In Varanasi

On the train back from the oldest city

in India, a man is reading over our shoulders,

mouthing the words like a hungry ghost

chewing on the air. We don’t mind him

being close, not after all these months

of huddling around chai, drinking even the grit

at the bottom of the clay cup, throwing it

out the train window to be consumed

back into the land, as everything here is.

You are dressed in all white, mistaken

for Gandhi all weekend though you look

nothing like him; a man touched your knees

and bowed. I’ve heard this whole city

is a prostration, leaning into the Ganges,

holiest creation water and swallowing-

grounds for all the burning dead.

When we watched the bathers at the ghats,

you wondered how anyone gets clean

washing in all those ashes.

We couldn’t bear to touch the water,

but couldn’t look away as the women

submerged everything they owned

beneath that burying current.

Disappearing in Bihar

Mosquitoes persist. The rooster

never learns three o’clock from five.

Everything we think will stop happening

keeps happening. We weigh ourselves

in the bathroom, converting kilograms

into how much rice and dal and dysentery

have slimed our hips. Ten pounds lost,

and it’s still not time to go home yet.

We’ve made a habit of cutting off our braids

by flashlight, leaving toothbrushes

where dragonflies land on them,

unpacking our jeans only to fold

them up again, to let them be taken

by mold. When we emerge in the hot

morning, when the monastery is all silence,

we only touch our bare necks

and imagine our hair falling in the dirt.

Village children run after us

holding out hands, saying sister, saying

money because it’s the only English

they know. We start to look for each

other’s shoes at the doorway

to find one another. When we forget

our sandals on the roof or lose them

on trains, our bare feet leave

no sign that we are anywhere.

The Translator

Last day in the monastery

and Pema comes up the stairs cooing

and limping as usual, his leg

twisted at the hip from a childhood

disease that almost killed him,

which I imagine means refugee, means

dragging yourself across the Himalayas

and not knowing anyone with limbs intact,

means he doesn’t give me a name for it.

We birdcall back and forth for a while,

one of our common languages, the way

he tells his sons he loves them

by taking them for pizza in Varanasi

and buying them toy helicopters

at the market. Over tea, he tells me

he wants to be a good man.

Then story after story, how

his father slept in the snow

for three months crossing the border

into India, or how the Buddha left home

to starve himself in a cave

before being offered milk rice

and a wide tree to rest under, or how there is

a rock you can press your forehead against

to wish for anything. The day we hike

up the mountain to find it, Pema lets

his whole body linger against the stone,

hands raised above his head, fingers

trembling prayer flags.

Bodh Gaya Boys

Sansa looks like he’s seven,

but leans against the pandal like twenty,

the girls holding out light offerings

to the goddess inside, while he whistles

at his friends raving to Bollywood music

in the street. When the heat becomes too much

for dancing, he slides up next to me

in the restaurant next door, the one

that has a tree growing right through

the silk roof, and I nod my head

at the refrigerator in the corner full of Coke,

tell him to get himself a cold one.

Boys like him always seem to be

in the background, following me all

the way through town some days,

small shadows in dirty blue jeans.

On the darkest night of the year, they throw

poorly-made firecrackers at each other’s feet,

and Sansa is standing outside the pandal,

holding one above his head, leaning towards me

like I’m the little boy daring him to do it,

and when it explodes inches from his face,

he doesn’t even flinch. He lets the light

pour over him like it’s the only way

the gods will ever get a good look.

The Local News

When you come back home,

the mayor has shot himself in the chest.

You remember him standing like a mannequin

in your high school auditorium, the smell

of scuffed wood and old chewing gum.

You've been so far away, no one

thought to tell you. You've been

in a place where shops burn down

every other day, leaving strange words

in the char: famous, Rajesh, Father.

The owners rake under the tin roofs

with their brothers, looking for unsinged

Dalai Lama postcards while tourists

watch from the other side of the street.

When you walked past, you thought

of tornadoes, how they never hit your house,

but you followed the local news: farmers

on the edge of town mending their barns.

Now, the papers are full of this man

who called 911 before turning

the gun against his heart so his family

wouldn't find him in the kitchen

and have to wipe the blood off the tile.

You remember the one ambulance

you saw in India, broke-down

and abandoned near the temple.