A Poem About A Jack-Fruit

I spy a jack-fruit lying 

beside the gutter 

on the side of the road 

blackened bruised and bibbing 

flies drunk on spoilt juice 

buzzing 

What if I...

pick it up. 

will it collapse 

into fleshy rotten pieces 

burdened with water and pus 

or 

will its fibers cling 

veiny knots together

like a baby under attack 

heavy 

warm

Stinking of fear. 

Body

Again, a rough draft. Still working on this one.

hips

mouth

thigh bone

your heavy breasts- long and pomelo shaped
brown-tipped

Your neat nails, and

the stubble on the back of your calf
it always grows there first

the darkness inside your elbow

the tiny v of hair at the nape of your neck

your hands so long, so white, so faded
scrubbed
with open cuticles and bluing veins

tiny pink pimples on the top of your leg
red spots of capillaries burst on your shoulder

the natural arch at the end of your eyebrow
the unnatural thinness of the beginning

your sun-peeled nose
your mouth your ears
pierced clean

your heart.
steady.
warm.
through the pulse at your wrist
licking at the base of your throat
scratching your chest
a throb at your temple
hidden in the redness of your
eyelids

careening wildly
when I press your toes

Settlement

Sleepy cat. Yellow eyes. Fur coat the colour of milk and browning apples. With long white whiskers. Her face is soft and folded with recent sleep, and she blinks languidly as she stretches and yawns, baring sharp silver teeth, bald bone. I want to smell her. See whether she has picked up the scent of the mud and rain around her, or the must of the wicker chair she sits on, or the hard smell of the painted wooden table between us. Or whether she has a purely unique smell of her own. 

She sits companionably across from me, glances occasionally at my little glass of lime juice, eyes my fat book with practiced disinterest and then turns away to gaze unseeingly at the rain. Fully awake now.

I wonder what she's do if i tried to bite her. I want to see if her fur really is as thick as it seems. To feel her muscles contract against my teeth. She'll probably scratch my eyes out. Or bite me back with those long, pristine fangs of hers. Or do both. 

Vader the crow fusses over a scrap of filthy brown plastic bag in the middle of the quadrangle, unmindful of the drizzle or the round eyes watching him through slits in the surrounding buildings. They have repainted, and rebuilt the buildings, so the settlement now resembles a giant butterscotch cake. The thought makes me crave sugar. Suddenly he abandons this pursuit and flies off in a screech and flutter of black feathers and discarded plastic shreds. 

As if on cue, my companion on the chair opposite mine, uncoils herself and jumps blithely to the floor. She strolls off, stretching her back and shaking out her paws. She, unlike me, has better things to do. 

Poem

A rough/ first draft. Needs work...

I can smell him on yellow T-shirts

see his face in bus tickets

and my first pay cheque

pranav’s credit card and big sun-glasses.

 

Thrown awake

find my phone my clammy hands had

somehow dialed that number.

This Number Has Been Temporarily Disconnected Please Tr... at

this point I cut it off. Hard

to describe the mild panic and

horror… shock

at what I’d done. Under cover of darkness

blankets and white bed sheets It comes

like sticky strings of memory spiders legs and spittle.

Camera flashes. In between waxing appointments

and birthday parties, breakfast lunch and dinner,

World Poverty and two different hair conditioners

he creeps slithers

 

into the fronts of my eyes

a niggling ache behind my right temple

a word stuck at the back of my throat

just below my voice box or even

that twisted knot on my grandmother’s face or

the hollow smile in my father’s

eyes 

5. 5. 2009

The water is so cold. I take a deep breath to fill my lungs with oxygen and pour a dipper of it over my head. And it is still cold.
The water in Vellore is hard. It coarsens my hair and requires superior species of soap to lather. Still, I persevere, rubbing my thin, transparent sliver of Pears Dry Skin over my thigh, rubbing in circles around my knee, and then balancing my leg against the rim of the bucket, my calves and feet.

There is black dirt in grimy cakes between my toes, underneath my toenails and cuticles, grey slime coating my heel. I walked barefoot through the hospital campus this evening. Plunging my naked feet into puddles and gutters along with crow shit and dog piss and everybody else’s shoes. I studied the contrast of my then white limbs against the night grey of the cement roads, turned my palms upwards to catch the light summer drizzle from the sky. I could smell the pungent boonh of wet pigeons and dogs, my own sweat dissolved in the rain, the traces of yesterday’s shampoo in my hair.

I scrub. And scrub. Finally, I use an old toothbrush and a discarded floss stick to wedge the muck out of the crevices in my feet, and them rinse them clean.
Pink and white again.
White hardened soles.