meenakandasamy

[meenakandasamy]

A Cunning Stunt

bound in bed and blindfolded i hear the man of words come to me.

burying his face between my thighs he says a cunt by any other name would smell as complicated

and then sniffling in sanskrit he christens it yoni, the womb, uterus, vulva, vagina, the female organs of generation.

memory gives way to medical terminology gives way to metaphor as this man turns to a word-monster who says that it connotes place of birth, source, origin, spring, fountain

and with his first thrust it also becomes a place of rest, repository, and a receptacle to his erection as enormous as the monier-williams dictionary. he is tearing away to make the meanings fit in and

cunt now becomes seat, abode, home, lair, nest, stable and he opens my legs wider and shoves more and shoves harder and I am torn apart to contain the meanings of family, race, stock and caste and form of existence and station fixed by birth and I can take it no more.

Pinned down that way, I cannot walk away. I'm frightened. I turn frigid          I turn faker.

[meenakandasamy]

This poem by Meena Kandasamy is called Lines Addressed to a Warrior. And it turns me on so much. I know, I know: “Historical references to colonialism merged with hints at hot, hardcore sex turns you on, Mehreen?” Only if it is done with Kandasamy’s panache, and only if it is committed to paper...

[meenakandasamy]

Poem from Ms Militancy

[meenakandasamy]

A militant whom my lines  cannot hold whom my lips cannot kiss whom my eyes cannot hide whom my memory cannot mark with a date of birth or even death. No knowledge of her village laid waste, then displaced and no mention of her songs seeking to seize a state and no sign of a red star where she had stashed her dreams. In this book of martyrs,   only that blood-drenched story in three bold words: "One Woman Comrade" to say she died fighting for the people. 

[meenakandasamy]

Caste is a kind of structural, intellectual, cultural and economic genocide on a very slow scale.

[meenakandasamy]

here, the hurried truth: day after day after day of battling death and keeping him at bay you became the star taking struggle in her stride and we became the body breaking free, we became the scream cutting loose from the curse of silence, we became the protest that poured like blood from a wounded night, and learning from you, we became the flesh that became the fight.

Meena Kandasamy

[TW: Rape: a poem for the delhi gang-rape victim who died two days ago, and whose devastating story ignited a nation-wide call for protest, solidarity and action.] 

(via thisisnotindia)

[meenakandasamy]

Non-conversations with lover

don’t talk to me of sudden love…

in our land even the monsoons come— leisurely, strolling like decorated temple elephants (the pomp, the paraphernalia)— after months of monotonous prayer, preparations and palpitating waits.

my darling his silence (those still shoulders) but his eyes dance his eyes dance (so wild, so wild)

so i think of raging summer storms— like uncontrollable tuskers trampling in mast (the madness, the lust)— across the forests of our land…