The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Friday Poem on 26/05/23

We chose ‘Holy’ by Serena Alagappan to be our Friday Poem this week because it’s a praise poem with a difference. Alagappan takes us into unfamiliar territory – holy the potato? – but she is a sure footed and skilfull guide, and her confidence and elan carries us with her. We love ‘hauled’ – reminiscent of haulm – and the delicious echo of indigo / snow / potato / volcano. That spectacular last stanza does it for us every time. Bravo!

Holy

Holy those colors in rain 
after drought, a puddled vow,
iris damp and aching.

Holy the indigo aura
that casts doubt on a landscape’s
verity. Fog or foam, snow 
caps or sea? 

Holy the difference between 
solid and liquid – this thin: a
cloud thrums, only temporarily
pregnant. 

Holy how time morphs 
between shores,
how when suspended
in ice, petals burn to touch.

Holy their will to wither,
unholy their right to lie.

Holy to be mummified.

Holy atmosphere of glass,
shattered by the unjaded.

Holy temple on the beach,
which the tsunami passed.

Holy Hanuman, monkey-headed
deity turning winds in his hands.
Holy statue, draped in marigolds, 
tearing open its chest. 

Holy stars shrill in the sky.

Holy the potato 
hauled out of the soil.
Holy the hairthin seed
of the potato plant.

Holy the volcano, and 
the ones spared
from the volcano, 
and the volcano’s fertile sand.

Serena Alagappan received her A.B. in comparative literature and creative writing from Princeton University. She went on to study anthropology and literature at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Her poems have appeared in The London Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, the Colorado Review, Stand Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the 2022 New Poets Prize and her pamphlet Sensitive to Temperature will be published by The Poetry Business under the Smith|Doorstop imprint this June.

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