Anuja Ghimire "goodbye gourds"

goodbye gourds

in a borrowed book from the British Council Library

I once read about great men

that Tolstoy dictated as his wife wrote him into the world

if my daughters sleep I can type desires and prayers

after four months, green is going out 

like light switch leaf after leaf in garden gourd

some afternoons children melt

and I cannot smile 

eighteen blossoms were never yellow

my brother and I exchange headlines in camera phones

far from Kathmandu

monsoon floods swallow villages 

the virus waits in epicenters

if I water the roots without hope, will okra linger in August?

we are awake in this dream

daughters, you can be anything you want

look, there aren’t any clouds

but this poem is about the rain

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Bio: Nepal-born Anuja Ghimire (Twitter @GhimireAnuja) writes poetry, flash fiction and creative nonfiction. She is the author of poetry chapbook Kathmandu (Unsolicited Press, 2020) and two poetry books in Nepali. She’s a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. By day, she works as a senior publisher in an online learning company. She reads poetry for Up the Staircase Quarterly. She enjoys teaching poetry to children in summer camps. Her work found home in Glass: A journal of poetry, Orbis: London, EcoTheo Review, UCity Review, and Crack the Spine, among others. She lives near Dallas, Texas with her husband and two children.