LỤC BÁT FOR THE ANCESTORS - ANGEL ISLAND 2022
See the peeling casern
Here guards loomed, taciturn, silent,
threatened frigid violence.
Free will, self-reliance not strong
but through this pent-up wrong,
their starving hearts bred song, soft ge.
Their heirloom poetry
becomes your canopy of words.
Our legends will be heard.
Crisp embers stirred, ignite,
and in the gloaming light,
ghosts crowded over-tight, enclosed.
And through the squall, God dozed,
but progenitors rose, still do--
a homeland’s hymns they coo,
In a thicket of rue, they mourn.
Mukund Gnanadesikan is the author of the 2020 novel Errors of Omission (Adelaide Books), the poetry chapbook Petit Morts: Meditations on Love and Death (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press), and the upcoming children’s picture book Clarence and Elroy (Pen-It Publications).