Meenakshi – a poem by Charlotte Couse

Meenakshi


I first met you in Madurai, though I
couldn’t go near you, so I wandered 
the trinket stalls, luck heavy incense
in the air, & bought a miniature of you
incandescent in the temple’s shadow,
skin betel leaf green — the same as your
parakeet’s plumes & strangely since then
I’ve been in possession of parrot pictures –
jewelled wings flaring on my walls. 

Years later I bought a statue of you —
£10 from a beachcomber who’d seen 
your shimmer in the cool water — 
an antiquity he said, but I knew you’d been
left there for luck – in my palm small, weighty,
hips swayed, dress wet against your curves —
& I see you shimmying towards me,
down through darkened arches,
long eyes glistening auspicious fish.

Charlotte Couse lives in Wareham, on the south-west coast of the UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Southampton University and works as an acupuncturist and practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine.