On Days to Come
By Anvi Sonkar
On days to come,
it will turn ugly again, radio silence,
robbing of our mutual mates but
mostly knowing it is what it always was.
rose stains on your ran down
cup of tea and cigarettes, I
share them ever so politely
with a sickness in my head;
the salt cuts us hard and
like the waters, we persist
when we trade are glasses
for ever so melted ice over
gin and lime or when I take
your hand and you promise to
never let me go,
do you think they see us?
when the bookstores are
closed and we run in the rain,
half a mile, do you think they
notice? When we dance, your
feet over mine and my heart
scarring because it’s the last
night before it all turns ugly again.
your birthday toast, I so
often sit with and eulogize,
your mother’s china
that is scarred of the
fifteen year old wound
on the crest of your left
shoulder blade, your
father’s word, oh, that
double edged sword
I’ve learnt to swing past
but deep flows the guilt,
under graves of graves,
for all what was fought for,
for all misery of mutiny that
I swallow in the name
of Machiavellian distort, it
rots us until everything we
touch turns ugly.
I refuse to return your books and you
keep mine close to those healed burn
wounds, ties the faulty fallacy of
them being pieces of us we trade.
you refuse to call me anymore
and yet I sit in a hallow building
with ghosts for friends, knowing
not a day would go by where I’d
not pick up; six years of faulty
exchanges, in the books of sins,
lies and altered truth, there
goes the burning
bridge of you and I.
seven months in
strawberry fields, as
the world fell apart,
we crafted letters of
deep devotion in the
name of Christ; we
were never religious
but grazing through
the long grown
grasses through
the winter’s nights,
nothing fell short of a
life of such sweet
decadence and a clocking
grenade on our arms, coiled.
On days to come,
ten will remain, each meal shared
over a year’s strange familiarity, each
will be marked by the oldest of
colognes and greys of our hair.
after all of it,
after days of sitting
by the phone,
it will ring,
thanking for
never letting you go,
and a book in the mail,
with a devout eulogy, of
all the words that
couldn’t teach us love,
of all the idler dreamers and
their ungodly Gods,
of all the dogs caught beneath
the landslide, and the letter
oh so wounded, it only says,
“on days to come, will it all turn ugly again?"
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When the Goddesses are Invisible
By Navya Ojha
Dangling mid-air, suspended,
Limbs the aerial roots of the banyan,
Bunched-up, knotted, huge nonetheless.
A gust of wind blows, sudden, notorious
Activity jerks them, a wooden tap
On the trunk, this mortal, deciduous
Hypnosis: I am become tree,
But I dream like a woman.
Lunged by the limb, I feel myself
Thudding down a flight of stairs into
A cesspool of guttural,
Abysmal blackness, my identity, that of
The undeniable wrench
Of the umbilical cord. Lately,
I feel like the rind of the womb
Encloses me, muffling my voice into
A rhythmic whimper of sorts.
I am pregnant, with all the women
I have been and will ever be. I know extensively
Of Naidu, Phule, Irigaray,
Of Christeva, the Queen of Jhansi, the great
Panchali; I know of my mother, and her mother,
And her mother! In many ways, I am them.
I am also, live woman jumping into pyre,
Twenty-one, noticed, and violated.
Memory has a chokehold on me. What use
Is knowing, if history sits on my chest,
Steady, strangling, pinching nose shut.
A while ago, I dreamt all my
Teeth were falling out, rhythmic,
Satisfying, plop-plop-plop, I feel time
Calcifying into milky chunks, and
Passing my body by. Everyday is the same,
The knowing and the knowing and the knowing,
Pinned down like a thumb tack,
All this genius wasted—he sits on the throne
My mother and her mother and her mother
And I, not to mention, I, built for him!
They say man accords meaning; I am woman
And I say, I have the names of all my Gods wrong!
They stare down at me, and I lower my eyes,
Shame takes over. My God has always been man,
And I have struggled to make him love me,
Offering in hand, always. He flickers like a blinding
Candle in the wind. I can only sob
Like a fool when he turns to ember. It takes
Bribery to hold him down. Or he burns my face.
Milk teeth falling out.
Still falling, tunneling, echoing, until
Someone taps at my woodenness.
All of a sudden, I am tree again. It is
A white office. God-like. His thumb
And finger force my pupils to constrict
To their blinding whiteness. MD psychiatry,
This God of mine is yet another man. Method,
Structure, planned routines, moderation!
Yet another fool dictating the course
Of this legacy of the womb. Hysteria,
They call it, panic disorder in more
Refined terminology.
Get help, they said, like being a woman was
Such a grotesque malady. You are
Too much, in the face, raging, screaming
Screaming for my women, in protest of
This historical bigotry. Own and
Expropriate and toss to the side of the road
Like this rage will never spark a forest fire
In this jungle. I turn in over myself,
Brilliance wasted to a pitiful death. Dog-like!
I wish I could be more to myself, show love
To this body and mind, to all this knowing. I wish
Knowledge made a difference.
(I hope flowers grow out of my lungs.)
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