‘Into the Ravenous Bits’ – Three Poems by Prahi Rajput
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘the surviving curiosity / in descendant’s narrative is wrested from a ticket & one welcomes / the other through its foreign / door/translating displacement & dialect’
What is more confusing
than not being able to tell
a dance is a jealous spark or attraction binging
all series of sliding and jostling is to get out of space Or to get closer
What is more confusing
than being held
In memory of the dead or the light weight of moving
into the overindulgence at intersections.
What is a jump
Between has and the arrival
a body forgets to keep chaste and it is one
of the things we
Tell our limbs before going to sleep cleaned of misdemeanour like terrors and piss,
Lashing and rebuking, turn anew or the ever-lasting
In the squeal of night,
What is more confusing
than not being able to tell
carcass from meat flattened tender, clay to rind
Into the ravenous bits, alpines emanate air from
The putrid, calling the unheard to the uncontaminated till our breaths
mix with poison.
*
take a left till the alley beckons
not a day passes & odd stories paste run-down generations
in leftover hands staining wet,
green beetle leaves, each caressed slap delighting
under ill-mannered gaze/greedy gaze of the mocking phone
seizing unavailable, oral chronicles outside decent time, muddled towns
racketeering history for extra qualification, the surviving curiosity
in descendant’s narrative is wrested from a ticket & one welcomes
the other through its foreign
door/translating displacement & dialect
watch your step, someone still lives here
pious on our feet for three hours/all over cornerstones, in a living room even
vigilant is the hawk diving in the royal courtyard
where does it go from here settles on their inherited exhibit
photocopied pictures/out of their buffet torsos an idea inseparable,
The endured & the forebear
last (championed) family struggles to keep grandfathers/out of prying monuments,
their homed graves still wrinkle-free, tourist-free & a city was not sold
in this area/humble showpiece, this area.
someone snaps a local vowel like its a chance encounter in this habitat,
the memoir captured, first written on a door,
doors of historic entrances, revered look up before coming in & around them,
drains dawdling openly/routine dilemmas strutting waste
it is old-fashioned like that, this area
our hick towns charming versions/we tie ourselves on their doors,
bleat till yesteryears laze our voice
disgraced is not the fall that lives here, it's how anyone comes here (undamaged)
to renovate without shame
opening ancestral doors, keeping them open.
*
Is it justice, Is it Punishment?
So many of us say, we have become our mothers & all women are elusive, a type
left best at the peak of imagination
So many of us will never get a hold of them as mothers & the fairies
still flutter to leave a coin for a tooth,
So many women unreachable—phones lost, switched off,
broken sims & figures in justice holding out hands
So many heralded above our understanding— we catch a glimpse
of what made them & sob
For what we can never reach & still many of us
Insist on recognising when we cannot touch what we cannot have
We will not attack, we steal what we can & call it their punishment.
***
Prahi Rajput lives in Lucknow. Their work has appeared in Muse India, Voidspace Zine, Roi Faineant Press, Gulmohur Quarterly, Aze Journal, and elsewhere. You can find them on Instagram: @theplatypussies
