moon blooms

By Athira Unni

Athira Unni asks the important questions: whether our lives are just storyboards, and when it’s gone, whether we will miss our madness. Metaphors make these questions come alive: spectacles that see ‘opinionlands’, a jacaranda tree that is a soccer trainer and a woman whose dark breaths are hurricanes. Dexterous and disruptively luminous, capable of ‘disturbing the fairies’ and ‘deranging the dragonflies’, these utterances take wing. — Arundhathi Subrahmaniam, author of The Gallery of Upside Down Women The craft of these poems shimmers through startling images and deliberate, breathing spaces between lines, so that each page feels composed not only of words but of silence and echo. This is not a book to be read once and set aside, but one to be revisited, its music revealing new notes with each reading. — Sivakami Velliangiri, author of How We Measured Time Athira Unni is a pointillist of language. These poems sift through your mind and hypnotise your senses with dazzling and devastating epiphanies. — Arjun Rajendran, author of One Man, Two Executions

Excerpt: moon blooms

From Malayalam slang to ectopic grief and American chai, a collection unfurls. The reader feels each poem's click, a stark, intimate whisper.

By Athira Unni

po-yum

the whistle blows and the po-yum
immediately writes itself
in Malayalam slangs of old.

I’ve located such blankness in misery:
but it’s actually part of a po-yum

note that a po-yum is not a po-yem
let alone a poe-em—

a po-yum is an attempt
at saying it true.

a po-yum is a song of chaos
a yellow ringer phone
a place that airs movies.

moreover, a po-yum is not a poe-em
which is longer and more morbid than it should be.

a poe-em is a number
a po-yum is a word

a po-yum ends, with a click
just like this.

***

anti-aubade

the septuagenarian neighbourhood is
quiet, except for tinkling glasses at the
old beer garden.

Duchess moored to the third spot
from the west side of the canal has
disappeared. Raven Club has a
peeping puppy inside.

cows congress on the grass.
my phone rings—
an anachronic, stubborn blemish on
the silence of the evening.

after the call,
the landscape seems too eager to
lift the veil and kiss the sun,
settling in for the night,
leaving my suddenly rabid heart
without a goodbye.

***

ectopic

a rogue egg makes a tent
in the right fallopian tube:
hides behind blood rather than find
its way to my womb. before this:
I’d not made space in life

for such pain. nor had my nerves
borne rhythmic poison dart palpitations
with tense squeaky defiance for hours.
tears leak for what felt like days.
kind-eyed doctors have trouble

finding a vein in my alien brown skin
to draw blood. pink cannula thrusts out
like a bloody tooth. now: some Vicodin.
a blurry ultrasound. a heartbeat in a tube.
an almost-brain. I am already anaesthetized.

an oxygen mask on my face
unleashes breezy gusts and words.
my last faint thought before I go under
is how sharp the docs’ eyes are:
alien-mustard, staring.

I awake in post-op in tears
but don’t remember crying.
he’s silent. handing me water, cashews,
calm. stretching out. stepping out.
the sympathetic doctor asks us

whether we want to see the tissue
they’d inter in the premises. we say no.
what is a rupture? what is the optimal
amount of grief for the unknown?
at night, after a sandwich and painkillers,

(while actually craving rice and dal and hope) the left side of my body unconsciously shapes the blanket into a soft green bundle that wedges against my freshly cut tummy, a clinical-presence-absence of gratitude, a misshaped bitterness.)

***

chai in America

we meet every weekend at the Deccan chai place like
migratory birds. our people, like us, convene, drinking
spiced tea. we share stories about the week, about the
sights we have seen, sometimes even

liking them in retrospect: what’s not to like? the
sights are heartening: roadside flowers
pink and yellow, tall cypress trees with ghostly trunks
lighting up, arching high across, above the path;

scars on redwoods, deep and old from forest fires,
baby otters swimming belly up, baby’s breath in the
bride’s hair at Vegas, pride of Madeira lining the
Pacific coast highway giving vertigo.

we are storytellers in groups. we sigh and roar, pass
samosas and lend coats to the forgetful ones who are
cold. we talk of hikes planned, driving tests failed,
pickleball courts claimed. there are maps

in our cars, of the places we live. we live places.
schools survive shootouts. we are afraid.
hitting the night time alarm is muscle memory. our
marriage is yellow, ripe and sweet-smelling.

I drive you to the gym and back on alternate days.
the seed is strong, but it is taking too long.
and California is a kid with dimples nestled against the
mountains, picking seashells stogged on the seashore.

when we make chai at home, the clock waits, utters words
soaked in our tongues. some cinnamon. some cloves. some
old cardamoms from the back of the spice boat. it is okay.
the chai is brewing. it is okay to just be.

tiger chai, like a gunshot steeped in silky milk sipping
stories, forgetting the home country. at night, fear
returns. I dream of Ma Kali, her face a hollow – bang –
blackberry in the framed portrait.

***

what it feels like

you succumb to a stillness
that pervades all but the heart

as if you were smelling life
until, suddenly, no fragrance

but then you hear him and her and the other
rumbling with opinions, clouding over your life

you believe that you live in their world
you believe you are living out their words

do you believe you have lived?
are all your lives just storyboards?

did you love the world so much
you eventually ran out of love?

have you had a silent head in a while?
have they stopped talking?

you become an insect
on the windshield of life

Excerpted with permission from moon blooms by Athira Unni published by Red River 2026