The Street Poem & Others | Annie Zaidi
When I run, he says the earth shakes to the tune of my….umm. He will not say breast.
Six Poems
by Annie Zaidi
We could give it a name
Quiwhatever
Hyperschmaberzeka
Hyposomethingnew
Easier to explain
A thing caught in the womb
From metals in our mothers’
Drinking water supply
Bloody hell if only the government
Was responsible about pollutants
We could click our tongues
Or it could be a gene thing a great-aunt had
Three cousins chugging along on prescriptions
If only our dads knew whom to marry
Or it could be vaccines
Or a bad combination of hormones
Or genetically modified corn
If only these seed companies weren’t sicksicksick
We could rage and plan lawsuits
Around this incalculable wrong
If we only knew what to blame
All things become speakable
Once they have a name
A wherefrom
A how to how not to
A how do I live with this song.
Dream: Blackbird
Your hair is big like a preying bird’s
nest. You do not bother to smile
as I sit there like a supplicant, trying
to show you something. A PDF file?
My laptop is charged, prepared
for scrutiny but you are busy
plucking blackbirds out of the sky.
Your manners are beautiful. No feathers
stick out the sides of your mouth.
I’m thinking there must be tiny bones
piercing your graw — ribs or claws or
a twiggy neck scratching your tongue.
You spit nothing. You eat them whole.
I tell myself this is a dream and maybe
you have learnt to swallow thorns
from fish-eating Bengali neighbours.
In my dream, I try to imagine
your neighbours and somehow I know
these are the only neighbours you saw
that year you flunked and had to repeat
a class and learnt what failing was.
I think I will never meet your neighbours.
My heart pounds and in my dream, it turns
into a jack-in-the-box collapsed into my ribs.
There are no birds left in the sky.
I hit shut down and wait to hear
that microsoft windows sound.
I wait for some words but you look
at me as if you know how this will end.
Your eyes are black and feathery.
Your eyes are talons and I, a blackbird
cascading into the heart of the sun,
my eyes squeezed tight against vertigo.
Even so, I want to fall into the nest of your hair
so you can pick me up, swallow me whole.
You can. But will you?
I am a black morsel inside your mouth.
I am fine-boned and plump with hoarded fear.
You can. But will you?
My jack-in-the-box heart is powder
against your tongue, my wings are locked
between your teeth. God! I am so tiny!
There are things I want to tell you.
I am tiny and weak. I failed an exam once.
And I cheated in an exam once.
I had pure veg neighbours once
whose little girl constantly fought
with her mum and liked to eat the boiled
halva my mother sent across in a steel plate
with paisley embossing on its rim.
I want to say, we used to eat fat desi chips
with red chilly powder sprinkled on top.
I want to say more. Something about
why I am here and how hungry I am
but I am a tiny morsel in your mouth
and your teeth are grinding.
At the appointed hour, the body will not go
like the arthritic woman relieved
she beat all her cousins in the end
the body goes on licking its lips
asking for leek soup and mashed potatoes
it asks to wear the shirt shot through
with green silk thread and pointy lace
and pink hello kitty underwear
a kindergartener on the first day of school
the body clings to the knees of the day
count down five four three two one
at the appointed hour the body blubbers
and begs for more just a little more
a black moon will wax at the appointed hour
and hands complaining of the slimy trail
left by destiny will burn with the fat of love
long after the body stops begging.
Nose
Up her pakora nose (it was not this shape
until she hit fifty) they pushed a tube.
She said “What’s this? I’m an elephant
For God’s sake!”
As I rushed to her feet and poured out
my juvenile worship, she said,
“Enough! Enough! Enough!”
Esophagus
Your tongue gives so little away
What of the rising gorge?
Bitter years of gall?
Tell me how hard it was
to bite back what you swore
no man should swallow.
Give me pitted roofs
Give me a clue to the cavern
where your crouching dragons go.
Don’t just say it goes too far back
for you to know.
The Street Poem
He calls me garlic,
which I’m not.
He calls me hot.
He says I’m a chilly and his tongue
is on fire.
He talks to my…
lemons
He talks to my…
apples
He talks to my…
bulbs
He talks to my jamuns…
except
he doesn’t really talk.
When I run, he says
the earth shakes to the tune of my…
umm.
He will not say breast.
He kisses the air.
Lips puckered, he kisses ghosts.
He is haunted.
Hit him and he says
he is not a demon.
He is only a man.
He calls me jaan and jaaneman
He calls me saawariya
He calls me things
and he sings.
How much he sings!
He calls me onion.
He calls me silk.
He calls me a bomb.
He calls me bombshell.
He calls me madam, even
mademoiselle.
He calls me winter.
He calls me a burn.
He does not learn.
He calls to my ears
but I am noise.
He calls to my eyes
but I am stone.
He calls me chhamiya.
He calls me Zohra-bai.
He calls me ras-malai.
He calls me a bitch
He calls me dumb.
He calls me bird and flower.
He calls me things
I sometimes wish I were.
I shrink from him but
not as a violet.
I breathe fire but
no sparks fly.
I even glow but
not as the moon.
He calls me all of those.
He calls me a rose.
He calls out wherever
he goes.
He calls me raapchik.
He calls me maal.
He calls me a tomato.
He calls me laal chhadi.
I pretend
I have not heard.
He calls me to sit inside
his car.
He asks if I have to walk
very far.
He could drop me off.
He offers me a lift though
he knows I’m going to say, no.
He calls me baby
He calls me firecracker
He whistles
He stalks
He says,
he wants cheap girls
for sex.
He says,
he wants to rape
with his eyes.
He mentions acid
and sonagachi
He calls me whore
and bastard too.
He says he can’t help it.
He turns sour, shrinks,
in the hard light of my stare.
Then he says, why? What?
What did I do?
With so many lemons
and balls and coconuts
and firecrackers around,
he had to do something!
At least he can do is make
a kissing sound.
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Annie Zaidi is the author of ‘Gulab’, ‘Love Stories # 1 to 14’ and ‘Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales’, which was short-listed for the Vodafone Crossword Book Awards (non-fiction, 2010). She is also co-author of ‘The Good Indian Girl’, a series of inter-linked narratives that trace young women’s lives and liberties. She has edited ‘Unbound: 2000 Years of Indian Women’s Writing’.