Aren’t you sick

of leaping like a monkey

 

from bank to bank?

You’ve not stopped

 

this scarf’s unraveling

and now you rewind

 

the wool pulled over

your eyes into a new skein.

 

Just give up, Rama,

your body’s five holes let in

 

the entire sea.

 

 

∞

Rajiv Mohabir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Cutlish (Four Way Books 2021, Finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry), and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (Kaya Press 2019) which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His hybrid memoir Antiman (Restless Books 2021, Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and the 2022 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir), received the 2019 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.