Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
In this story, I have no corpus. Sinew strewn about haphazardly,
a charcuterie board riddled with cuts of gut, tendon and bone,
my presence umbrages. What is a she, the child I accreted inquires,
dropping crayons into a metal tin. I suffrage a low stream of supplications
in my flint-voice: you will know what it is if you listen for it, or you may find it
it means unwilling. They hum. They know I eschew the word sun, son, all the
homonyms. Call me a meadow, I’m green and full of flowers, they giggle.
When the body recommits itself to a semblance of earth, petrichor lacing
its very seams, I wake up. I am not operative. A machine trills, metal
folds in half under the supine spine. Honey, you sure those are too heavy,
a voice asks. There is a permission form, dotted and signed in black. Sir,
Someone calls, and the phantom turns, delves into the maw in my chest. I
fed two mouths with it, I begin, but the suggestion of milk is drowned by
a scrape of the blade-tongue. I am going to do this slowly, the voice murmurs.
One more excised from the board, one more hacksaw, scalpel, cleaver
tainted by the phlebotomy of personhood. Are we going to buy new shirts now,
the child asks, watching the bandages encircling ribs. Do you like buttons more,
mom? Are you a mom? There’s a flinch now. Yes, I want to say, yes–
when the tender stalk of the lotus opens, there is a dewdrop curled
within, spotless, flailing about. I am still a meadow, shorn. I am still on
the board, splayed but sewn, full of the absence of milk. They, I say.
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