Leela Srinivasan

ACID RAIN

the skyline is bitter & red 
& we’re waiting for the crows 

to forgive us, we draw the blinds 
& they still look up at us from 

the street. picture frames become 
little houses holding casualties 

so we turn them around. no more 
reminders of our losses. save 

those echoes for the wind.
days fold over like risen dough 

& i wonder if anyone will graffiti 
my body when i die, till my 

skin is a canvas of half-drawn flowers
& abbreviations, laid down & bone-dry 

beneath the underpass. we swallow 
the ashes, then swallow them twice. 

there’s no more room for pyramids 
in this city & i’m beginning to feel 

the red between my toes. the paper 
afternoon yawns into dusk & the sidewalk 

looks like cottonseed & my lungs are vases 
ready to be filled with the bloom.

Leela Srinivasan is an MFA student at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from the Jersey Shore, she holds a BA in Psychology and MA in Communication from Stanford University, where she wrote and published a collection of psychological poetry as her undergraduate honors thesis. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.