the kids want bollywood

The kids want Bollywood
something more North and more West

glittering cloth, bouncing bare hips
praise of lips
on national TV

not so much the kitha-dom of me

------

back home
they learn to point their toes,
the redde is lowered,
hatte bejewled,
mandiya straightened out.

they loosen their palms and step lightly.

we say, it's very indian, it's very western, it's pretty and also
it's very necessary.

the beravas have been dying a long time.

------

I work with a lady who says
give me just a flavour of "Senegalese"

I lean in with a stifled wince: I
crush me beneath a hundred cultures, I
grind me to spiced dust, scatter me.

------

no one knows that
I think of you

in my curled arms
draped across this curving waist,

seeking to see yourself
in half-dropped eyes,

find yourself on
half-laugh mouth.

I think of you in the
tharikita-kun-dath-

I even think of you in the
thah

your body rigid, you gasp me in.

------

#WhatItsLikeToBeADesiGirl
am I a desi girl?

#WhatItsLikeToBeADesiGirl
to be pressed into an even tone

------

the kids want Bollywood, I try to be what they want me to be

------

rivers

ottawa was most of all
the sturdy curve of collarbone,
slope of loose embrace:
a place to rest a burning cheek.

I carry you with me

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
the urgent froth of your dreams beating
against the shore roars
always in the scooped
curl of my ear. I carry your fears.

I carry you with me
your stories like
distant stars, reaching,
tickle in my throat, coughing
fire in the gaping gut, burning
me out.

I carry the contradictions
the hate on your tongue tied in
a mouth that smiled and kissed,
the warm crinkle at the edge
of your eyes that sometimes
filled with spite,
the gentle lick, sometimes the bite.

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
I am the why, I carry this
question and your life
folded over and over itself
in mine.

11262015

Scratched out from a silent womb
I've grown into a tumult:
ever-buzzing roar and whine
of tortured stone, and groans
of men heaving rock. Even in 
the quiet hours before the
engines start, breaths not mine, 
dreams not mine animate my heart. 
What has this crescendo consumed?
I scratch into the womb of
me to find the silence to be.

Cactus

prickly like
a sudden poem
a heart that breaks
a life undone. My fingers
to know the pain of you
reach. And there - the many million stabs - 
I gasp and pull away to find a
tiny thorn trapped in the labyrinth of my fingertip, 
maze of my identity - and now, the pain, too, me.

101015

do you understand that you shut me down
do you understand that

your words should be rain not arrows or

you are like a heavy darkness
a dot of ink spreading
under the skin or

do you understand that i don't even have words

reminder

i don't want to forget

the precise angle of your shoulders

or the tight curve of your smile

but it has been a while

and the skin forgets its goosebumps

the heart forgets its joys

there is a deepening void, and i cry

I remember! I remember!

pleasing aches and little plummeting delights!

of course! the pain of that jagged edge of satin petals fluttering out of sight!

on a sunny day --

I remember (because i'm terrified

to recall only that i've forgot, 

to know only 

that i loved you once and then i loved you not

as undeniably

as dreadfully

as a dead thing rots).