Actress Lisa Ray, a covert writer, dons many hats. She had a serendipitous career in entertainment arts spanning multiple countries, films and modelling. She has started her own yoga studio and a line of ethical perfume. Her poems explore themes derived from an identity-bending, nomadic experiences, the culmination of a life of no fixed address
The Fallen
I’ve been staring
at a fallen photo in my bedroom.
a week
and I still haven’t picked it up
and set it back
where it stood before.
I can see the right corner of the frame
wedged behind the bureau
like the ankle of a man buried in earthquake rubble.
but there was no earthquake here
in my bedroom.
so how did it fall?
and now fallen
perhaps it should stay
the way of all things that have come into the world before
and fallen
like armies and ideals, Communism and the American Empire.
like my youth.
there’s just something I suppose.
a broken, plunging wish,
in all the unpickable things.
Remembrance
Is there a way
to talk of the sun
without invoking the moon?
Love without loss,
Desire without despair,
without hope.
Arrival without departure.
What follows
can’t be easily ignored.
If life is an act of
remembrance
Don’t forget —
every considered step,
and how well you have fallen down.
Incinerate
I did not come here in a car like everyone else
I arrived like the howl
of a goddess striking a priest.
All the varieties of pain
couldn’t harm my features
couldn’t make them plain
or stop my wanton fingers
stretching over bowls of rice and Polish veal
from living many lives at once.
But still they never see
the glow of Sarnath in my skin
or a Calcutta chromosome
in my narrow green eyes
You come from ice
they insist.
You are shapely but not like us.
and it makes me burn enough to incinerate
all the flags
binding my face and their eyes.
The Gift
The magic lives
outside what is known.
in the reclusive bay where fishermen bathe.
This I’ve always known.
And it’s very encouraging
when people don’t understand you.
Also,
there are many things not worth knowing.
Like ‘why a ten percent surcharge?’
while a tree outside quietly grows.
Talk not to me of inoffensive things,
or the way you hide
behind your crowd-pleasing lives,
or why it’s unsafe to travel.
No, I want to hear
the last time your heart was massaged by fingers of delight
or when you found pieces of yourself in broken pottery
or climbed a volcano
and did not tell.
If you change the topic to tell where you get your hair done —
I’ll smile.
I may not be brave enough to be despised
but I won’t give you the gift
of my wild, unknowing heart.
Unraked Shores
there was never a thought
to protect you from how the world works
or from the furnace
of your desires
victory is found
in
stumbling
in
feeling
inside
a jade pendant
sold for a month’s rent
and retrieved
from beneath a lover’s
duvet
Before
there was this shore
and that
a preview of sunset
to draw a line under your day
Now
nothing rests at
angles at odds with
symmetry
no more echoes
from unraked shores
touching the limits
of our courage
A Bud in Reverse
When I see time
(Speaking through)
sinking into my father
(plate washing, mouth slack)
his gentle face drawing in
(A bud in reverse)
his touch so light
(Prairie grass in the Fall)
and his eyes focused on the distance
(the colour of the world before sight)
I want to tell time
Stop.
I have seen enough
I leave the room
trailing scraps of feeling, heart full of embers
sketching grief in my pillow
When I return he is smiling
to sip a cup of tea
with Time.
And it’s my understanding
which is amber
which is a potted plant
a whiplashed bird
a calloused heart
Needing light
Air
Freedom
And his love
My love
The mollifying dance between father and daughter
can bring me to my knees
(the heart of me)
to bow to beautiful decay
and then I’m smitten
(burnt amber/wings unfolded/cracked pot/3page love letter
because some day we’ll all be gone
but our whirl of tenderness will go on and on
Entanglement
I was walking towards my mother
When I saw tires on my feet
But the deep deep tracks
on the trail
Prevented my retreat.
So up I turned to look
To find guidance in the sky
And promptly hit a rumblestrip
And fell upon my side.
Badly.
And when I awoke
A pug before my eyes
A mushroom ripened in my throat
Before I realized
My wheels had gotten tangled
In the roots of this fable
How unkind, how unkind
To corset your mind
said the Pug
And disguise your pain like Abel
I cried out for my mother
But she wants to return to the sea.
So love and attachment entwined in my chest.
I let her go, reluctantly.
Drift Along
Evening clouds
in Thailand
hover like ageing beauties
plump and outrageous
who know they are watched
bruised plum
lilac shadow
magenta blush
they drift above me
on their way to a cruise
taking themselves in the direction of twilight
while I wonder what they would look like
on the ground
they turn
then in lurid conspiracy
flash their pillowy asses
and bend my attention
to a disappearing trail
of all the day’s delicate lavender desires
The Rain
The rain
is indifferent
blank grey pellets
falling without philosophy
without the tenderness to stir melancholy
in the chests on the pavement below.
I think only
of the scent of persistence
and the wet crowd
pressing on like pigeons
step
dip
lift
Down on the sidewalk
the choreography
makes me stressed
Who lowers and who raises
and when to surrender?
Because there is not room enough
in the city
for two umbrellas to walk at equal heights
Stopping at the curb
my heart is a sluice
for the people flow
for their dry eyes
and lack of concern tucked into tiny handbags
while I
like a foreigner arrived
quietly erupt
without harbour in the rain.
No Fixed Return
Did you ever fancy adventure?
Something more
than stretching a dollar on bathroom fastenings
and banquets?
But she hadn’t persuaded herself
This blue silk dress of a woman
To dream of more…
Though the question was in kindness asked
That pale hushed feeling
Robbed her of conversation
And she could only think of closets
And the things she saw on TV
And not
How will I live now without taking a trip
With no fixed return?
i couldn’t keep my
heart
from pounding against
the plate of morning toast
and landing
at your feet
Splat.
tenderised
like Bedouin veins.
we add up to
Everything
we are propane.
without us
there is no hearth
to warm the coffee
there’s no way the mangoes will come to market
and the world will decelerate
to end this fantasy
that
women cannot be counted.
Trespassers
Outside
A temporary autonomy of rain,
Birds.
Rose-ringed parakeets,
I think.
They are pausing time
In a tree of knotted thread.
Trespassers
Who swallow the sky
And every kind of dirt,
To remind you
Of sodden little pleasures
Of a kind of a Mumbai morning
You will miss
When you are gone.
Fragments
Does it ever occur to you
One of the reasons you don’t know me
Is I don’t want to be known
as nocturnal by unfamiliar stars
Or by the grasping look
Of a merchant blooded man.
So many eyes
Say ‘you cannot be this’
Even while the sweeper
Looking down into dust
Sees we are all fragments
Of the same idol.
That is what it is to be known.
Not by the drawing
Of primitive lines by your cultured mind
That separates me from
Everything.
High Heels Hurt
And they want to replace my guts
With something more chic, less smelly
Cover the crescents under my eyes
And dress me with their confusion
Then stand back to photograph their creation
A windup, bloodless spanx enthusiast.
Lips held firmly over jagged words.
Because we all know
High Heels Hurt
And make it hard to run away
Pandora
they say Pandora
was full of regret
but that’s
an old men’s tale.
we all hoard
secret things
that make us sick
and if we opened
all our chests
we’ll save ourselves
the grief
of getting devoured
by what’s hidden.
Webs of Memory
I needed (really needed)
you
to stop me from swallowing
every last drop they offered
but instead
you handed me a napkin
and made sure I drank it down
because,
you said
‘Who doesn’t like to fit in’
how do I explain
The things that leave me awestruck
are the turning points of flesh
the pilgrimage of the nipple
from air to earth
for instance,
or
the fine webs of memory
from my knuckle to my face
All these they will spoil
For our protection. For your protection.
from the density of age.
they break into
my mythical junkyard
And spoil it
With silicon and pasties and photoready paint
A Crooked Girl
I was a crooked girl.
With a patchy pedigree
and a taste
for the discoloured corners of the soul.
I would have become air
And learned how to caress,
life’s perfect mess, if I could
without leaving footprints in the sky
There’s more to it, of course
When you’re made of matter
When bones and earth and
Roped up thighs
Can’t prevent desire
From drenching
A world baptised by doubt.
Then,
I thought it very important to know
How to debone Dover sole.
Until I came across off duty waiters
Who looked like all the damaged lovers
I’d ever known.
So I tried to straighten out
By bending other things
but the furies took it personally and
Withdrew support of my deficiencies
And everyone knows there’s no eulogy
For beauty.
I drank to uncommon ruin
To desolation within reach
While a fire scorched footpaths in my head
Laying waste the eclipse of love I had
by the thoughts that led me astray.
Now I have become patience
Everyday I fail, I fall,
I press bone on masonry
And I no longer take it personally
When the shop attendant leaves me
To answer the phone.
She knows, there are no sacred egos
She knows.
Sky and earth and wind and breath
I am all of those.
Give it Away
Give it away
The heart whispers….
No.
They do me the kindness to not
Say ‘you fool’
But my shoulders are narrow built
Neither fortune no pain
Can rest here.
Give it away.
Shangrila Musing
in the light of the pool
Oh my goodness!
see how the game plays out on our bodies
sized up
measured up
put down
see
I don’t care if my hair is in disarray
or my flesh doesn’t fit
mouth moving
no one listening
eyes like chimneys
sorry to tell you
your pain isn’t unique.
and she
not thinking about it deeply
the old woman lowers herself into the water
kicks her legs
she has smooth beautiful legs, untouched by time
and i want to hold out my hand
because her hair is perfect
and she needs help/i need help
and i look down and see my mother’s arms
chipped golden tiles glittering between my thighs
i can be tough and soft
and radiant in the space between
cry it right
and your liquid offering consoles us.
Cautionary
Why do children touch things
move important things like
soup bowl
stemware
scramble up the setting
Why, the why, the why
Puts a spider on my forehead
with a practised lament
Is this what they call naughty?
And when did I become
Cautionary
The woman who turns side plates
(accented in platinum)
to line up imaginary landscapes
of little blue elephants
soon to be covered in vinegar and bread
Because who cares
who cares? Well,
My mother’s hands,
My hands
care
for bone china
and a tuning fork
I don’t remember inheriting
Orchard of Desires
There were flowers here once
And space to call your own by
Clearing a little dwelling
On the ginger coloured earth.
Now when I fly close to the sun
I can’t look down.
Not for fear of a tumble from an errant cloud
No.
But because there were flowers here once
And now
Only longing
To satisfy
Thirsty eyes and an orchard of desires.
Bruises
I have rabbits
bruises in hidden places
suddenly I’m full of words
tennis courts and tiny flowers
and socks that always fit.
i give you my clean
and let the wrinkles show
cause this ain’t no disney film.
and i still don’t like my knees
but i let the body lead
it knows where it needs to go.
Chemistry of Belief
I want a clean wall
so the people they stand out in relief
so I can see clear
their feathers,
the sticks in their backs
so I can see their one word
their one need
and the chemistry of their belief.
I feel their splinters
and weight of their saints.
I taste bloodsoup
And fallen apples
Seasoned regret.
But I like things speckled and secretive,
bones straining
Through historical corrections.
Now I know
Beauty hides answers
in upward stabs
of a setting sun on water
that punctures chests
gasping for God
The Body Keeps Score
sometimes you need to know
just where is your right toe
and own this feeling.
know when your back
needs an extravagant scratch
and the back of your legs
are calling for a stretch.
archive these moments of intimacy with your flesh
so that the terror
in the literature
in the movies
in our humanity
will not hijack you
into the stiffness of respectability
because, you know, the body keeps score.
not of the vast and subtle plains of mystery
nor of your mouthful of teeth, your well manicured toes
the mingled voices in your head, the haunting behind your eyes.
no.
the body will know
where is your right toe
(I remember you. you are not a surprise. you are not a longing or a gathering of opinion or a monstrous, unnamed feeling)
and exactly where to place your foot.
dignity lies
in your potential to crawl. out. of. any. hole.
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