Ramesh Dohan

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Pillow Talk

Our ménage à trois by candlelight
The various absurdities: black lace
I move my body smell next to yours
Your spice of Zanzibar. 
Mine rains, yours pours          
Your pleasure and sighs
What if I made you hear this as music?
I am winding down
Only the night is wound up tight
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Winter Waltz

Who's in charge of the nip and tuck 
of a winter sky, 
the long solstice, 
the constellation of birds— 
grackles, perhaps, 
ribboning their way across 
the low pink horizon, 
the smoky grey of December 
skies, a path to somewhere 
not here? 

The ribbon curls in on itself. 
The flock, if something so large 
goes by that name, millions 
of black wings erupting 
from the North, flows 
like the air has become 
a river, the birds banking 
and shifting with the currents.

While You Sleep

At night, while you sleep, they rise up 
while we wander lost in the natural 
symbols of our dreams. 

These simple household goods 
mimic speech and intertwine 
into their own design.

Listen.
Every sound clicks 
into place, a tone 
like bells, like machines make. 

Refrigerator, 
dishwasher, clock. 
All these manufactured servants 
are singing to themselves, 
to soothe us into sleep.


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Ramesh Dohan's Profile

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Summer

The morning swung open like an iron gate
We walked down the path to breakfast
A cool wind blows this very moment
Stirring the steadfast willow leaves
The wheat bend, the leaves of the peach tress
In a chorus line
The invitation was for you
Rest with me under the linden tree
As the sky returned to baby blue,
the swifts do not sing
what they do well
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A Portrait

What scene would I want to be framed in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to ponder
about all that goes on outside my window.
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At the Movies

At the ticket window, I won’t follow 
the body of the usher as she leans 
to break a twenty with a press 
of cash register and chest. She’ll tear 

my ticket and pass twelve-fifty 
beneath the glass, steering me 
past the snack bar where two rows 
of candies in loud yellow boxes 

will glow like lines on a highway 
and lead me to my seat. The previews 
will warn R for restricted, S for sex 
and V for violence, and I’ll remember 

the V-neck of the usher’s sweater 
and the fainter V drawn by her breasts. 

Attention Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if ....to make sure you
have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost,
dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words.
 

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