion on the head with a bright-red ball. I believe in the single sugar cube sparkling on a small ceramic dish as we sit at a café-- me sipping a soda with a paper straw, you leaning in close to point to something that neither of us have ever tried--but we will today. The waiter will say Good, good choice, my favorite, as he gathers up the vinyl menus and leaves us. TWO MOTHS Some girls on the other side of this planet will never know the loveliness of walking in a crepe silk sari. Instead they will spend their days on their backs for a parade of men who could be their uncles in another life. These girls memorize each slight wobble of fan blade as it cuts through the stale tea air and auto-rickshaw exhaust thick as egg curry. Men shove greasy rupees at the door for one hour in a room with a twelve-year-old. One hour-- One hour-- One hour. And if she cries afterward her older sister will cover it up. Will rim the waterline of her eyes with kohl pencil until it looks like two popinjay moths have stopped to rest on her exquisite face. Excerpted from Oceanic: Aimee Nezhukumatathil by Aimee Nezhukumatathil All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.