Burial 

Ghosts eat flower-bodies
                                  lain on alpines
              after the violence
velocity pelts last of loosestrifes
              in decibels of thorax

                                 polyblend iconography
in molecular moss-fields
              after the saints
                                 descend from hilltops
              when praise for labor
is a wreath of fig-leaves
              the ether becomes wet copper
a porous tracery.

               A pilgrim is not for ritual
                                  star-blight arranges dark frays
               of river alongside barbed-wires
after grief is sung as sepia-hymnals
               bury the coats under pinecones.

                                  For every ceremony
               that didn’t occur
a bunch of oleanders release
               in the sea, unfold,
                                  extinguish vectors of fire. 

​

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from Canada and author of Ghost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press). She is the recipient of the inaugural Vijay Nambisan Fellowship (2019). She was the Charles Wallace Fellow writer-in-residence (2018-19) at the University of Stirling. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Puritan, Savant-Garde, Quiddity, The Shore Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal.