“The cure for most things,” “Pamplemousse,” and “Your Succulents And Other Reasons To Stay”
by Thanisha Santhosh
“The cure for most things”
While trying to find a cure for AIDS,
scientists in the Mayo clinic created
glow-in-the-dark cats
-imagine a whole family made bioluminescent-
mother cat, father cat and a limpid litter
of orange bellied critters retracting their claws.
Strange, sagacious animals
with their soft downy pearl pink ears
and indifference for human affection.
The flabbergasted biologists, with no cure in sight
for their virulent pathogen, at least shared
a chuckle.
There are such things as happy accidents,
the last time Lichtenstein went to war
the cavalry returned with 81 people
even though only 80 had been drafted out,
the reason was one of the more gregarious soldiers- a polyglot,
who had happened to make a new friend
and sometimes from garbage and human faeces cornflowers tend to grow
and turn their anthers towards the sun.
You must allow the world to open itself to you,
without such a thing as shame
or consequence;
when the earth laughs it is always a rumble
and always it comes from the root of it’s belly
you must allow to be turned like a spinning top, on your head
sometimes it is what the world does,
you must allow for awe
and for the sprightly head of surprise
to come-a-popping ,
even in the face of great adversity,
like gophers from holes in the ground.
There are such things as happy accidents
and tell me has there ever been a day
where the dark has lasted beyond daybreak because
just when you seem to lose all footing, when you can no longer
keep your head above water
the fugue will clear
and a glow-in-the-dark cat may appear,
then another, then another,
those slinky multicoloured motherfuckers,
their long, pointy tails curved upwards
sometimes in the shape of a lonesome comma
at other times calmly beckoning
the sun
“Pamplemousse”
Like most conscientious writers when wounded
I never cry in front of company,
preferring to save all the lugubrious lamenting
for when I’m in private.
If you have ever tasted sadness you will know that it is savoury
and selfishly I must stash it away to relish at home
like a juicy plate of plump pamplemousse. Really
I have no choice.
Afterwards and as a result, poems
are gently pinched out like molluscs
from my tear ducts,
others crawl out, after much pleading,
like pinworms
from the darker dark within the lighter dark.
Still others have to be smoked out like foxes
from their cosy homes in the snow
or dragged vehemently by their tails-
long poems, fat poems, astringent poems
and woolly ones,
some poems with the words half chewed
as if by a camp of purple bats.
It is only then that I am left clear eyed,
the familiar choke threatening my throat dissolved,
the poem serving as a sort of betadine
over soiled wound and the words themselves
with a mind of their own,
congealing first into a scab then cicatrix.
New skin will take root, sweet potato tuber
and all that has nettled, rattled or moved me
would have been written out to the breeze
to take where it pleases.
Private sadness comes in many states – grief, guilt, envy, defeat,
but in the form of prose it no longer belongs just to me
leaving me many kilos younger, many years
lighter. In poetry,
there is no ownership-
the poem as much the property
of the one that writes as of the one
that consumes,
one a medium for the river, the other
the foaming sea itself
each one, upon contact,
made anew.
“Your Succulents And Other Reasons To Stay”
Even if you were to close your eyes for good tonight,
there will still be a pink quartz moon in the sky-
pale and opaline.
there will still be luminescence – bright or borrowed.
Seasons will still drop by in sequence
as if plummeting from parachutes,
identified by the change in foliage,
the bear’s blind sleep,
men and women will still work 8 hour jobs,
heat leftovers for dinner, lie and cheat,
polish their shoes, bathe their children,
make love
the humpback whale will stick to its yearly migratory route,
traversing 4000 miles between the poles and the Pacific,
the wildebeests on the other hand will cross the Mara river,
in their long and arduous journey from the Serengiti,
the Chinook winds won’t change direction
and the tidal waves will turn,
unscathed by misery, lament, woe
no one will remember to water your succulents
after the first month, so they will die-
first the jade plant then the aloe,
your father will still sit in debt and your mother
in stone faced silence,
your neighbour will still be trapped
in a lacklustre marriage
the sun will rise tomorrow,
like egg yolk dappling a cotton canvas,
just as searing, regardless of whether you do
the Atlantic will be the same shade
of Carolina blue
and you’ll still be gone, won’t you
and will there ever be
another like you

From Bangalore, India, Thanisha Santhosh is a 22 year old POC poet that got to go to medical school. She dabbles in spoken word poetry although the written word will always have first claim over her heart. Her poetry explores themes of race, mental health, body image and the female form and pays homage to the myriad sounds and colors of the subcontinent.