Two Poems

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.

***