Nitoo Das Poems

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1.
GRANDMOTHER'S GODREJ: I

The women of the house
could no longer embrace
the squatting wooden thing.

They needed something
more solid than fluting
something that did not desire
a polish every week
something
that did not need dusting
between vine-leaves
and flower whorls.

The Godrej
steely-straight with no deceptive
dirt-seducing curves
arrived in a cart
with much pageantry.
Various men in sweaty vests
pushed pulled shouted swore
until it stood tall and grey in
a snooty little corner
all by itself.

It flaunted
its cursive name and soon became a womb
for aging silks, perfumes, powders while the
wooden thing sat barren by the bed with only
fake chiffons for company.

The new almirah was cold and cranky,
demanded silence while it creaked and
croaked and could not be opened when
babies slept. In hushed tones people

talked about how clothes were no longer
cared for by crunchy neem leaves but by
the miniature-snowball splendour
of naphthalene balls.
...

2.
how to cut a fish

you have to sit
properly
woman-like on the floor
put one foot
strongly gingerly
on the base of the blade
hold the fish with firm hands
head and tail and swing
him quick leftrightleftright
to remove the scales check
beneath the gills red fans
cut them swift and
then fins here there up down
and tail
feel that perfect line
where the head ends and the body
begins choose it fine and move
slow over the edge
feel the resistance of white flesh staring eye
and open mouth but keep at it let him feel the pressure
of your fingers until it is done and the head sits isolated with a hole
dripping with stuff and then halve
him down his body and pull out the red mess
make equal pieces cutting him so that
the bones do not disturb
afterwards.
...

3.
LOVE SONG: IX

A playsure, an erasure
a damn cocksure toiffurier.

Leave me to my
bewoahing, you tenderhanded hoisterier.

It was in the hornice cornice that I found her,
slatherfolding blatherer.
Damn, damn wilchead and wilchold
went jooby boobying with her
and damn it's triff, I tell you

triff and nothing better.
Her wiggance is so gizsal.
So houndeous, so beauteous,
so imperfeccamble.

I think I need another tasty toisterier
like her.

A playsure, an erasure,
a damn cocksure toiffurier.
...

4.
Creation of the Birds

Ekphrasis IX:
for Remedio Varo

Close your eyes, owl woman.
You don't need to see
to break night, starlight
into birds.

Refract them into beaks,
wings, crests, tails. Birth them
prismatically, mother owl.
Who wants eggs, nests, mates?

Ask an upside down
metal ant to filter air into
blueyellowred. Quicken in them

a hopping,
grain-searching, flying-
fluttering, head-
cocking yearning.
Much like yours, owl
woman of the frail feet.
Much like yours.

Your calm, shut-eyed yearning
to know the air, the stars, the dark.

Wire them
with your guitar heart.
Let them hear the thrum
throb strum string of your blood.
...

5.
Matsyagandha

My body is a story
of smells.

I was a girl then
and did not know what it was
to smell otherwise.

Born of Adrika, the fish-woman,
loved by a fisherman father,
I only knew fish. Silver, black,
orange arrowing,
panting fish. I loved them
and smelt
like them.

Matsyagandha. I was
Matsyagandha.

And Parashar smelt me
and lusted after me and called me
names.

But Parashar, I work and you don't.

You roam and think
and have the consolation of leisure.
I row and sweat and fish with my father.
I work. You don't.

I am your fate, your secret.
You hate me and covet me
and have to grant me
boons of perfume.

Now I smell like jasmines for miles around me.
Men sniff and rise
sniff and die
around me.

This fake skin smell never washes away now.
I pace alone in palaces now
and remember my fish smell, my name.

All women smell like me.
I am Satyavati and I know
the truth now.
...

6.
ANECDOTE

At first it was just a whiff
of old days, a hesitant
air that moved this way and that
near the quilt.
It was a smell

that flew right into her arms
and licked her hair
whenever she walked into the room.
It grew stronger with each passing day.
Not even the stubborn sunshine
of open windows could cleanse it.

She tried incense.
The jasmine
mingled with the smell
and made it worse. Her lover said
I'm moving out.
And he did.
She moved out too
and they closed all the doors to the other room.

The smell needed a home.

A week later they found a pigeon
trapped between the cooler and the window pane.
In the rain, its mate
turned round and round
and round and round in blue-grey explosions
like the February sky and gurgled
through the day
...

7.
THE POETRY OF EVERYDAY LIFE: II

Pencil
I am thin.
Leaden, yet light.
I am that fine line on white.
I am zigzag flowering wood that smells of childhood.
Use me, blunt me and make me grow again.
My death in pointed perfection repeated until your fingers can hold me no more.

Chew on me and suck when you think
I taste good.

Scissors
I am a right-handed conspiracy.
An unknown quality.
Iron nailed into an X.
A swooping gull, a mouth
that closes over swift
lines that divide.

Razor
I mark the beginning of knowledge.
Use me
on a body that knows of sin, of hidden
places, of new things.
I harvest hair
I eat skin.

Headphones
I grow out of ears.
Wiring, enlarging
sound. I am the moveable self
ambushed by silence. I engage
with screams.
...

8.
AN UNCERTAIN FOLKTALE

The corpse had to be fanned
for twenty eight days.

You had to squat
on the floor and believe
the fanning helped the dead
object of your love.

Even while winds
grabbed your eyes and
pushed you backwards
into sleep, you had to trust
what you heard.

By the fifteenth day,
the floor dulled into dust
and pieces of the fan fell
all around you.

The lime tree near the window
yellowed like marginalia.
Busy flies desired access.
On edge
like the crows outside.

The corpse could repulse you
sometimes.

That bit of body, the purpose
of your love
troubled the air
and filled it with tenderness.

Anticipation lived in the fanning
and the hunt for a pulse
in a rotting wrist on the last day
of waiting.

.
...

9.
A MANLY CONFESSION

Kaga sab tan khaiyo
chun chun khaiyo maas
Do naina mat khaiyo
mohe piya milan ki aas.

Yes, let the crow eat me whole, peck out
the finest bits. Everything
except my eyes. I will need them
to witness your love, my love.

I will not remind you of my parents:
my wild mother and my sad
slouching father. I will not tell you about
my teacher who slapped me and made me sleep
in the rain and worshipped me too. I will not tell
you about Sayeeda who swayed away.
I will not tell you about those nights either. Those nights
as agile as fishes in air.

I will clutch winds and feathers. A twitching shape
calling out unsure names. Like songs
thrown in and fastened
by verbs, I will pull a semicircle
of muscle toward me.

Go away. I have nothing,
nothing to confess. .

See the not-quite born sons,
the groaning daughters. They have
their own walls. I stand subtracted
from fire and walk between trees.
Twenty years, thirty, twenty more
soar until all I can think of is you.
Sayeeda.

Sayeeda, where are you?
...

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