The Naming of Things

Call the girl asleep on the bench an avalanche:

swiftness is not her calling, but she will forgo stillness

to become the eel in his big glass world, otherwise known as a jar.

Call the boy on the terrace an insect. His thoughts, minuteness.

Call him Yashpal, Surinder, Joseph, Millipede. Don’t

call it to his face, or his million legs will crumble. Call that love.

Call this century a fortress. The girl and the boy waking

to the oddness of brevity every day. Call their year a

novel, but say it lightly. Call it a novella, then.

When they step out into the city, call it a brothel. Call

them like their mothers; call them “cacophony” and

“dissidence” and they won’t know what you’re talking

about. Call that love, again. Call this narrative

a momo. Steamed. They’ll eat it for lunch, and step out

into a riot. Call it drama, and they will meditate through it.

Call this violence victimhood. Call academia buggery.

Call poetry trivialising loss, and

don’t go back to the beginning.