Ligatures, Identical Twins, and, Honey Moon by Sujatha Menon
Ligatures
Fatter, wider, longer we loom
as the bangles of our grandmothers shrink
to the size of a ring
that although old and borrowed
turn our fingers blue.
On the day I was bandaged
in sari and gold
to stop the ways of the new from leaking,
a fine tinkle of a tune
wrung its song around my neck
and across the cut of each starving ankle.
Old blood and new money dripped
step by step, fresh to the banquet filled with
big bellies of rice freshly squeezed
into gastric bands that I wished were tight muzzles.
Surgery is not an option for the tug in my tummy
that knows knots are used for the preservation of life
as well as strangulation and the ties of tradition.
There are other ways to release our throats
and fork our tongues
just as there are other ways to evolve and unravel
using scissors instead of a scalpel.
Identical Twins
The suitcase going out
is not the suitcase coming in.
Fattened with pickles, chip fry and sugar 10 ways,
there is no room for the things I want to bring home—
a big coconut mallet,
the dream wallah’s stool,
Fabergé chicks in a reptilian jackfruit jewel,
cheap monsoon clouds stuffed
into thin cotton sacs
lined with the silk
that tired Devi’s sleep in.
If I took out the Tetley
expanding in little packets of chai,
I could hide Paapi’s lion
beneath dark paisley skies— folded neatly.
But most of all, I want to pack twilight,
the one that tames the hot palms
that during the day
stalk the tall nights.
When I get home and unzip
what could have been and
things you could have seen
• plastic nappies
• milk bottles
• formula
• and cream
I don’t even have children.
Honey Moon
Sticky, orange and boiled
beneath a hole in the Sweet Walla’s shack—
shack-attack of asthma glacé,
and the road outside wheezes home
to the knell of cattle bells.
This unstitched edge is where I left you
and everything about your name
now shy as a distant cousin
with similar eyes
but not the mouth, nose or gaze.
How was I to know
about this undoing,
like a teaspoon of honey
that takes months to make
but just seconds to steal
and so will no longer heal
this infected breath
rough-cut sigh
broken tongue.
With hands churned raw
from milking lost maps,
I lift my face to your shining
and kiss it goodnight.
Executive Producers
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Sue White
Hayley Scrivenor
