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the poet
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian poet, artist and improvisational pianist. Her poetry and art have appeared in journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review, Black Bough Poetry and Bracken Magazine. As well as being nominated for The Pushcart Prize, she's had work put forward on several occasions for Best of the Net. Author of Patchwork Fugue and A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys, Oormila lives and works in Sydney, on the traditional lands of the Cammeraygal.
the poems
Dirge in June
A lone tree wilts in the solstice night—
a ripple in blue pashmina.
Slow denudation—
its trunk is a withering cross
sowing moth wings
in the night.
All around the periphery of the dark hours
frost-eaten buds decay,
a carpet of papillae
strewn on purl-furrowed soil.
There is no mercy in the frigid sky.
It descends in a shroud of clouds.
Myrrh numbs the pain
of bruised torsos,
tortured limbs
shivering
in winter’s Golgotha.
Padma mudra
The boy on the marshland is a pious lotus
a helix of petals unsullied
by the murk of mud.
He lies awake at night
in a hammock of moon—
breath sustained by the thin gruel
lining the stalk of his belly.
His fingers moisten cotton wicks.
Oil hisses into blue-eyed flames
as primroses quiver in prayer.
The boy knows that his salvation lies
in the power of the syllable—
he captures cold cursive in chalk on slate
forging words forming phrases
raising a bridge over the quagmire
one kernel of knowledge at a time.
An indigo god smiles,
bamboo flute in hand
glowing from an igneous wall.
They will converse—boy and deity
and alter what seems to be hewn
in stone.
Padma mudra is a hand gesture in Hinduism and Buddhism
that resembles an opening lotus. It symbolises the journey
from darkness to light.
Maiasaura
I know her in her unravelling—
her kaolin scales ground to dust
scattering upon a tongue
of breeze.
There are lessons I learn early on—
that I must grow a pellicle
over my skin
to heal
the penury of touch.
Frenzied murmurations mimic
the shape of her armored heart—
love is a severed appendage
the shadow of a fleeing gecko
a clot of cold blood
throbbing in the dark.
Maiasaura means 'Good mother lizard'
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb