Your Voice is Not a Slice

Keep the onion full to the roots, keep aflame
the purple skin in face of mandates to peel it

slice it. Keep bitter the bitter gourds. Never
salt or soak it. Let okras plunge deeper

into glutinous etymologies of ‘lady’s finger’,
‘bhindi’, ‘quimbombo’, ‘gombo’, ‘bamies’,

measureless strings of language attached
& detaching from spider-loop strands. Keep

cabbages true to overlays—it’s not adornment,
it’s substance, survival. Let it grow ripe with

jungleness the spinach inheres in. Don’t
line them by length or slice them to strips of

color. Keep brinjal in the sleekness of its certainty
making known the planetariness of our minds,

our memories. Don’t fall for the treasonous axe
of blades, of bigotry. Keep ivy gourds small

and plenty. Wear abundance like sand,
mirror-stripes like light. Keep snake gourds

twine around slights bends sharper turns. Let
the ravenous growth strangle hands that spring

to contain it as you’re told to keep it down,
prune it, pare it, or to keep it unused in mildew.