Lakshmi Priya
Kerala, India
I feel the quake in my abdomen.
The city crumbles
over its abandoned lanes. II
The million men army, The intruders on an island Cheat in the dark
Slay the other and drip out.
The dead men’s sea Drops of holy white. Oozing cleft from the inner courtyards
of the temple shrines.
I
My city,
with its map less contours, spread like a dissected frog breathe heavily
over passions fed.
Kisses uprooted
in the desert storm, By-lanes of her body fade in the sandbanks of he-sweat.
Bosoms dissolve
for the sprouting volcanoes, That hiss venom
For the life to be.
III
Passion is sin
for this Adam and Eve A sin, rewarded
With fruits of heaven.
They are the perfect out castes, on earth
spinning splendid in pageantry show of flesh and skin and copulation,
invoking gods of sterility.
I
Yet,
Its carnival bout
and she is beautiful today
drenched in her night rains of red sea.
Droplets of rubies thrashing past her cities of crimson silk goddesses.
She is
the ritual, the sword, the coitus,
the earth, the sky, the red mountains, the lucky red seeds,
upon the holy yards and bed spreads.
Scarlet of the black magician,
The sindoor bath of the female god, She gushes out the sacred cut.
The deluge between her legs.