Mirabai Calls to Manuela by the Silla de Paita
for Manuela Sáenz
Come sit with me by the Silla de Paita
by the Pacific’s gossiping waves,
where the wind is a bow throwing arrows.
I call you now in this time of tyranny,
Dame-of-the-Sun, bold, bold woman,
shining medal on pan-America’s breast,
I roll out a red carpet for you,
let us exchange notes of our lovers,
show each other our love-bites,
call for Krishna, Bolivar,
galloping on the horseback of our bones.
We embroidered our hearts with stars of love,
turned our backs on ‘husband’ and threw a garland
on the neck of a chosen one,
we exiled ourselves from the sanctuary of prescribed bliss,
for the chaos of an uncontracted passion,
walking barefoot on a road of thorns.
We bled.
Your story a sword in freedom’s arsenal,
my songs on the wind,
step out of the mirror Manuela,
sister of my smoldering heart,
your heart a volcano among volcanoes,
of the Pichincha, you lit them, they lit you.
Let us show the world once again how to love man or god,
how to light courage boldly like a cigar,
hold it in the mouth in society’s face,
teach us how to spin like a dervish lit by love,
Come soon Manuela for I am lonely,
I do not understand these times of gold and gravity,
History heralds my devotion for
the love of the dark-blue flute player
who stains eternity with his blue spirit,
But I confess, I asked for eternal enslavement to a God,
And you, you dared love a mortal man,
your heart a port-of-calling for love,
crazed with a desire for freedom,
you showed us love is not illegitimate or unethical,
I know sister, your love is harder,
to pledge loyalty to what is strong and then declining,
you loved what is impermanent and frail,
you never forgot Bolivar’s dreams,
they shone in your eyes when they faded in his,
you loved with a lighthouse heart
that could free a nation.
And I loved for my soul alone.
Bolokoli
for Astur
Welcome to the world little girl
cut cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut
cut cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut
cut cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut
200 million times cut cutcutcut
cut cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut
cut a clitirodectomy, infibulation, excision
200 million makes many constellations
constellations of 30 cuntries, cut-cuntries
nicked pricked pierced incised scraped cauterized.
de-petalled
capped
pruned plant
you’re a sewn gunny bag little girl
you’re clean and pure now little girl.
here’s a lollipop!
hush little girl hush hush
don’t talk little girl don’t whimper
don’t urinate, don’t bleed
don’t moan in pleasure
much much, much later.
keep your sunrises unseen
your tidal longings secret
be clean closed unseen.
What’s that little girl?
louder little girl…
fuck you fuck you fuck you
FGM in the Bambara language spoken in Mali means washing your hands, a purifying phrase.
Astur, Somalian girl’s name meaning to cover or conceal
Usha Akella's I Will Not Bear You Sons, published by Spinifex Press, Australia, will be released in April
Joysmos
for Magda Carneci and Ruxandra Cesereanu
‘A reader will read us one day ’from the poem ‘A Vast Reader’
These poems you write write to by which you tear scratch
carve delineate the universe on your terms this tug-of-war with
the world your right your triumph
your big gulps of air to live to breathe
to be my sisters-in-arms,
I am warmed in my bed now, I salute your poems
outside the dull-leaved oaks like ancient alligators
climbing to the sky, you burst open the seams of words
as yellow pollen scatters in the air this very moment
outside my window,
I admit I do not know the trees or flowers in your country,
but here morning glory, basket flower, coreopsis
are shrill announcements calling my attention,
name us! they cry aloud,
in my bed now asking a thousand questions the names
of your trees and flowers
what pollen is in your soul your agonies
how regimes plunged into your bones
and became the ink in your pen
and sculpted your love stories your souls
a cup of dark chocolate its aroma wafting
on Victoria street the street I walked
a few steps with you and imagined
your revolts and victories, imagining the poem lost
in translation rising like an inviolate city on your pristine page,
your poems your poems breathing
in and out the universe order no different from chaos
no different from your soul’s panting
no different from your violet emotions or red intellect
no different from your prayers no different from your politics no
different from your Godless deity no different from
different from your Godless deity no different from
you write to me today,
you write me. A reader will read us one day.
Yes. Your waiting is over.
Play on Magda Carneci’s book title Chaosmos.
Write is the major trope in both poets’ work.
Women Speak
for us
Even if you feel your days are held in place
with safety pins,
and you are unbuttoned by life daily,
harangue the stars with your voices,
they cannot be trusted,
speak!
Boomerang
We are boomeranged
in the lattice of destiny by a deft hand,
the years a burning bush,
a life — pilgrimage and sacked city —
we are arched to the uneven spin
bending hardness, curving by cultural burn
and — retrieved from flight to the source.
You gifted me this metaphor.
I was six when I tasted the sweet cream of childhood
in your croissant-shaped boundaries,
— and still didn’t know our totemic links
— that you too stepped off a landmass —
and before that — we — all of we — dreaming —
stepped out of the dreaming
as a nascent blue globe — eyeball of god
watching its own birth and decay —
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