Poetry: treadmill of time by Rekha Valliappan

Photo by Ankhesenamun on Unsplash

a lantern sheathed in frozen butterflies
jaywalks into yellowing foliage
dangling everywhere like a
coyote’s captured song—
tongues of mountain voice move
no shimmer of light
between pained notes
breaking the broken silence

a river’s remembering
sprinkles tea-colored moons
into the heave of dry gullies
plunging sun discs of an orderly life
into stillness that can only give birth to stones

A time once was–

the wind in tumult jacknifes
fragmented echo, disfiguring memory
of stiff butterflies clinging to foxes silver tongues
sinuous web of time splayed in shuttered avenues
on which they feign new chimera

Rekha Valliappan is a multi-genre writer of prose and poetry. Her poems and prose-poems feature in a variety of literary magazines including Ann Arbor Review, The Sandy River Review, Nixes Mate Review, The Pangolin Review, Press 53 / Prime Number Magazine, The London Reader, Madras Courier, and other places. ‘The Ghostly Luna’ was named ‘Poem of the Week’ by Red Fez, and another ‘Sakura’ earned a nomination for the Pushcart Prize by Liquid Imagination.