Hari Bhajan Khalsa
Afterlight
The man in the video dies in a car crash,
comes back, says that this side is cloudy,
doesn’t have the opalescent sheen. That
on the other side it’s technicolor. This is
what I’m seeing now, walking back to my car
after acupuncture, with palm trees in hi-def,
shadows fluttering the pavement, clouds
popping from the sky. Is this close?
Do some of us remember, the rest of us not?
Is this why people dart in front of trains,
speed and weave at ninety on the back roads,
don fabricated wings and fly? Do they want
to jump the line, long for what they cannot
see here; though the ocean devours the sun
every night, swallows murmur in the thousands,
mountains disgorge their insides, river crimson
across the landscape? I try to be okay living
in the blur, not recalling illuminations rarely
glimpsed on this side, until that day, moment,
a covey of hands, like willow branches, bend
down to take in me what is not solid, unbowed.
Refraction
Drive your car north on I-25, past
the casinos and gas stations, abandoned
churches, strew of cups and condoms,
small white crosses planted along
the graveled shoulder marking so many
crashes: ascension of a man or girl
child just a few days or years upon years
ago. Sit with your friend nearing the end,
thighs touching. Speak in a slow cadence
about that day at Whychus Creek when
you were lost, sought the trail for hours—
foxtails riddled your socks, the sun’s
merciless beat on your arms, back
of your neck. Her cerulean eyes now
scoring into yours—you must not forget.
The moment you curse the sky, scrub
the past from the soles of your feet, dismiss
the feathers of the bluebird as a scattering
of light, mirage of the ocular, you have
failed your children’s children. A final clasp,
breast against breast, scent of talc swept
from her blouse. Go out the door, about
your day: wash the car, sip green tea at noon,
pick up bread, oranges, a carton of milk.
Hari Bhajan Khalsa
Khalsa’s poems have been published in Poet Lore, Comstock Review, Roanoke Review, Quiddity, Cathexis Northwest Press and Transcend, among others, as well as forthcoming in Birdcoat Quarterly, The Blue Earth and The Potomac Review. She is the author of a chapbook, Life in Two Parts (Main Street Rag, 2010) and a book of poems, Talk of Snow (Walrus, 2015).