In Memoriam — Keki Daruwalla: A Tribute, by Menka Shivdasani
There must be fire in the language and music in the words."…
Read more →
From ULR
Issue 1 – The Beginning
The Whole Deal
Molten eyes gaze at a whole self beyond charred spaces and silent, scaled peaks.
July 15, 2018
It takes much to be empowered:
you must feel the lava
spewing from your breath,
rising from the volcano
that hisses near your intestine,
spilling over to turn the rivers red.
It takes much to be empowered:
to feel whole when
bits of breast and ovary
lie in plastic bags,
dissected into bland reports
that tell the world you’re well.
It takes much to know the burning coal
that lay inside of you
is now a charred and empty space
and the river is no longer red.
It takes much to know you have
scaled the mountain, scarred yourself
with the ridges at your feet
and you have almost touched the horizon
where the sky bleeds black.
It takes a special pair of molten eyes
to see that untouched self
and to meet yourself on the other side
where the rivers flow no more.
That’s when you feel empowered,
that’s when you still feel whole.
📖
PART OF A COLLECTIONThe Whole Deal and 2 other poems
View Full Collection →
Menka Shivdasani
Menka Shivdasani is the author of four collections of poetry, with her most recent being Frazil (1980 – 2017). She has edited two anthologies of contemporary Indian poetry for the American e-zine www.bigbridge.org, and an anthology of women’s writing, If the Roof Leaks, Let it Leak (SPARROW). She is co-translator of Freedom and Fissures, an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry (Sahitya Akademi). She has been conducting a four-day poetry festival in Mumbai for the global movement 100 Thousand Poets for Change since 2012, and in 1986, she had played a key role in founding the Poetry Circle in Mumbai. Her work as a journalist includes 14 books as co-author/ editor.