From Threads

This is a poem from a chapbook I made over the summer. The formatting got screwed up so the spacing is not like the original.
-Jayinee

Beleghata

I lived in a house
where the flowers bloomed
like chinese characters
outside the window.
Nightly,
the branches snuck in, scratched my cheek
while I slept they fondled my hair through
and through the bars there was rainwater
dripping lightly into the cool airy room.

I lived in a house
where the whapwhap of cotton
yards beaten against wet ground
woke me to the window
in the gleaming morning
where the
dappled
powdery
sunlight
flickered on the acid burning
brightly on the red cement.

I lived in a house
where autism blossomed
in pairs of awkward joints
they were all knees and elbows,
those boys,
their mother with her teeth
and her widow's thin white than
knotted about her swelling knuckles.
when they died the room was quiet
like the crazy chained to the window.

I lived in a house
where wives and daughters
with green eyes meowed at
the one daughter whose madness
was to love
and be loved
without clothes
with screams
so they kept her locked away
until one day, she up and died.

I lived in a house
where the crumbling stone wall
bore peeling manifestos
of Marxist-Leninist sentiments:
INQUILAB ZINDABAD!
The revolution lives on through fists
pumping, teeth
breaking
blood trickling slowly from his head
like the steady dissolution of memory.

I lived in a house
where a woman with black plum skin
lined my white little feet
in red red ink from a green glass jar
pulled out a bamboo mat
rough and dyed
the fan in a lazy whir
lulling me to sleep on the floor in the depths
of a dog howling in pain or love.