Kumar and Mansoori's Landscapes of Love

New Jersey poet Lavinia Kumar’s chapbook Rivers of Saris is available from Main Street Rag.  Her poetry has appeared in US and UK publications such as Ascent Aspirations, Atlanta Review, Caduceus, Colere, Edison Literary Review, Exit 13, Flaneur, Kelsey Review, Lablit, Mobius, New Verse News, Orbis, Pedestal, Pemmican, Stone Highway, Symmetry Pebbles, Touch, US1 Worksheets, and Waterways. She is an editor of children’s poetry at PoetryWITS. Check out her website at laviniakumar.org. 

"Landscape of Love" by Nabibakhsh Mansoori, oil on canvas, 2005

It’s morning as I lie on my back in cool water.

I see your smooth skin over my cheek bones grow

as a bright green hill onshore, a blue eye at a ridge,

and at the foot soft sand chains of twists and coils.

My nose sinks deeper in still water.  I close one eye

till a small tree grows above it.  Branches inside

spread crimson red, blood red, color of the river

and your arrows. I enclose it in a glass bubble

and watch it rise, till it sails farther than words.

Now my nose slips under.  Habit holds my breath.

But should it?  Is there a time when green love

is more than life?  No new color should be beyond? 




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