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    Sharp Blue Search of Flame
    Sharp Blue Search of Flame
    Sharp Blue Search of Flame
    Ebook148 pages51 minutes

    Sharp Blue Search of Flame

    By Zilka Joseph

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    About this ebook

    Sharp Blue Search of Flame is an exploration in poetry of a complex network of nuanced journeys into a variety of worlds. The searingly rich poems reflect Zilka Joseph’s own history of living in Eastern and Western cultures, as well as the influences of her Jewish Indian roots. Joseph’s free verse and forms shift scenes from the real to the imagined landscapes of the mind, and search for fulfillment and solace amidst the terrifying beauty and chaos of the human condition.

    Joseph’s poems, while dark and brooding in subject matter—bride burnings and infanticide in her native country, the loss of Eden, mourning for a beloved mother—offer a tactile insight into life in India and the United States. Through a flurry of sounds and smells, the reader learns an interpretation of the history of the sari, witnesses the horror of attacks on women, and wrestles with death, whether it be that of an elephant, an extinct frog, honey bees, humans, or goddesses. Her poems dig deep and aspire for something beyond. Colored by fire, blood, ash, and rain, these poems present images of great joy and deep loss in a complex harmony.

    Sharp Blue Search of Flame embraces worlds within worlds and worlds between worlds, which is not only intrinsic to the fabric of the poems but to the life of the poet as well. Readers of poetry will savor this sensory collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne State University Press
    Release dateApr 4, 2016
    ISBN9780814340509
    Sharp Blue Search of Flame
    Author

    Zilka Joseph

    Zilka Joseph teaches creative writing and is an independent editor and manuscript coach. Her chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, were nominated for a PEN America and a Pushcart award, respectively. She was awarded a Zell Fellowship, a Hopwood Prize, and the Elsie Choi Lee Scholarship (Center for the Education of Women) from the University of Michigan.

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      Book preview

      Sharp Blue Search of Flame - Zilka Joseph

      Apples and Oranges

      There never were any apples in Eden.

      Only oranges—vibrant suns shining,

      fruit of dust and heat that warmed to her pulse

      beating stronger and brighter,

      fruit of earth itself. She was ripe like the sun

      before she even thirsted, reached and opened

      her petals to the radiance fragrant in her palm,

      before the lush fire licked her tongue

      and before the coiled serpent of Creation

      threw her into subterranean shadow.

      She knew she would always be the sun

      even when the gates closed behind her

      and though History would try new tricks,

      twist orange to apple,

      the men with missing bones,

      the snakes, would stay the same.

      Consider the Sari,

      all nine long yards of it, or even six,

      and cherish every inch. Understand

      the language of the loom,

      hands, art, the blood and body

      of cotton, of silk,

      the secret of draping its serpentine grace

      so you can look like a goddess.

      They wound it around us,

      let it wrap us in its womb,

      its mother-love of woven fabric. We laughed

      as we tripped on the petticoat’s web,

      got caught in tassel traps, saw how

      it teased, seduced, learned to tame it. The pallavs

      flowed over our shoulders, the cloth

      sweeping around and behind us

      like a river dyed the color of peacocks,

      or spring rice, or godhuli—shades of dusk

      and dust when the cows came home. Imagining

      we were starlets, or queens

      in boardrooms, courts, and parliament,

      we grew vain. But forbidden to think

      beyond the walls

      built by the patriarchs, we inherit

      the destiny

      of our mothers, and Draupadi’s

      sorrow. The folds fall heavy

      around our ankles. Smoothing pleats,

      we hide our navels, cover

      midriffs. The red marriage sari

      has zari embroidery, sindur fills

      the parting of our hair, and when

      our husbands come to us at night

      they throw the gold-red swirls over our heads,

      our cries muffled in its unraveling

      thread. Pallavs must hang low

      for no one should see our faces,

      and we fear to look beyond its fringe,

      the border’s hemmed edge,

      for we are flesh of the air

      wrapped in woven shells,

      live briefly. Like silkworms

      inside cocoons

      dropped in boiling water,

      we give our lives

      to ageless hands

      who weave patterns

      dreamed by the fathers,

      and dress our sweet brides,

      swathe our sisters,

      swaddle our girl-children,

      shroud our own silent bones

      in its weft of darkness.

      Something Falls

      Something falls

      silent

      the night we return

      from the chariot festival

      to celebrate Lord Jagannath;

      the last time I’ll come home

      with the face of a flushed and happy

      six-year-old just back from a street fair,

      the smell of cigarette smoke and sweaty crowds

      pressed on my flesh like perfume

      when pushing my way

      like a mole through soil

      for a seat on the small wooden Ferris wheel—

      tumbling-boxes we called them,

      painted a lurid red and yellow, tilting dangerously,

      overloaded, and moaning like an animal

      in pain. It is late when we walk home,

      a long way. Running to keep up with my neighbors

      and a friend of my father’s who

      has never witnessed this lavish Hindu festival,

      a sailor called Salvador from Bombay

      and whose ship is in town. I am in love

      with him, all three and a half feet of me—

      in love with his name, his beaked nose,

      his stories of dogs, the sea, Jesus. How I blush

      when he visits. Everyone teases me

      as he blows me a kiss when he leaves. I never

      sleep that night. Neither do my father,

      mother, or grandmother. Holding me

      in turn, they knead my aching thighs and calves,

      as wave after wave breaks within me, my muscles

      convulsing. My father curses the neighbors

      who made a child of six walk such a distance;

      my mother’s high voice says, she has fever,

      wipes my sweat, lays her soft lips on my forehead;

      granny mutters, girls shouldn’t be

      roaming around like this anyway …; and I

      writhe on the bed,

      suck in their terror like a black hole

      while some wrathful angel

      leaps off nightmare’s ladder

      to wrestle my flailing limbs to the

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