The Names

Poet. Believer. Infidel.
Lover. Atheist. Bitch

These are mine.

Memorise them. Slake tongue
with them. Feed your thirst.
Open them to pure midnight
and turn them to gold.

Stripped of them,
I am unsyncopated,

flat as slate, diminished
by your thick face in dreams.

It is not enough to know the names.

You must speak them loudly
in rooms, pile them into cars
on smoggy evenings and drive
them around the city, check them
in as misshapen lumps of baggage
on cheap flights, hurl them
across continents.

This is who I am, you must say.
(Not so much who, as what
or perhaps, which and how.)

But what if a gun cracks your sleep open
and you’re running through
fields of blood?

and you’re on your knees,
arms clenched around your belly
for an unnameable loss?

and you don’t know if the shriek
will twirl in mid-air and disappear?

Will you know if something is still true
when there are no names for it?

*First published at Kritya

The Nizam’s Wives

Four girls in brocade,
tussar and stiff smiles, the
slow stranglehold of gold
on their hands, necks, faces.

They were the children who aged early.

Were they friends? Did they
share their fractured power
while swapping dolls, diamonds
and nights? Or were their eyes
darting and vicious over the pudding?
Did they avoid the bath at certain times?

Perhaps, three of them colluded
against the fourth, leaving
frogs on her bed, peas
under her mattress, spit
in her tea.

We can’t know. In this
photograph, they are
just four girls. Let out of purdah
frightened and unblinking
into the cameraman’s flash.

*First published at Kritya

Renunciation

I have waited for you
like the tree waits for rain
mute with unsung desires
and abashed, its leaves
clinging to the brown stem
with dry hands and dry lips.

Like the orange flower
of the pomegranate,
I have sprouted my question
from the topmost branch.

I have said your name
to the sun that beats
fiercely on this valley
making its lakes gleam
and the fish spool deeper.
I have chanted your name
to the winds.

Once, I wrapped you
in the folds of my sari,
entwined you in my anklets,
tied a string around your wrist
and kept one end under my pillow.

I woke from sleep
to find you gone.

I sought your face
like prayer.
I prayed for you.
I prayed to you.

Little by little,
I gave up the marks
of my womanhood.
My hair. My bangles.
My laughter. My breasts.
My certitudes.

I carried you to the
burning river.
There, where the water glows,
I immersed you.
I scattered you in the wind.
In the wind,
I scattered you.

Now, I enter the fires
that burn by the river
I let them singe my skin
I become what I was meant to be:
a heap of charred bones
by the riverside.

My body seeps into the earth
little by little,
until I can no longer tell
where my skin ends
and the soft, gritty line
of the soil begins.

Benediction

In your every rejection,
a poem waits.

It lingers there, quivering
like closed eyelids in half-sleep,
moth’s wings, tears.

I hunt it with eagle stealth
with aspen grace, with lightening
edge, and a lover’s embrace.

I am the swift tongue
of the mantis, its clairvoyant
eye glittering in the green
blade of grass

I am the volatile arc
of the comet, its loose,
hair streaming through the sky
as it flies towards the sun
with absolute certainty

I claim it. I take it
with gratitude,
with pride, with hunger.
This, your blessing to me.
Your boon.
It is my three pieces of land.
It is my atonement.
It is both reward
and restitution.
It will allow me to sleep.

I will write you a letter
every day. From your brief answer,
I will steal my poem.

I pray that you will find
enough rejection in you
for me to fill a book.

Sea Afternoons

The shadow
of the mango tree
has lengthened like a beak, like a rent
in the earth, a chasm.
It has spread. It has come
into our home,
into the little room
of endless talk and silences.
It has brought its thin, black
mid-afternoon gloom
and the cold.
I am drowning, I say to you.
I am drowning.
It is a plea.
It is bloody bone,
the rasp of sea salt
in my throat,
the ocean swirling
in my wound.

and you are sad
because this
is the kind of sea
you were always afraid of.

ever since you were a little boy
in half-pants and you recognised
in your mother’s girlish laugh
the slow, deafening thud of sadness.

It is the sea you ran away from.

But in the end, you wade in.
In the end, you always do.

To A. (villanelle)

We talked all night; there was so much to say
A catalogue of years, hours and sighs.
We talked until the break of day

We lived ten years in two; eternity in a day.
Through sun-drenched smiles, forest fire-cries,
We talked all night; there was so much to say

We steered off some mountain road to play
At the edge of the forest, the edge of the lies
We talked until the break of day

When you add up the sorrows, what will it weigh?
I noticed only the sweet stings of surprise –
We talked all night; there was so much to say

Forget. Forget. All the torment, the betray
Remember only this: your tears in my eyes
We talked until the break of day

You gave me shape, sculpted me like clay
You taught me to drop every disguise
We talked all night; there was so much to say
We talked until the break of day

Moonsong

My love
shames rivals into oblivion,
blackens them
until all that remains is my orb,
the sky’s gleaming eyeball,
white as sand
on alien beaches,
hollow as dust.

You slid in
to find mountains, craters.
and lava spew.
Now you are afraid
of my solitary anger,
the coiled serpent
at the base of my spine.
You are afraid
of its nameless hungers,
its slow uncurling down the length
of your body.
You are afraid
it will stalk you in dreams.

You are afraid
of my haunted face in the night,
my fragilities –
the white space
at the base of my throat,
the fine line of my collar bone.

You are afraid they will unravel you.

You who have spent a lifetime
simplifying yourself.

*Written for this exercise at Poets Who Blog. Photo Credit: Anthony McCune who blogs at Artistic Photography.

Submerge (villanelle)

You could have unfurled in my depths, if you tried
But your gods and demons stopped the leap;
Love diminishes when it has something to hide.

At least Icarus knew the sun’s heart when he died,
His father — left behind — could only long and weep
You could have unfurled in my depths, if you tried

Between dreams and waking, i think somebody lied
(Are these your fallen wings around which I creep?);
Love diminishes when it has something to hide.

The air so fragile with things said and denied,
The hunger of tides, the panic of lost sleep.
You could have unfurled in my depths, if you tried

I saw your wife in the elevator, and cried
Memory and secrets — i have never learned to keep
Love diminishes when it has something to hide.

When i let you go, drive to the sunlit waterside
Submerge what you can neither forsake nor reap
You could have unfurled in my depths if you tried
But love diminishes when it has something to hide.

*Written for a villanelle-writing exercise

She Said

What is it that scares you?
You with your gigantic bindi,
like a dull sun on your forehead,
your house full of Chinese vases,
wine glasses and photo frames.

Does my otherness terrify?
Or is there a part of you that wonders,
at night, in the quiet,
when the rumbles of his body have ceased
what it would feel like, what it would be like
to be me?

Do you sometimes think
while peeling the potatoes,
arranging flowers or birthday parties
that we are the same after all?

That after the meals, the tea, the biscuits,
the meetings, the fleeting cares, the layers,
the fading of the evenings to nights, the sights
that make up our days and our lives,
we are just the same.

Love is a broken vase on the living room floor.
Love is a face slammed shut at midnight.
Love is what you hope will come to the rescue when
you bite your lip, taste blood and repeat shitshitshit.
Love piles up in the sink unwashed and stinking
and cools in the bed even as you stoke it.

*written after a conversation with a commercial sex worker

Parvati

When the wind comes down from the hills
and palm trees fling their leaves about
like Sufi saints stepped off the edge,
she lies on a mat on the floor,
arms out,
and listens to coconuts falling on the roof
like tough-shelled meteors.

In her, quiet,
is the cry of marauding elephants
Grey. Heavy. It flattens her.

Parvati, woman of the foothills,
woman of hard hands and bright teeth,
woman who endlessly waits.

Woman whose waiting is a wound
that will not let skin
close over it,

A wound full of tree, grass, rain
and the smell of mud

Woman who bears the hollows in deep places
but feels herself break
with the slow burn,
the stench in the night
of things growing old.

*Parvati is a migrant’s wife who I met in the villages near Jaigaon, a small town on the border of India and Bhutan.

** First published at Kritya