And March through May before it.
The turkeys pardoned by the president
this year are named Bread & Butter.
I try to remember emperors
who would move to summer houses
before it snowed.
In family, we never labelled our utensils.
Father could tell the old & new milks apart
like beads of abacus.
Atacama is often compared to Mars,
yet around a million people call it home,
crowding into littoral fishing villages,
mining areas and oasis towns,
growing olives, tomatoes, cucumbers,
herding alpacas. I pore over the atlas
seeking another city, marshy & porous
against your asphalt; in my chest your land-
locked body foaming a saltwater craving
of absent coastlines, of mats of nothing
but free-floating sargassum.
Sudhanshu Chopra is a poet, wordsmith and pun-enthusiast. 29 and rootless, he is fascinated by nature and frustrated by its incomprehension. He wishes we had evolved better or not at all. It is the midway that causes Catch 22 situations, which are quite troubling, mentally and otherwise. He blogs at The Bard, and tweets at @Sohn_vonElysium.