rewilding
by Kandala Singh 

you are bewildered            by the yellow
mustard    on your pittsburgh porch    its sudden
familiar bloom                      the violence of color
against          skyless american grey
every tear     on your tongue          this endless sculpting
an ars poetica                of a split world--

                                         which language will you carve from?


the dance of your lips          pronouncing the thick ‘Pun’
of your mother tongue           the stretch of aaa in saying ‘abi’


listen  to the pauses    of a hesitant mouth
the silence            between pen and paper--


the song that tunnels your heart             like home
the five rivers of Punjab        crisscrossing your veins


their sediments               buried               in your blood


remember the story         your mother told you
about a mare’s wild gallop         by the banks of the Beas,
how the men chased  and chased          but couldn’t catch her.


the roar of the river      tiring tread      silt coating the banks


come away         from the water                to this soft field
of many-headed blooms.

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Kandala Singh is a writer and researcher from New Delhi. She is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Pittsburgh, where she was a Dietrich fellow. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Rattle, Frontier Poetry, Southeast Review, and The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City, among other places. Her writing has won fellowships and support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Community of Writers, Sangam House International Writers' Residency and Hudson Valley Writers Center. You can find her chasing clouds, flowers and poems at https://www.kandalasingh.com.