Your scarf spoke nine tongues.
I failed to know the purpose, seek the language
of splinters, shards, lazy salsas.
I thought the skies bowed to you even
as they turned mauve. Awe
filled my lungs, I breathed.
Shards slow danced, I felt your smile.
It smelt of something else.
Your ducking shadows traded with liquid limelight.
He always snips off ends. My tranquil ends,
fins deep asleep. Hair is frond. Hair is leech.
Hair is auction. Hair is lintel. Hair is traffic,
sigh, umbrella butt. Gaya, Kashi, Vrindavan.
Coconut-flesh scalps, a manifesto. “Boy’s cut.”
He always snips off ends. Antennae
of lust, tendrils of moist defeat. Hair is vial.
Lady Godiva. Hair is oyster, hiding nudity. Scissors
– suspicion’s toolkit. Sita, Vedavati. Sharpness
a male moral – “Haircut’s our last ahimsa art”.
The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz
Tonight, there’s been a burial.
A careless hammering of nails into a dry casket –
by men drunk on moonshine – breaks the night,
scattering the weevils and owls into the rising moon.
They’ve taken my words, my amour, my knife and
left me here to fill the lonely grave of Paula Schultz.
This cross I bear, is mine to carry for they’ve been
afraid too long – these men drunk on moonshine.
Afraid, when they peeked into my tent to watch
me put on my girdle, gather my bow and arrow
and swing the pelta around my one breast. Afraid,
ever since I rode through the wild crags of Pontus,
kicking up the dust to leave them momentarily blinded.
Tonight, there’s been a burial.
The stars die and I have a night to call my own. The
casket hits the ground and earth pounds hard on its shell.
Darkness smooths out my ragged breath. I remember
Deborah’s Song and hum the tune. Soon the raging
desert winds that once muffled the cries of Sisera
will fill the lonely grave of Paula Schultz.
***
the hours i keep
i’ll pretend i didn’t
hear the rain last night
that it didn’t lash out
on the roof
that it didn’t soak the
clothes on the line
that it didn’t rouse me
from my sleep
i’ll pretend i didn’t
hear the rain
i’ll pretend there are
no stories or verses today
hidden in the half light
waiting to be
put down on paper
that they don’t
rhyme and punctuate
to draw us in
or leave us out
i’ll pretend there are
no stories or verses today
i’ll pretend there is
no tea this morning
that it’s not lapping
against a gold rim
that it will not steam
my glasses
that it will now goad me
out from my bed
i’ll pretend there is
no tea this morning
i’ll pretend i don’t
know where you live
or what you do
that you like walnuts
and your sky grey
that sometimes you don’t
listen to things
i have to say
i’ll pretend i don’t
know anything about you
i’ll pretend there wont
be any more of this –
rain, teas, stories, verses and walnuts –
that they don’t fill up my hours
that they don’t pack up my days
in neat little
cardboard boxes
till they leave me in a silent catacomb
i’ll pretend there won’t
be any more of this
***
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
Bertha & I
Tonight I feel like Bertha Mason
with a fire and sadness in my soul.
I pace my room – this attic of madness –
it keeps me sane. I think it keeps me
whole, somehow. There’s no breeze
through the window, just an empty
vastness of night and shadow and
half-lights. And the knock on my door,
well, it came before – today, tomorrow,
or never, who knows. Tonight I am
Bertha Mason. I see her in the mirror,
lifting her hand to strike the match,
to knock the lantern over. I wait for
the crackle and hiss of wood, the empty
kiss of lapping flames. Yet all around
me is darkness, darkness. What burns
is a fury for what’s come before
and will again.
***
Mothers Sing a Lullaby
(after the 1994 Rwandan genocide)
Mothers sing a lullaby
As the dark descends on trees
Shutting out shadows.
The sensuous voices swish and swirl
Around shrubs and overgrown grass
Hiding mountains of decapitated dead
And the glint of machetes
That slashed shrieking throats.
In these camps without happiness
Mothers maintain the melody of life
Capturing wistful wind
To sing strength into the souls of children
Who have never known
The taste of morning porridge
Or heard the chirrup of crickets in the evenings.
Mothers sing a lullaby
For the staring faces
Who cringe at the sound of footsteps
Whose playmates are grinning skeletons.
Mothers become a lullaby
Silencing the sirens of sorrow
Restoring compassion to the nation.
Miscarriage
A curtain of rain separates
My verandah from the hospital.
On any other day a hundred
Silent patients would pass through
The OP clinic. Each of them
Allowing us doctors to listen
Feel, touch and question them.
The warmth of their fever would
Make us uncomfortably hot.
Today the air is chilled downpour wet.
Water roars in the stony river.
Five nurses, Gi and I sloshed
Through muddy puddles to witness
Our stream in full spate.
Only one desperate couple managed
To make it on the early bus.
Wanting an abortion.
***
To Get Myself Some Water
~Translated from Ellen Lai’s ‘Grassland’, written in Chinese
Our love toils about one period.
On the bloody and lusty grassland
You transform me into your self-pitied crippled rabbit.
When you finally discard everything you have
That is inside your permanently bulging equipment,
You turn your back
And ride towards the flat horizon
On a white horse
Whose tail is momentarily dyed pink.
Your horse clip-clops on the flatland.
Your horse remains no more.
I am still bleeding, and my inner thighs are sore.
I hop to the muddy river
To get myself some water.
That reflection of mine is startling:
She’s a ghostly ancient whore.
First published in Hutt
***
Iris and the sun
Iris thought of the sun as a stain
on the sky; it spread so keenly
when it set, perhaps the lake
was blotting paper.
Why she paid to sit in a boat,
no one knows. The oars scratched
at the surface — relentless nibs –,
disturbed the hulking dusk-yellow
ever so minutely, and nothing
was written that night.
*
Ragini to ex-lover
I am now underground.
Earthworms and roots fuss
about me. But I’m not dead
yet.
To get by I watch the moss;
I think of your green dress
and the rain
and how it conjured a Venice
on your body; the runnels — canals;
my fingers — gondola people
smoothing the ripples.
You must visit now you
know where I am.
I’ll bring the chrysanthemums.
***
Silk or the reason for my madness
here’s the reason for my madness
-chef emeril, food network
The world is changing for me
opening up
unravelling
like the strings of a cocoon
silk
smooth silk
I had tied around myself
covered myself with
like a shell
of bees
and guzzling honey
from my soul
smooth sacred silk
of the wedding shroud
saree silk
sharara silk
wrapping around my throat
like a noose.
smooth and red
lovely and radiant
it lures
me
draws me
to its sheer hues
glittering
like the eye of mephistopheles
resplendent
with the noor on the head of a bride
red smooth sindoor
mingled
with sweat and dirt of the wedding guests
partaking of my fathers feast.
I wait
waiting by the bed
to be taken
home.
bride of allah
I stay
beside the one
who will take me there
smooth sacred and red
in my silk satin gown.
***
