Three Poems by Amit Majmudar

Poem that Almost Rhymed

Sometimes I visit bodies where I almost roamed
and the curves are made of clouds I almost dreamed,

a consummation missed by just a touch,
an air-to-air refueling broken off,

the hose retracted and the thirst abandoned
as both planes bank in opposite directions.

I hold my almosts in a contact list
of hands I never held, and never lost,

my store of acorns, little lids on ache,
my unmates boarding, one by one, an ark

that sails them, as it must, away from this life,
where I have these three kids, this house, and this wife,

although it could have been somebody else,
a past I passed on quickening my pulse.

When I pull my present closer by the waist,
almost wears the skin of never was.

Hymn to Who

from American Veda

Aurum ovum:                      
time’s twenty-four
Carat chariot                        
bearing the unborn:
Linea nigra,                          
event horizon:
Golden embryoni,             
golden yonirvana,
Golden egg we are            
ecstatic beholding:
Who made it?                      
Who made it.
Who? Him.                           
Hymn Who,
All holy exhalation:          
Who, all whoosh:
Immortal morula,              
zygote-ingot
Mined from the mind:     
Ka, Kala,
Alias Time:                            
Ka, Kama,
Alas, Love:                            
Ka, come:
Who fathered this?           
Who fathered this.
Who mothered this?         
Who mothered this,
Hatched this matchless  
bomb of becoming
Through yogic logic:      
horizon-cracked
Solar yolk:                             
chronos Aum.
When rishis wish to         
know who made this
Cosmic aumelet,                
when devas devise
Radical riddles,                   
when doctors deny
The pregnant light’s        
golden ache,
Answer them,                      
chant this hymn,
Or tell them with               
an owl’s scowl,
Who,                                        
Who.

The Vaccine

It lays a cool hand on my forehead
To know what takes root in this torrid
Writhe and wrecstasy of sweat.
Inflammation, infloresce
This fever tree that grows a ring
To mark my midnight shivering.
Better this heat than one that could
Well burn away my mortal wood,
This sickness tried on like a garment.
Welcome the needle that heals by harming,
This spit on which I gladly roast,
This living mast that sails a ghost.

Amit Majmudar is a diagnostic nuclear radiologist who lives in Westerville, Ohio, with his wife and three children. The former first Poet Laureate of Ohio, he is the author of the poetry collections What He Did in Solitary and Dothead among other novels and poetry collections. Awarded the Donald Justice Prize and the Pushcart Prize, Majmudar’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best of the Best American Poetry, and the eleventh edition of The Norton Introduction to Literature. Two novels are forthcoming in India in 2022: an historical novel about the 1947 Partition entitled The Map and the Scissors, and a novel for young readers, Heroes the Color of Dust. He is currently co-creating a graphic novel/web comic, The Kali Yuga Chronicles.