V i K h i N a o —

VINOUS INTENTIONS [i]

(for Lizard who isn’t afraid of first-rate tacos)

You have tossed me into a glass of white wine

salvaged by an atomic winery

on the outer rim of California

Were you born colorless?

fueled by time

and not distance,

fermented in gravel, bitumen, sugar

detoxed for clarity.

Carafe of wasted incarnadine grapes,

near reticent cellar doors and somatic plants,

above Prince in freezing frames on a Superbowl afternoon,

now fervent radio stations and cardboard carboys.

Wine victimized by sloth and obesity.

Wine shipwrecked

by beer sewage and bacteria.

Wine sentenced to French kiss

rubber stoppers & dưỡng khí oxy

& deionized water.

Wine like the taste of reused glass

Arabic, 17th century, & deranged. 

You don’t know, do you?

Wine, micro-badly brewed for authentic

public consumption.

Wine for desolate poets & motorists

capsized by the Eucharist.

Wine made by dark Egyptians,

by the Mediterranean Sea,

by vinegar smelling locals.

Wine is blood, that crimson fluid

that circulates the veins & main

arteries of a city

with its empty calories & valor.

Wine is a bridge balanced between

sin

      and  

              gin

                      or  

                           heroin

                                       and  

                                               distaste                                            

a savory tang

fated for a designated  

driver who has volunteered

to Uber drive Jesus to your wine-less wedding after his

three-day vacation at a resort called The Crucifixion.

BIPARTISAN MONARCH [ii]

Notwithstanding the evening’s somber monolith of downpour,

we deliver ourselves to Bùi Thị Xuân at past midnight.,

our watches still engorged with dawn. I insist,

Time insists on falling asleep and a teacher and New York man

threatened to kill supreme court nominating senators. But,

people have to get imprisoned first and things have to get

worse before things can continue to descend into hell again.

I know it’s not natural to want bullets of impossibilities as

justice wades through weeds to become weed.

Our asphalt still cracked under the pressure of

ignorance. I’m angry and forlorn. I don’t have institution

of being anymore and for eleven days in a row now, my lover

wakes me up to show me his cage, a tube made of electricity.

He wraps me in a leopard jacket as we confront

the political cloudburst from Lindsey Graham to Taylor Swift,

and when the abyss arrived inside the showboats, I foresaw

the unbearable future. A few millions substantially, Dr. Ford’s

testimony, then Matt Damon’s, and then scratchpads,

umbrella-hidden owls arrive to witness this Yale farm-raised

donkey with his ferocious beer face to finish off the virtually 36-year

American Rape Association silent revolt. A woman neighboring us,

some Pro-Trump heavyweight, knocks off a catalogue of objections

as to why this judge—this beer-loaded thoroughbred, power

and influence, so on and so forth—should conquer

this backbreaking three-month unhistorical antagonism.

Then, this mare named Susan Collins emerges,

just insouciantly galloping with her chief stallion,

and ensuing a short, deceived interruption in the rainstorm, 

she’s charging forth and the FBI, the fake stopper of time,

preposterously quick and deliberate so that the Democrats can

grasp fully that stonewashed astronomical blaze on injustice’s

forehead like America is delusionally great again. As the elephant

reduces its temporary turmoil and we all shut our mouths to spit,

the heavyweight uncrosses her legs, and declares forcefully:

Trump is back. Because he was never gone.

[i] Subramaniam, Arundhathi: “Where I Live” Allied Publishers, Mumbai, 2005: https://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/12083/auto/0/0/Arundhathi-Subramaniam/WHERE-I-LIVE

[ii] Limón, Ada: “American Pharaoh,” Poets: Winter, 2015:  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/american-pharoah

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