My Favorite Place
Shilpa Kamat
~from Memoir of a Hippie Cyborg
You’ll rust, they all warn
eyes bulging when I say
how I slipped
my copper forearm
onto soil fresh with rain
beneath the redwoods–
I smile move on
They’ll never understand
how the sun and the rust
nourish
how the elements creep
into my memory bone
to machine to slug-paced
decomposition
in the forest I listen
to birds lean back
against the ancient pines
walk seventy miles uphill
at dusk to look at Venus
watching bats swoop swiftly
past me as I climb aware
at times of a cougar quietly
watching me pass
wondering if they see
what I know: that I
am part machine but
of the earth as well.
Shilpa Kamat (she/her) is a poet, educator, and healing arts practitioner based in Northern California. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and has been published by a range of magazines, including Strange Horizons, Kweli, On Spec, sPARKLE & bLINK, Colossus anthologies, Jaggery, and SAND, and is forthcoming in Fantasy Magazine and The Margins. Her chapbook, Saraswati Takes Back the Alphabet, was a finalist for the Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound. You can read more about her work at shilpakamat.com.
