Swallowing the Dark

In Hindi, the phrase for meteor
means “broken star.” I like to think
a star might break off

from the jaws of night
like a loose tooth to rush toward
our open mouths.

Tonight, under the constellation of Krittika,
I tell my boys a tale
have them know dark witches

can be as magnanimous
as a summer sky, deeper
enchantments than a pallid

tooth fairy await them.
I have pretended so hard, so long
to be ordinary, there came a time

I started to believe it.
Novice hunters, we target
constellations in the crosshairs

of our phones, guzzle broken
stars, let them blaze
in our pulsing throats.

The Skin Finds Its Way Home

For years, my mother was the map of the world.
Now I ask my body where it wants to go, where
                                                it will feel safe.

As soon as I walked into this house I knew it would be mine.

Because my skin remembered the future—
how my children would run up and down
the stairs, their finger stains
on the turmeric-yellow walls.

I make mango smoothies and place
a welcome mat at the door.
The stop sign at the corner, an octagonal
heart, beats a small panic every time I leave.

Back at home my skin relaxes
its hairs            lowers its fine blades
in the way of all fearful things returning
to their lair.

And Just When You Think You’ve Attained the Heart

of the labyrinth it doubles back
If there is a place to walk toward
this might be it:
what coils and uncoils like a surprising
octopus in a grove of silver birches swaying
hello. Sound of water
over river stones in memoriam
to lost babies. Once, hidden like a bird
I watched a woman walk, balanced
on the narrow outlines: who was she
when she teetered on the edges?
Arms airplaned—
              for balance?     for        ?         
              for joy?

Woman

on the reversal of Roe v. Wade

Say fallen,
and I give you the arch
of a spine, make a bridge between
animal and anointed.

Say ointment, for I have doctored
myself, scraped my wounds—
you laid them out
like contrails for the world to see.

Say control,
and I’ll stretch.
In my enduring will nest
the buds of new beings.

Say body,
I sing my throat raw,
breath as holy as
the first blow of spring.

Say spring,
and I leap like
a spark in charged air
like a hiss

like a flame     like refusal

Agni: An Invocation

Under the auspices of fox and feather, once again
I knelt at the trinity—
water, wood and wing. The vessel wishing
for the stove, for what needs to be simmered,
fanned through ancient attention, blown
breath through quiet coal. Cold marrow
astonished to flushed heat, the autumnal body
freshly molten, molts into                     : what am I now?
            where can I go?
Draw me a map, I beseech my kindling tinder heart

“Swallowing the Dark,” “The Skin Finds Its Way Home,” and “And Just When You Think You’ve Attained the Heart” appear in Yamini Pathak’s collection Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps (Milk & Cake Press, 2025).

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Yamini Pathak is the author of poetry collection Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps (Milk & Cake Press, 2025) and chapbooks Atlas of Lost Places (Milk & Cake Press, 2020) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press, 2021). She is a member of the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Get the Word Out Poetry Cohort and serves as the editor of Inch with Bull City Press. A recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, her work has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, and VONA. She has been nominated for Best New Poets and has been a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s Global Poetry Prize (South Asia). Yamini holds an MFA in poetry from Antioch University, LA, and her poems appear in West Branch, Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals.