Silk-threads
in my homeland little girls and
grandmothers are knotted with silk-threads
called stories
grandmothers walk nimble-footed
to the past, careful not to fall into
memory’s ditch
little girls traipse on it, tumbling
on fantasy and sport, daring
to dream
grandmothers teach them how to
unfurl their worlds and shed their shame
in private
that is what they teach with their
finger-wagging tales and anecdotes.
little girls outgrow
till some girls get lost
while they unbutton and unknot
their worlds
they get lost in cinema halls
with their mother and men with hairy arms
crawl all over them
they will long for the silk-threads
to flee from the dark and fall
into their grandmothers’ arms
some little girls will roam the valleys in search
of their ponies, they will see their own
hidden bodies
to remember the men who removed their purple
frocks, and the pain that screamed out
from their wombs
some little girls live in their fathers’ arms
that love their little bodies at night,
they shut their eyes
dream of
which
will take them home to the lies
their grandmothers once told
Amma
Did the doctor
with all his degrees
measure her heart beats?
Faint wings flapping
against the cage
showed up in monochromes;
unsteady and fragile,
she was wheeled to
be x-rayed and echoed.
Was it pain, fear,
hurt or love
that weakened her heart?
It still trembled like a
feeble prayer offered in
her lonely evenings;
It still beat
in the machines
to preserve her memories
against the violence of oblivion;
It pumped through
perforations and severed lint
in her attempt to stitch
herself together.
In the monitor,
her heart ceased to be
four walls of flesh.
Instead it was a
sea of struggle,
memories,
histories and love
imprisoned in her rib-cage,
waiting to soar towards
the sky....
My Brother’s Garden
My brother's garden
wakes up to birds,
they perch on treetops,
wait for his footsteps
A fig tree, with its cupped-palms,
holds drops of water for
finches and humming birds
The bottlebrush branches
hide nests under their arms;
they drop their rag doll fingers
to woo a magpie-robin
A drongo drones
to my brother's songs
before she drums down
to the marble-bath to drown
I know the trees by their names:
a Jamaican cherry with
its lopsided logic on gravity,
a guava tree fermenting with fruits,
whistling bamboo and wheezy thistle
A coconut leaf peeps down
from the sun-smudged sky,
a bird takes to wings,
a coiling curve
on my brother's brows
forming the forced smile
of my childhood skies