Meena Alexander

I come from the nether regions They serve me pomegranate seeds with morsels of flying fish From time to time I wear a crown of blood streaked grass. Mama beat me when I was a child for stealing honey from a honey pot It swung from the rafters of the kitchen. Why I stuffed my mouth with golden stuff, no one could tell. King Midas wore a skin that killed him. My nails are patterned ebony, Doxil will do that They made a port under my collar bone with a plastic tube that runs into a blood vessel. I set out with mama from Bombay harbor. Our steamer was SS Jehangir, in honor of the World Conqueror — They say he knelt on the battle field to stroke the Beloved’s shadow. The waves were dark in Bombay harbor, Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography Writing too is an experiment with truth. No one knows my name in Arabic means port. On board white people would not come near us Were they scared our brown skin would sully them? Mama tried to teach me English in a sing song voice. So you can swim into your life she said. Wee child, my language tutor muttered ruler in hand, ready to strike, Just pronounce the words right: Pluck, pluck             Suck, suck Duck, duck Stuck, stuck. May 12 - July 4, 2018, NYC

Portions of a mango tree the storm cut down, a green blaze bent into mud and they come to me, at dawn three girls from Kanpur, far to the north admittedly (we know this from national geography class, the borders of states, the major cities). They hung themselves from fans. In the hot air they hung themselves so that their father would not be forced to tender gold he did not have, would not be forced to work his fists to bone. So that is how a portion of the story goes. Slowly in the hot air they swung, three girls. How old were they? Of marriageable age certainly. Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, something of that sort. How do I feel about it? What a question! I am one of three sisters, most certainly I do not want father to proffer money he does not have for my marriage. Get a scooter, a refrigerator, a horde of utensils, silks, and tiny glittering bits of gold to hang about my ears and throat. Gold is labor time accumulated . . . labor time defined. Who said that? Yes, I am a schoolteacher, fifth standard trained in Indian history and geography, Kerala University, first class first. The storm tree puts out its limbs and I see three girls swinging. One of them is me. Step back I tell myself. Saumiya, step back. The whole history of womankind is compacted here. Open your umbrella, tuck your sari tight, breathe into the strokes of catastrophe, and let the school bus wait. You will get to it soon enough and the small, hot faces. See how the monsoon winds soar and shunt tropic air into a house of souls, a doorway stopped by clouds. Set your feet into broken stones and this red earth and pouring rain. For us there is no exile.

Terrace deep as the sky. Stone bench where I sit and read, I wandered by myself Into the heart of the mountains of Yoshino. In one hand a book, in the other, a bag made of newsprint— No weather-beaten bones here Just lychees bought in the market, Thirty rupees per kilogram. Stalks mottled red tied up with string, Flesh the color of pigeon wings— Sweet simmering. Sunlight bruises air Pine trees blacken. Where shall I go? The Dhauladhar peaks Are covered in snow.

In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god) Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battle He balanced himself on a flat boat painted black. Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flag A tongue with syllables no script can catch. The many births you have passed through, try to remember them as I do mine Memory is all you have.

Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well's mouth. Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood. You were bound to meteorology, Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds. The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm, Fissured air baring the heart's intricate meshwork Of want and need— Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me. Crossing Chand Bibi Road, Named after the princess who rode with hawks, Slept with a gold sword under her pillow, Raced on polo fields, You saw a man lift a child, her chest burnt with oil, Her small thighs bruised. He bore her through latticed hallways Into Lady Dufferin's hospital. How could you pierce the acumen of empire, Mesh of deceprion through which soldiers crawled, Trees slashed with petrol, Grille work of light in a partitioned land? When you turned away, Your blue black hair was crowned with smoke— You knelt on a stone. On your bent head The monsoons poured.

In the dog days of summer as muslin curls on its own heat And crickets cry in the black walnut tree The wind lifts up my life And sets it some distance from where it was. Still Marco Polo Airport wore me out, I slept in a plastic chair, took the water taxi. Early, too early the voices of children Mimicking the clatter in the Internet café In Campo Santo Stefano in a place of black coffee Bordellos of verse, bony accolades of joy, Saint Stephen stooped over a cross, A dog licking his heel, blood drops from a sign By the church wall—Anarchia è ordine— The refugee from Istria gathers up nails. She will cobble together a gondola with bits of driftwood Cast off the shores of the hunger-bitten Adriatic. In wind off the lagoon, A child hops in numbered squares, back and forth, back and forth, Cap on his head, rhymes cool as bone in his mouth. Whose child is he? No one will answer me. Voices from the music academy pour into sunlight That strikes the malarial wealth of empire, Dreams of an old man in terrible heat, Hands bound with coarse cloth, tethered to a scaffold, Still painting waves on the walls of the Palazzo Ducale.

I watch your hands at the keyboard Making music, one hand with a tiny jot, A birthmark I think where finger bone Joins palm, mark of the fish, Living thing in search of a watering Hole set in a walled garden, Or in a field with all the fences torn: Where I hear your father cry into the wind That beats against stones in a small town Where you were born; its cornfields Skyward pointing, never sown, never To be reaped, flagrant, immortal.

I In the absence of reliable ghosts I made aria, Coughing into emptiness, and it came A west wind from the plains with its arbitrary arsenal: Torn sails from the Ganga river, Bits of spurned silk, Strips of jute to be fashioned into lines, What words stake—sentence and make-believe, A lyric summoning. II I came into this world in an Allahabad hospital, Close to a smelly cow pasture. I was brought to a barracks, with white walls And corrugated tin roof, Beside a civil aviation training center. In World War II officers were docketed there. I heard the twang of propellers, Jets pumping hot whorls of air, Heaven bent, Blessing my first home. III In an open doorway, in half darkness I see a young woman standing. Her breasts are swollen with milk. She is transfixed, staring at a man, His hair gleaming with sweat, Trousers rolled up Stepping off his bicycle, Mustard bloom catches in his shirt. I do not know what she says to him, Or he to her, all that is utterly beyond me. Their infant once a clot of blood Is spectral still. Behind this family are vessels of brass Dotted with saffron, The trunk of a mango tree chopped into bits, Ready to be burnt at the household fire. IV Through the portals of that larger chaos, What we can scarcely conceive of in our minds— We'd rather think of starry nights with biting flames Trapped inside tree trunks, a wellspring of desire Igniting men and gods, A lava storm where butterflies dance— Comes bloodletting at the borders, Severed tongues, riots in the capital, The unspeakable hurt of history: So the river Ganga pours into the sea. V In aftermath—the elements of vocal awakening: Crud, spittle, snot, menstrual blistering, Also infant steps, a child's hunger, a woman's rage At the entrance to a kitchen, Her hands picking up vegetable shavings, chicken bones, Gold tossed from an ancestral keep. All this flows into me as mottled memory, Mixed with syllables of sweat, gashed syntax, Strands of burst bone in river sand, Beside the buried stones of Sarasvati Koop— Well of mystic sky-water where swans Dip their throats and come out dreaming.