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Two Poems

Abhinav Aradhi

 

Chlorine

 

To breath is to belabor oneself

With a notion of importance, and 

Do you truly lack humility 

To such a staggering degree? 

 

Look inwards, and then at your

Visage, and you’ll learn quickly the 

Demerits of your existence, the pitfalls

Of your pratfall life, oh, you’ll feel it then,

 

Like when I dragged my sister 

Out of a drowning grave at a waterpark, 

And I felt like a Savior, and now I wonder

If it really mattered at all.

 

And was it really me, who saved her,

Or was it my hands and feet independent?

And why can I not prevent things from

       Occurring, before they ever leave the station? 


And this reminds me                   of when I nearly drowned

In a big pool at a Chicago gated community, 

And I felt fear and life and water, and it was 

 

Then that I questioned the reality of meaning. 

 

And I wade, heretofore, and I must confess,

To the Fates and their yarn                    by the pool edge,

 

That I still don’t know how to swim.

 

Crickets

 

Papa says i’m a good-for-nothing,

and i like swimming in the creek,

when the woods are at a serene terror, and Mama hasn’t beaten the 

dust out of my shorts quite yet.

 

Mama twirls my hair sometimes in                     wood-rotted hands, and she          whispers like a breeze,

and she and I sometimes live         in the palatial and in that thing she calls a dream.

and she and I sometimes cry         somewhere between the worn-oak door and the crawl     

space beneath the creaking porch seats. 

 

and he comes swimming around here sometimes.           i think he’s a nymph or something. 

his hair reminds me of             summer up at Niagara, where Papa said to me,

you’re the strangest child I ever seen. 

 

and his skin is ghostly, but I think he’s all kinds of real,

because he smiles,

and my skin gets all tingly, 

and the trees hang entirely still, not daring to make 

a sound, the pindrop sensation only burst by the          soft, silken, ambrosia of his 

gentle wading,                   back and forth, to and from me. 

 

boy, i yell like Papa,

and he grins like whiplash,               and he’s atop me, 

and we’re writhing, and he’s drowning me in crashing waves against

my lips,            and he’s a nymph and I’m the one lured into the

swirling vortex of            he. 

 

My nymph, he and I understand 

fervor out there in the creek, down the dirt trail

 

past where Papa likes to whistle and wipe down

the old rifle he says 

 

seems to keep trouble 

far from company.

 

Abhinav Aradhi hails from Cranbury, New Jersey. He expects to graduate in 2027. He writes, “All of my poetry comes from a personal place, or a feeling I want to draw on. The ideas for what I write come to me like blurs, and once I have the idea concretely in mind, I let it all sort of spill onto the paper. A little about me: I’m 20 at the moment, I love watching Big Brother & Survivor, and I’m a massive fan of Nintendo games. My favorite book series of all time is Nancy Drew.”