[PDF]Mani Rao Ghostmasters

GHOSTMASTERS


AN
AY, MANI RAO é
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GHOSTMASTERS


A Chameleon Press book


GHOSTMASTERS
ISBN 978-988-18623-1-0


© 2010 Mani Rao


Published by Chameleon Press
22/F, 253-261 Hennessy Road, Hong Kong


www.chameleonpress.com
Typeset by Nicholas Gordon


First printing 2010


Artwork and photo credits

¢ The Ouroboros image used on the cover and in the book is courtesy Saki:
saki-blackwing.deviantart.com

¢ The photograph of Mani Rao on the back cover is courtesy Tom Langdon.


Allrights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. The
right of Mani Rao to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted as have
her moral rights with respect to the Work.


GHOSTMASTERS


BY
NG MAN RAG
aNee. af
SSF


chameleon press
hong kong


Acknowledgments


The author wishes to thank the editors of publications in which the


following poems previously appeared:


“Q” — Caravan magazine (2010) India.

“8” — Almost Island (2009) India.

“co” — Almost Island (2009) India.

“Address” — Quay Journal (2006) USA.

“Airing at a sniff” — XCP (2007) USA. Almost Island (2009) India.

“Auditorium” — Tinfish (2008) USA.

“Bird Union” — Kavya Bharati (2008) India. Softblow (2009)
Singapore.

“Calling” — Zoland Poetry (2007) USA. Indian Literature (2009)
India.

“Catching up” — 91st Meridian (2006) USA.

“Choose” originally appeared as “Testament” — Wasafiri (2006) UK.

“Chorus” — 91st Meridian (2006) USA.

“Classic” — Indian Literature (2009) India.

“Drought” — How2 journal (2006).

“Ebri” — 91st Meridian (2006) USA.

“End of Scene” — Softblow (2009) Singapore.

“Epitaph” — Zoland Poetry (2007) USA. Chandrabhaga (2007) India.

“Five-word poem” originally appeared as “Mutations” — Cha (2007)
Hong Kong.

“Geocity” — Holly Rose Review (2010) USA.

“Grand Finale” — Quay Journal (2006) USA.

“Haul” — Wasafiri (2006) UK.

“India Song” — PENumbra (2006) India.

“Location” originally appeared as “En route” — Fourth River (2006)
USA. Chandrabhaga (2007) India. Asia Literary Review (2008)
Hong Kong.


“Mobius” — Caravan magazine (2010) India.

“Other” originally appeared as “Other Half” — Indian Literature
(2009) India.

“Pol Pot” — Washington Square (2006) USA. Asia Literary Review
(2008) Hong Kong. Kavya Bharati (2008) India.

“Pupa” — Tinfish (2008) USA.

“Re-incarnation kaleidoscope” — Filling Station (2006) Canada.

“Sequence” — Papertiger 05 (2007) Australia. Oxford Magazine
(2008) USA.

“Shorts” — Almost Island (2009).

“Shots” — Softblow (2009) Singapore.

“Slough” — Meanjin (2005) Australia. The Alphabet City Trash
anthology (2006) Canada. Asia Literary Review (2008) Hong Kong.
Kavya Bharati (2008) India.

“So that you know” — Fourth River (2006) USA. Indian Literature
(2009) India.

“Sporous” — Softblow (2009) Singapore.

“Star-crossed” — Meanjin (2007) Australia. Cha (2007) Hong Kong.

“Tensile” — Papertiger 05 (2007) Australia. Indian Literature (2009)
India.

“Visited” — Washington Square (2006) USA.

“Void Plate” — Spoken-word version at 2006 New York PEN World
Voices and Cha (2007) Hong Kong. Almost Island (2009) India.
“Which way does the river flow?” — In Posse Review, webdelsol (2006)

USA. Asia Literary Review (2006) Hong Kong.

“Worker” — Tinfish (2008) USA. Almost Island (2009) India.

“Writing to Stop” — 91st Meridien (2006) USA. Atlas (2007) UK/
India.


Contents


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For your presence


So that you know


Trimming the overgrown silences of the night


Scissor beaks


It may be early unlit but the birds have begun to boil buds are


growing wings and the tree will rise featherborne

One row of birds like a stem bipinnate will curve nicely to the breeze

One large bunch will turn like a wheel and then somersault you will
see acrashing tree root fist twisting up cumulus head rolling
down

Blackbirds will burst a packet of tacks


A stork quadrant will appear with the mythical carpet


Chirping chandeliers will swing in from the sky in time for dusk


Classic
If everything is impermanent why do you want it
I don’t want anything for ever


You will disappoint everyone


Then you will be free


Location


Hiding in a tree trunk
Looking through the hollows
Firs in new wedding gowns


Fire budding Christmas trees


It was the trees jangling interior bangles
Tigers striped past silently


Rugs on the floor of salvation wood


The first time I saw ginseng I understood body to be root


Until a slice of what I could only call steakwood


The river swears it’s blue


Will carry you across


Soon as you leap in
Fast moving coils


Who said the python’s dead


Where is the hatch
Somewhere here but giant roots flowed over
Is it sealed


Bloody me
Will we keep


Gone too far free out at sea why does the water wave as if pining for
the ties of Shiva’s braids

The tangles at the fountainhead

From here


The view of the dance


Drought


Fruit dump under the tree


Smarting tender

Under the sore why-me look
A drool bedding noodle soup
Worm hitch


Wriggling gone from the grass no winds frisk


Collecting dry rivers


Seas


The sea was no slake


Cracked continent’s crustaceous parts drifted upcreek
Said salt of the earth
Tastes like mud


Looks like chocolate


Outgrown the fish juts


Glacier not much more than a hat tipsy on a lite draught
Blood thirsty stalks faint streets

Air wavers at mouth

Toothless the well caves in


Lips do not blossom even if they meet


The speed with which air avages the plump


Yah Yah The eerious ways of god


Hot baker’s fleur de mal


Catching up


The orphan and the alien met. One adopted the other.

How did they meet?

Oh in exaggerated stories always ending with a rescue and two
foundlings.

Did you tell them they would have to forsake to save each other?

No.


Choose


They step aside letting me clean their graves


There is a pagoda in the garden where they wait talking as I mourn


I hear a voice granting me this
That I can give up my life for anyone I wish brought back to life


But only one


Father of sacrifice needs no help to draw my pity


That is piteous


Mother of passion reigned over me
I resent that


Brother of empire I would re-instate
But why


Sister of sullenness I feel for


And ignore


Lovers of the moment I cannot deny


But they did not wait for me


Children of untold stories make the most promises
They will not fulfill


Tensile


Mused at your breasts
Two at a time
Creator harvester of histories


Destroyer resident ghoul


You turn on the suck and flow but how
do you keep them away from the new one the rubbery
amniotic and chewy umbel as they loudly


gnaw and chatter how


the infant heart must be stocked with fresh f & b
and the gut

taut

clean


washed in milk


10


Drowning by Numbers


The retaining wall
Fell on the slope
Ran down the valley
Slipped to the beach
Dropped to sea

Laid the net
Blooming net


Closed in


We should have jacked up the foundation of our house and put back


the map where we found it


Crusty old cat’s cradle signed in blood
Engraved on leathery leaf


Our tetheredness


Fat star fell off a ring
Dotted lines re-aligned
Braying our battleship


Keeled over in a beerbottle


Down with the totem pole


Dinner at Davy Jones’


At the end it'll you and me saltface
Warm under waterquilt

Carnival of corals and fish

We'll be grateful for the fizzy water
Doe Ray Me Far Sew Lah Tea Do


11


Epitaph


Tooth for a tooth defang
Plucked feather mess


Ring formation around the precious gone


We the child of you and me


Two roots anchored each other
Each both tree and soil


Day and night : lips played at missing
Twilight a lasting a las t


Dyad caught in a snag
Vectors pulled


Two ends of a rope knew they were one when they tried to separate


Our future sense created a telescope
The telescope became a passage
Our passage


If it doesn’t have a passage I won’t call it a home


12


Easier to lose someone to death than to life
The present pollutes the past

The physical blocks the view

The clatter frightens the presence


When shutter sprang
We captured our stuffed animal
Stiff gloat of headstones


Horripilation on the plum tree


One sudden fruit and tiny impoverished seed inside


Those days of bottoms-up hourglass


Now the reverberations the deepwalking


We took our shoes off and walked. The fender became a reef a
garland of shells. Crabs closed their eyes like a loud wish
pretending to have disappeared when we went closer. I watched
as you waited a little longer. The high tide closed in quickly
around your feet covered the bare sand and picked up the


backwater.


13


Star-crossed


You hold on to this cloud I hold on to that
Shouting the shapes over each other’s voices
Everything turns to water darling

Tired

Sleep


The riddle of the moon has busted
Tell me why
Insatiable shift


Why we take to terraces gardens
Wherever we can fly silhouettes
Turning our heads slightly in love
Try on the moonring


It never fits


Your face the shadow of a witch


Sleep on the flatbed of stars

Sleep on history

Sleep in the shape of Pegasus Orion Aquila Cygnus
Heaving net


Someone always playing at Vega


14


Sporous


Red September path covered in kisses


Autumn abandon


Abandoning what you ask as your teeth strip and gnaw my flesh
Bruise-clouds flambéed for days
Stained as if I had gone berserk in a perfumery


Trying on too much


19


Address


Every evening the trees inhale birds

Swirling back home a warm shawl

But I still wait for my perch in your arms

I would peg so lightly the sheets of your night flights

We would travel in one mind your old lands my new skies


And every morning you would breathe me fly


20


Five-word poem


Those love cannot leave alone
Love those cannot leave alone
Cannot love leave those alone
Leave those cannot love alone


Those cannot leave love alone


21


End of scene


We don’t see each other any more
Was it art for art’s sake


or did we get some poems out of it


“Until part do us death”


Until we exhaust all endings


Finally singing sol o


Airsummons


Was supposed to give you the white kiss
But the bloody roses
At the lorist
Dragons with pretty eyes


Your body suits you best
Conducted like a plant
All pores at once
Posture of trunk of leaves the


Petrifaction moment


Your uality


iolatedness
Careful as you shape the air


Where my breasts used to be
Inhabitation’s a habit


22


I arrive on the 18th
eyes


lips


2 days is what we have
Same as 20

Spring upon your fingertips

Pert buds

Cottonwood

Bee balanced on proboscis

Uh oh in a spool
Now the tips are green
Now the tips are pink
Now the tips are white


23


Airing at a sniff


Easy in the envelope of your hands
Rewinding to the memoir


The glyph in your graze


Rrrrrip
Rerrrip
Rrrrrip


Easy I said to the deaf habit of a jawdisc
What’s the hurry


The season sprawls


My fiber was coarse


All five: flavor color odor vibre texture


We ran amok dusting air unsettling
And now bereft jumped on the moon
Straycow

Honeybell


What else to do but ruminate


Come graze ghost bees
About time


24


Grand Finale


That we are scarecrows presiding over tracts
Does not stop crows from placing feathers in our caps


And cracking up


Or stop termites pinching our feet
The powdery husk of their voices carries in the wind
Sawdust


Look there poor dog pissing in the breeze again
Chasing she who does not know fidelity


Last year’s clothes are deluged by sand
In the hourglass of my body is there time


Before upside down


I’ve lined my pockets with the fat satin of gluttony
I’ve toned my thighs on charity walks
Maybe the highway robbers will have a special smile for me


Our greedy pens gorge on trees


What when we cover all the trees and nothing


Stirs the chrysalis


25


Re-incarnation kaleidoscope


The young wife got up


left the room and came back a dyke
The chase was abruptly called off

The child went into meditation
emerged warrior and waited

for the child-snatcher to show up again
Abra macabre


Spell it out to break the spell
Shatter light


26


Shots


Was in the ear foyer


Stray voice


Now sleeps on the bed
House pet


Diver followed the curve of floor


Did not see the sudden lunge


If we met now I would surely die
And I would surely if we didn’t


Everywhere you are not


Your exact absence


Where does it hurt
Wingtips

Eyeballs

Lumbar

Jaw


Are you cold or hot


Suspicious at the goat’s steady eyes and reminded of an early lesson
the executor stayed his hand
If the eyes are not rolling in fear the heart may be found missing


Could be a priest in disguise


2¢


Shorts


Some deaths are well-dressed
Butterflies neatly folded


Some have banners


One ragged wing banging in the wind


One by one the petals bowed
Such polite timing
We gave each its due


Now uncapped

The smiling pod seedy teeth
The old bitter-gourd
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