She may have four arms or six

even eight, but only one pair of legs

and nothing between them 

except a gentle fold of cloth.

The palms may be raised in blessing

or hold weapons, brooms, crocodile teeth 

or a man’s head but never 

a bottle of moisturizing lotion,

a screwdriver, a cupcake, a microphone.

The wrists should bend delicately

frozen in ethereal dance

but if that might tire her out, choose from

one of the sixteen (bangled) mudras 

that suggest a tenure track to moksh. 

Let her smile or appear vacantly benign

or, to work in the dead crocodile 

she may glower and scowl

with flesh caught in her fingernails

but never must she appear 

to ponder the stock market

or Diophantine equations  

or bunions on her feet 

(she has been standing

ninety-one thousand two hundred and forty eight days)

with any one of the three or five 

heads atop her neck.

Her hair may be worn in tight knots

or cascade neatly over her shoulders

like an additional shawl; think of it

as her own built-in fleece

and though she may have lived 

three thousand years

in rain-blessed loamy lands

it cannot be grey or frizzy 

and no matter the fashions of your time

it’s never styled in layers 

with bangs. 

The breasts must be tasteful C-cups

okay, D-cups — live vicariously 

through your art — but not lactating 

or weighed down or pulled apart 

by gravity or feeding.

Sculpt her in nine yards of silk

sufficiently cinched at the navel 

to reveal a waist-to-hip ratio of .06 

and the absence of stretchmarks. 

A woman exquisitely beautiful 

and entirely sexless — chant mata 

under your breath the whole time. 

Blood, if you must

is permissible on faces and hands 

the respectable red of battle, valour, men   

some may even dribble down 

her flesh-eating teeth

but she has no use

for tampons or hot water bags

and even if she did bleed 

she would have to walk out

of the temple

that week.

Soak peeled onions in water for at least ten minutes; the world will give you
enough other things to cry about anyway. Have children. Have boys. Hurry
along on the road sister, with a safety pin between thumb and forefinger, and
no, keys are too blunt and too bulky, and yes, the road because footpaths are
colonized by hawkers, beggars, prostitutes and bulbless streetlamps that look 

murdered at the base what with the paan stains that leak onto the cement. 

Laugh with your mouth covered. Devi, you are like temple — how you let 

anyone touch? The unhistoried can find themselves too. Keep cats if you want 

to learn to cope with the otherness of lovers. Higher, lift your legs higher, 

you’re a ballerina not a dog about to take a piss. Women who hate are far more 

interesting than women who love. Why you insist on jogging on the street,
shaking your thisandthat — what are treadmills for — and who you want to 

preen for all the time, huh? At least get the driver to take you to the park and 

then jog inside the park, arre what is so complicated-vomplicated — just call
him, sit in the car (with jacket on), get off, do your joggingandjiggling, call
him, back in the car, wear the jacket again and go back home. Simple. Most
creatures have roots, some have wings. If you must meet a friend on the street,
wait at a bus stop so you won’t look like you are soliciting. The morning will
come again. The night will come again. Your premonition is more accurate than
his proof. They’ll say dance like no one’s watching but someone’s always
watching. You haven’t yet started on the biodegradable sanitary napkins — who
will save the sea turtles? They’ll say the age of woman has come but do not
believe them until they stop saying it. If you hate his shirt so much, throw it
in the wash with the woolens. This neither begins nor ends with you, but don’t
pause too long; your granddaughters await. Speak slower at meetings. Don’t
use oil when the recipe says butter. Arre, if you’re so particular, you won’t get
anyone, what you think they’re lining up for your nakhras, and then what’s the
point of being Miss Perfect huh? Wear sarees. Nothing kills you faster than
loving too much, and nothing makes you more alive. Wear jeans. Even a
flower has its roots in manure. Wear lingerie. Don’t watch too many romcoms
thinking you’ll heal with laughter; sometimes it just makes you numb. Wear
nude make up. Your voice is the sharpest blade the world has known, don’t let
anyone tell you it’s high-pitched. Wear heels. One day you’ll look at the old
man in your bed and feel foolish about believing in true love, but it will pass, I
promise. Celebrate your birthdays, specially those in your fourth decade.
Know less to understand more. Have girls, chalo, at least one daughter for old-
age sake? Give, give, give until you turn inside out. Bleed.

The skin is a prism through which light refracts

and breaks into seven poems, each one cruising

along different waves — some languid, some bouncing off

each other or intersecting at unexpected angles.

But once in a rare while a poem leaps off and makes 

its way to the darkest spot in the room 

the spot that people have sensed to avoid

though they do not know it. There, it pauses,

growing brighter and larger, expanding 

until it has touched the walls and filled the rim 

of your coffee cup. Then quite suddenly there is music 

in your ears and you don’t need to wear out your knees 

before sleep finds you, and you are embraced by a softness

you thought he had taken away as his half.

Where do you go, my love, 

In those angles where our limbs entwine

And I lose you to your kisses

That seek out another tongue.

Which navel, which mouth opens up to you 

So that you must shut out this room

With those determined creases of your eyelids 

And hoist your shoulders, straighten those elbows,

Lift your head, as if to break through the clouds 

And emerge amidst another heaven

With another rain.

Where do you taste the sweetness

On my parched, bitter lips

That part only to sigh, providing charge

To your sails as you cross the seas

The saline air fanning the salt of your sweat

Your breath warm and rising to her waves

Your hips lashing against moist curves

More real that my waist,

While her skin lends fragrance to the inert lilies 

On our bedsheet, on which you slump,

Shaken, wind-whipped, wide-eyed.

Where will I find her, my love

Which look on my face serves as a portal

To her door? Teach me how to tear open that skin

And step across, so I may offer to her

Those stars you once dropped in my lap

And say: Take them, as you have taken him

Take the laughter, the secrets, the spark of his fingertips

But take also the putrid moans

Of his nightmares that remember what is lost.

Take his emptiness of where I once slept. 

And hold me in a muddled embrace

As I hold you now, with his breath, your breath

On my face.