HARI B PARISI

SHE DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS MADE OF FIRE

In the Beginning

She wrote a sermon
on her chest
Be a good girl
it read
dictated from the book of
May I Live in Your Man
World
etched in her womb
His commandment
Thou shalt
not 

She stayed
true to the gospel that
there is only one
Great He
to whom is owed
her head
her ambitions
a bent knee
and they must be given 

In the End

She snakes through sand
until she burns
a hole in the earth
crawls in
pulls behind her
His creed
smothers it there
deep down
in a curdled grave

She has no daughters
no baby girl
no goddesses
blushed from her womb
to deed her crooked
travels
only poems
saved over the hours
pressed into books
like leaves
like blossoms

__________

HARI B PARISI’S (FORMERLY HARI BHAJAN KHALSA) POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN NUMEROUS JOURNALS AND ARE FORTHCOMING IN THE BLOOD PUDDING, TWO HAWKS QUARTERLY AND INKLET. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF THREE VOLUMES OF POETRY, MOST RECENTLY, SHE SPEAKS TO THE BIRDS AT NIGHT WHILE THEY SLEEP, WINNER OF THE 2020 TEBOT BACH CLOCKWISE CHAPBOOK CONTEST. SHE LIVES IN LOS ANGELES WITH HER HUSBAND.