Sanjana Nair
Practical Physiology or the Negative After-Images
after a textbook in New York University’s medical archives, 1908
of mr. x and madam y:
think of me, the darkened square
imprinted on your light-eyed lens
a negative after-image, a white shadow,
if white shadows are possible, a turn on for illusions,
mansuetude of nothing but a wrongly named color, the back—
warding off of this other, this soft-boiled heart.
Name me the foreign fly in the body of your beautiful things
as my heart’s a bothersome thing: Heavy-hand-it-over-bloody-thing
that must be scene for its remarkable color blindness. The orb of this dark eye.
I do not say it as a selfless deed: It is a selfness need sprouting
girlish blooms of contradiction. Blood and bound, this blinding thing I do,
I do: My expected chant to you. Name this bond in the ways you break away
and finally, I can say it. I do not owe you anything, but you do not want it that way.
Sanjana Nair’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Fence Magazine, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, and The Equalizer. In a prior lifetime, she was part of a performative series in NYC named Emofru and The Lady Apple. Her collaboration between poet and composer was performed at Tribeca’s Flea Theater as well as featured on NPR’s Soundcheck. Nair lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter, and is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).
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