Tea

by Karan Kapoor

mouthful of herb and heat
softening his pumice throat

my father holds
his favorite drink

each morning
the drumbeat of his debt
to ginger basil fennel

each night our doubt

Karan Kapoor is a poet. They have been awarded or placed for James Hearst Poetry Prize, Rattle Annual Prize, Ledbury Poetry Prize, Julia Darling Memorial Prize, Red Wheelbarrow Prize, John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry, Orison Anthology Award, and Literary Taxidermy Competition. Their manuscript Portrait of the Alcoholic as a Father was a semi-finalist for the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Poetry Online, Colorado Review, Prism Review, The Offing, Frontier, and elsewhere. You can find them here.