Next-Life Anxiety Complex 

Ayaz Pirani

If needed

could I call up

an important wind

to fling coconuts

and warn the villagers?

Could I descend the well

and bring back a corpse?

Keep the fires burning

in the streets on chandraat?

(the last prayer replied to

by wolves with their own plans

for the full moon)

Could I arrange for

a white horse, necessary

to marry the milkmaids

for the next fifty years?

Well, could I?

It doesn’t seem likely.

My fingers are long but

belong in gloves.

Good just for caresses.

I never learned my lesson

about rope-knots

and getting home in the

absolute dark 

by listening to what 

the foot crumbles.

My next life may 

be hopeless trying 

like this one, 

a sleepy clutch of 

mosquito net.

Ayaz Pirani’s books include Happy You Are Here (The Word Works, 2016), Kabir’s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets (Mawenzi House, 2019) and Bachelor of Art (Anstruther Press, 2020). His work recently appeared in The Malahat Review, ARC Poetry Magazine and The Antigonish Review. He lives near Monterey, California.