​Dear Paranoia, 

Rushi Vyas

The suicide rate for Asian-Americans (6.10 per 10,000) is about half that of the national rate
(11.5 per 10,000).

About 75 percent of those who die by suicide give warning signs.

APA  
                                    

Gift your double helix        to the mouth
No matter how we grow        roots bind will 

wind still blows        Fallacy        Spring casts shadows 
below the creek’s ice        Sun slips through creases

between blinds        bleeds color in garments hung to dry 
through windows        We cannot predict the arbitrary

warning sign        to which shade greens will fade
This tree        strung by miscarriage’s shadow        bends 

stripped limbs too long in sun        Disjunction my lip’s 
crook        my slow chew       He left no note

Dear inheritance        let us relent 
to inevitable passing seasons        I know

you just want me to survive


Funeral: Pilgrimage

Rushi Vyas


Cold water rests in a bucket on the grout creased square tile floor. A silver-green lizard suctions up and down the washroom wall. Yellow smog soaks through the screened window, outside which the black dogs who live under the bamboo scaffolding surrounding the under-construction grey cement building across the street nuzzle the sides of their young. Fingers test water before pouring over grey-black hair to rouse eyelids. Instructions on constructing a self: lather, rinse, dry, clothe, fill with idli and clove-laced sambar, nod in greeting and leave to breathe the outside air thrumming with Ring Road traffic, dust-pocked, tulsi scented from the row of bushes flanking the gravel road giving way, in moments when the wind is right, to the dead rodent stench of the lot turned neighborhood landfill one block away. Walking through swamp air burning in rising day, feet mount gravel past a windowless hospital, approach a pond whose far-side’s green field, lush with palm trees and tall grasses, collects neighborhood men’s motions. A kingfisher flaps and settles on bramble floating in the pond’s center. It finds no gap for reflection. 


Move, move, move. Walking 
through haze heals. One foot tramples 
another’s holy. 

 
 
 

about the writer

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Rushi Vyas is an American poet living in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand where he is pursuing his PhD in English at the University of Otago. His first manuscript was named a finalist for the National Poetry Series (US) in 2018 and 2019. He earned his MFA at the University of Colorado-Boulder where he taught creative writing, and his B.S. at the University of Michigan where he co-created and taught a psychology seminar on finding meaning in life and death. Recent poems are forthcoming or published in 32 Poems, Redivider, Boulevard, AQR, Tin House, Adroit, Waxwing, and elsewhere.