Poem of the Week: "Thieves' Market" by Srikanth Reddy
Srikanth Reddy's first collection of poetry Facts for Visitors was published by the University of California Press in Spring 2004. His poems have appeared in various journals, including American Poetry Review, Fence, Grand Street, Ploughshares, and Verse, and his critical prose has been featured in The New Republic, The Chicago Tribune, and American Literature. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and doctoral candidate at Harvard University, Reddy currently teaches poetry and literature at the University of Chicago.
Thieves' Market
They trade under a crumbling aqueduct, under meteor showers
& the red moon wired to a bitter honeysuckle stem.
Clematis has shot her root into the masonry.
They wipe ricepaper flakes & charred moths from benches
with a dripping rag; the young unpin strings of onions
hung over their stalls. Good trade, I’d say. From my lean-to
each night I hear their songpipes drifting across the canal.
Some nights I come closer, steaming in my bear suit.
I made off with a spyglass once & once with these kites.
You can have one if you sit with me until the lights go on.
Tonight they’ll have fish. Fish from the rust-colored sea
hidden deep inside the jungle. Some nights they trade squid
you can slip inside your pocket. Help me with this buckle, friend—
tonight I’m going in. They’re lighting torches with Zippos
& here come the lorries, the bullock carts. Listen.
Do you hear the whips? Broken wheels?
There’s the untouchable girl I’d like to get my paws on,
the one turning handsprings at the head of the line.
She wears an amulet I’ve heard can stop these nosebleeds
once & for all. How her braids spin through my night!
The night is gray, my friend. Night, without middle or end.
Night. A blood-smeared beast shoulders the night.
Just give me a hand with this neck-piece friend.
That’s right. Now off you go. I can strap on the muzzle myself.
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