(Re)incarnation
Because
a colossal arm of hubris
beheaded
a body fleshed together with turmeric and clay,
nursed
not at his mother’s bosom but with hands and breath,
splenetic
Destroyer of Evil,
the
pale of his blue skin, fire of his third eye
cowered
to a mother’s sorrow.
Lugubrious
chants precede
rumors
of a dead elephant in the North,
his
non-decaying carcass starfished across forgotten rubble.
Legend
is (re)born
with
his head now appended onto that jaundiced figure.
Several
gods pose behind him for scale.
Renuka Raghavan’s previous work has appeared in, Boston Literary Magazine, Jersey Devil Press, Blink-Ink, Star 82 Review, Down in the Dirt Literary Magazine, Chicago Literati, and elsewhere. She is the author of Out of the Blue, (Big Table Publishing, 2017) a collection of short fiction and poetry. Renuka serves as the fiction book reviewer at Červená Barva Press, a poetry reader for Indolent Press Books, and is a co-founder of the Poetry Sisters Collective. Renuka writes and lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Visit her at www.renukaraghavan(dot)com
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