By June Nandy

Woman Made

always the same shop of decency
from where my books and dresses are bought.

my nationality is decided by the
identity i hold between my legs.

i have no Pandora’s Box
in whose depth, i can store my fantasies.

it comes swimming to me, his battle ground;
bringing me currencies, carnal, banal.

other times, my timidity decides
how not to find me left, mid-way.

i flick my pages; a constitution i’ve become,
placed at the highest pedestal; to be violated
again and again.

*Previously published by Gloom Cupboard, USA

Taking Account

I’ve seen female elders
stocking dead cowries in the God’s throne.

I fill the cereal bowl with it…makes you smile;
the child calls it–fish…sometimes
the food even; she will learn.

I don’t know, how your red diary
travels to me often, with outstretched arms;
it was important though, to know

the void left by the moneta pies—to make our home,
was filled with sighs. I thought
they were to be tossed out.
It is an eternal sojourn—
to jostle space with them.

Cretin that I am—
figure out: the frugality does not help.
It is the scrawled sub-formulas—in the air
that I must learn, to read.

***

June Nandy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals such as Taj Mahal Review, Sein Und Werden, Poetry Super Highway (featured), Kota Press, Up the Staircase Lit Review (featured), Gloom Cupboard, Decanto Magazine, Clockwise Cat, Malaysian Poetic Chronicles, Kritya, Femina, and Heavy Bear. She was the third prize winner in the Poetry with Prakriti contest, 2009. Her works can be accessed here.