The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ellen Kombiyil’s “Histories of the Future Perfect”

THE UNIVERSE GOES DARK

Eventually, the stars’ far-off headlights
plink off, one by one, in a sky growing

more and more silent. No more humming
from the microwave’s burned-out filament.

It will be like how we never met, driving
a mountain path, winding up and up—

Where’s the music? I’d say, the radio’s
turned to static—and the hi-beams we flash

could never actually connect. I’ll round
one side while you climb

the other, just ahead, moving faster
than I could ever breathe.

This selection comes from Ellen Kombiyil’s book Histories of the Future Perfect, available now from Great Indian Poetry Collective. Purchase your copy here!

Ellen Kombiyil is the author of “Histories of the Future Perfect” (2015).
A recent transplant from Bangalore, India, where she lived for nearly 11
years, she is a founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, an
mentorship-model literary press specializing in innovative books from
India/Indian diaspora. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and
has read, performed or taught workshops at the annual Prakriti Poetry
festival in Chennai, the Raedleaf Poetry Awards in Hyderabad, and
Lekhana in Bangalore. Originally from Syracuse, New York, and a
graduate of the University of Chicago, she now lives in New York City
with her husband and two children.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently The Midway Iterations(Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), Fall (Lucky Bastard Press, 2015), and The Ep[is]odes: a reformulation of Horace (Noctuary Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review, Menacing Hedge, LIT, West Wind Review, Ninth Letter, Phoebe, and others. A weightlifter, artist, teacher, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she is the Vice President and Associate Editor of Sundress Publications.