PunchMag

Mirabai Calls to Manuela by the Silla de Paita and other poems

Mirabai Calls to Manuela by the Silla de Paita and other poems

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

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 —

Donate Now

Comments


*Comments will be moderated