Inspired by Rig Veda and poet Frank Gaspar
The brown bricks in the courtyard offer up their histories of clay and ash,
There is someone here who is the daughter of the moon.
She is awake, having gone where the sky is thin.
She has uncovered the edges of the horizon.
In Kamala’s house, the pressure cooker spins and spits streams of hot steam.
My right hand scoops the rice with my fingers,
My thumb, the trigger.
I did it the way they taught me, the rice and curry airborne.
Kamala told me that she and Narayan were lovers back in Nepal.
I asked her for how long. She said, “Always.”
Once, I saw a goose separate the milky ocean back into milk and water.
Milk is truth and water is not.
A smart human accepts the truth.
If you listen, I can tell you.
Once, Krishna painted the entire world on his thumbnail.
Once, I saw my son’s father hold our baby up in the air,
the baby standing on his palm.
Trickster is not a common magician or horse thief.
Trickster is driven by appetite.
They know best the places where one must never walk.
When sunset is visible, the sun has already set below the horizon.
Trickster cooked lamb curry and made from it a vulva.
Trickster took squirrel kidneys and made from them a kiss.
What is the world is trying to say to us?
Sky and earth, Guard us from the monstrous abyss.
Kathryn Ruth Stam is a professor of cultural anthropology at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, NY. She writes about the people she has known in Thailand, Nepal, and Central New York, and the joys of getting to know the resettled refugees who are our newest neighbors and friends. Her creative non-fiction work has been published in Griffel, Exposition Review, the Santa Ana River Review, Wanderlust, Flumes, and the Write Launch. She was a finalist for the Nowhere 2020 Emerging Writers Contest with her story, “Elephant Crush.”
Sparks of Calliope 