Serena Chopra

A

Sea-Sick

Man

In the tornado, the sky is green as a sea-sick man, the birds

cannot keep formation like I am lonely left

to my own disasters.

In a moment, my immense speed defies the liquidity

of water, offers of concrete against custom.

Offers to break my bones

instead of floating them, densely.

In a car in front of your house,

I pull the blades and watch the windshield fill

again. When the rain stopped.

When I don’t numbly know the future,

a moment, made irritable.

In a dank place, I have been naked.

I have seen important things

and I have not seen.

In my own disasters I have been lonely left

to my own devices.

When brutal.

When succulent.

In miles of rain-same.

When there are so many things

I think to think beautifully

of the world.

In architecture, a house,

when I think to think of cleaning.

When I have our home, I will think

of a moment: Let it be, let it die.

When that is a moment.

In the end, when I remember to pray

for the universe

not to destroy, meticulously,

each of our joys.

Serena Chopra is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Denver, a 2009 graduate of University of Colorado at Boulder’s MFA program, and a 2011-2013 Writer-In-Residence at RedLine Gallery in Denver. She has been published in Bombay Gin, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, VOLT, Versal, Vinyl, Hot Metal Bridge, and No Tell Motel. Her chapbook, Penumbra, was released 2012 from Flying Guillotine Press, and a version of her book, Livid Season, was released in chapbook form from Free Poetry in 2012. In February 2013, Coconut Books Press published her first full-length collection, This Human: A Poem in Seven Parts. She was a finalist for the 2011 Dorset prize and a 2010 Kundiman fellow. Serena is also a dancer with Evolving Doors Dance Company and a visual artist, participating in recent gallery shows, Material Engagements, Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art, and Notes on Feeling at RedLine Gallery in Denver. She lives and works in Denver.