The Women in this
Village
the women in this village
are the running off kind
leaving
saucers (not cups)
stained with lip marks
and chai
papers
documenting primary school marks
pundits, charts and prophecies
slates
carrying the awkwardness
of a first son’s
meticulously
drawn lines
of the first alphabet
leaving
all that marks the beginning
of a making
of a life
running off
taking
only their babies and their men on their backs
Centavos for the
Village Idiot
for one who will not supplicate himself
will not
speak from his knees
for stale bread
centavos
for one village idiot
hidden
on this body that will not beg
will not
ask for a man’s touch
centavos
rooted from gutters
fished out of wishing wells
collected
for a beggarly kind of love
Village Witness
i will lead you
into a land
into the shadows of a room
under a
we will stand
in a land i was born in
in the lines of a room i was birthed in
in heat
we will stand
on solid ground
in
i will tell tales
of the things that happen when ground gives way
monsoon rains stealing
that spot
where life began
(though you still will not believe)
still a village will bear the weight of my tale
and the weight of your disbelief
For an Aunt
my poa-ji died today
her name i have never learned
i know only this
an illiterate woman
who grew her sons into
a pilot
a physicist
a politician
Translation
in
translated
not into the telling of what has been done
(he committed suicide)
but
translated
into the doing
translating that hand that ended that life
he suicided himself
the mexicans say
Indian Logic
my uncle bit on the fruit of his tree
a guava fruit a guava tree
a seed planted itself in the root of his jaw
prophesying the beginning of a lifetime of aching
of weddings and births of grandchildren
of deaths and his own cremation
endured
with that seed paining
he cut down the tree
that bore the most beautiful of fruit
my aunt
spotting a first cavity in the making
had her teeth all removed
now she sits grieving
her sister followed suit
i am the niece of two aunts and an uncle
and the daughter of a woman
who plants a mango seed in