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Purvi Shah

    Mira unfurls her hair into a bell when – from this ringing – mirror emerges


        Such dark lip of the beloved



                            in swirl of untangled

                                                   strand,

                                          revealed.


            Here, a mirror’s black

                            spark, shine

                        of obsidian

unspooled from earth’s

             innermost core.

          Your heart too


                                                   bore origin here. Shaken,

                                                                  see a mantle

                                      scattering,

or hundred clappers thrumming heart’s desires –

             in heat your fingers clamoring skirt of fires.

In each thumb’s stroke, streams of sounds                                  erupt, bringing


not burn but truth’s divinations. Delight:

             not left & right of tresses shorn & swept

                                      but herald pasts &

      horizons/futures &

            promisings. Listen

to the peal of bloom in your mouth.



                                                                                 In either clang

                                                                 or clatter/sojourn

                                                   or quest, you land

at nape of neck, cupping this struck spilling

            into your trembling hands, arcing your lips

                        into the darkest fountain, finding here trill

            & original light, finding here


that which first brought you – your own sight.
 
 
Purvi Shah’s debut poetry book, Terrain Tracks, published by New Rivers Press in 2006, was nominated for the 2007 Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award. Her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Descant, Drunken Boat, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indivisible, The Massachusetts Review, and Nimrod. She works as a non-profit consultant and contributes to the Huffington Post.
 
 

See the full list of 2013 Emerging Poets Fellows