Mani Rao (India)
IF WE LIVE LONG ENOUGH, WE SHALL
One day we shall
all find
our Orphan-age
Ordained we shall
be sworn
brothers, sisters
Weep we shall
hang sighs
in vacuum,
our new home
You were never there, brother
You too busy sister
Witnesses to the same
split skies our stories same
Promises,
Promises,
~~~
SAFE
When I tell my mother
I’m going someplace
She warns me
Of crocodiles that look like logs
Mountain lions behind rocks
Lonely roads and rakes
Tall grass, irritated snakes
One must never enter caves
Or go to the restroom
in large malls solo
She speaks without
word breaks
No wonder I am so fearless
All the panic safe with her
~~~
UNTITLED
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.
~~~
UNTITLED
My mistress
uncoils
her umbilicus my
lifeline and leash
she stacks high
and jumps on top
Nobody tug
Dark inside the closed
snake basket
Still
though they slide
~~~
UNTITLED
The days hatch around you feed their hurried mouths. The years open like doors, one by one they shut behind you; some softly, some bang shut.
Chin glacier melting on jaw-slope. Long breasts, empty pockets. Skin in under water sog.
Unhitched you hurl in two opposite directions. Your mind speeds on, a whistle, minding nothing. Your body’s best crash, I see it coming.
~~~
UNTITLED
Steamed rice spills from a neighbour’s window and before you know, it has arrived like mail, bulging with photographs.
A flood :
: home.
I am your history, your memory and your child amnesia. Erupted in fear from your dream, I knew then it was, and that I was your dream. A river uncoiling from mountains, weight crashing into the sea.
~~~
UNTITLED
Picture the children who will never be born. The things they might do with video cameras. The petitions they might send to Kofi Annan. The children with a plan.
Children who take magnets out of their pockets and rally the universe into a new polarity. Children who can save us, lead us out of here.
Who don’t do that. Who become a live journal suspended in word web. Who become parents. Loss after loss, born.
~~~
UNTITLED
Watch out! Your children crack your heads open, a jagged jig.
Trepanned, your brain releases an air balloon to lift you out of here.
After you leave, they interlace fingers around their own heads, like it never happened to an eggshell.