Prose

“No one likes a social malady,” the Third Dakini says, unscrolling the rural ordinance against terrace-farming anywhere in or around Arusha National Park. That leaves David Meltzer’s apple chapter with the nagaraja holding a jam biscuit by its teeth, its belly pre-dynastic and egg-shaped. It’s 1972 yet again, a more industrial fall with so many grey skyscrapers crawling upwards on all four corners, skulking behind the interstellar clouds. This nagaraja is especially serpentine, another bypass ringlet turning into another fulsome whorl. Meltzer grabs the serpent by its neck, opens its jaw like a ventriloquist puppet, porcelain body under knits, and finds in it an explosive announcement: “ground / beef flats of beauty / beansprout trees / explore today’s tropical heat / limestone and green / eyelash in a curling.”


* This piece first appeared in PANK, a literary journal out of Michigan.