Second Bloom by Yamini Pathak
A poem for you: "Was it bewilderment or lostness or pleasure, this gentlest uncovering of ecstasies?"
On her birthday, she filled a clay pot, a mix of mud and water that took on an opaque river color. A sand-colored pot, generous swell in its belly, which she could feel under her palms. Was it bewilderment or lostness or pleasure, this gentlest uncovering of ecstasies? Of earth and body? All afternoon, spring rains gushed into her upturned mouth. While the drops wept into the pot, in widening circles from the center, youth aged into silted kanjeevaram, a temple silk. The pilgrim and her peregrinations. Into the vessel she planted 3 transparent sprouts. Not beans, they were lotus saplings: they contained sleeping flowers.
Yamini Pathak is the author of chapbooks, Atlas of Lost Places (Milk and Cake Press) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press). Nominated for Best New Poets by SWWIM and a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s Global Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, Tupelo Quarterly and other journals. She is a Dodge Foundation Poet in Schools, teaching artist for Arts By the People, and a poetry editor for Bull City Press. Yamini holds an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University, LA and has attended VONA, Community of Writers, Tin House, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. She’s on Instagram @ypathakpoet and on X(Twitter) @YaminipPathak.