Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










by Mani Rao

My mother came home one day
without her uterus.
The doctor took it out.

Like someone heard me say
Let’s act it out
act it out physically.

I was the baby who never cried
The snake on your breast
who stung you dry

The vicious pet
and yet you held

I shot past her knees past her hips past her breasts past
her shoulders, way past her wisps of hair, those rays
of grey light radiating from her shrunken head.
She had to look up to speak to me
She had to have wide eyes.

Life begins when the children are out of the house
and the dog is dead, I said.

She laughed
Dyed her hair black
Made me stay.

TIME BRINGS CHILDREN
THEY BURN HOLES IN OUR STOMACHS
POP OUR BELLY BUTTONS.
DEATH MAKES SENSE.

Weightless in your sticky fluids
too long you kept me in.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mani Rao (b.1965 India) is a poet, translator and scholar. Her poetry books include New and Selected Poems (Poetrywala 2014), Ghostmasters (Chameleon Press 2010) and echolocation (Chameleon 2003; Math Paper Press 2014). Her book-length translations are Bhagavad Gita as a poem (Autumn Hill Books 2010; Fingerprint 2015), and Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader (Aleph 2014). Her most recent book, Living Mantra- Mantra, Deity and Visionary Experience Today (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) is based on fieldwork in South India.
Mani’s poems and essays are, or are forthcoming in, numerous journals including Wasafiri, Meanjin, Washington Square, Fulcrum, West Coast Line, Interim and Poetry Magazine, and in anthologies including Zoland Poetry, W.W.Norton’s Language for a New Century, Penguin’s 60 Indian Poets, and the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. She has held residencies at Omi Ledig House (2018), Iowa IWP (2005 and 2009) and was the 2006 University of Iowa International Programs writer-in-residence. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UNLV (2010), and a PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University (2016). See www.manirao.com for more information and links to her writing.