‘Flesh of the Fruit’ – Four poems by Priyanka Aravind P.
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘I too had a mother, / Who fed me with knowledge so ancient, / And called me her brightest star, // until I misspelt a note from the sacred chants.’
The Greater Coucal
A groom in soot and copper,
neither crow, nor pheasant
he keeps to the undergrowth
hopping through the leaf-fall,
moving the earth
for the hidden little lives.
In your gait, I sense
a rhythm older than kindness
an auspicious omen for the pauper friend,
a cuckoo who knows no deceit
a paternal care feeding many a softer hunger
and an oft-sung lover of moonlight.
Your flight is brief, almost reluctant
a steady drift between branch and ground
oop-oop-OOP-OOP, OOP-OOP-oop-oop
your resounding call stirs up
a buried folklore in the ears,
just like those startling kunnikuru eyes
reminiscent of ancient blood beads
from a forgotten rosary.
Ammoomma would hush me
do not call its name—chembothu—
or it gets no food that day.
Never once did I see his nest
although my cousins bragged
they spotted the crude shelter of twigs and leaves
over the bamboo thickets
and the crown of Cycas trees.
Your red eyes gave them nightmares
when Baalarama featured Dracula.
Today, I long for your deep calls
in my damp mornings and sundowns,
trusting them as sacred chants building
gyrations within me, and I tread slowly
with steady steps, metamorphosed
into the bird.
*
The Gospel of Flesh
A closed mouth refusing sun,
green and tight-lipped.
The fruit waits for a winged grief.
A cathedral of pollen on her thighs,
the female wasp chooses the unready fig.
Her body trembling with an unknown future.
She squeezes her way into the wound,
clipping her wings and sky forever.
Inside, two throbbing wombs
cursed by god.
She presses pollen into each ovary
blessing them like mother mary
before she dies. Her corpse
then becomes the flesh of the fruit.
From her grave emerges the prodigal son—
gold and translucent—
his instinct
threading through the wound
to his still unborn sisters.
The late brothers emerge at the brief
tunnel of light, offered like small prayers,
to the waiting mouths of prying ants.
They are decoys,
for their waking sisters full with pollen.
Two days of light,
in search of another sealed mouth,
to enter and die.
The sun shines on the fig, now swollen with light,
the crimson flesh
ripe enough for the mouth of the world,
which can never taste the story whole.
*
Death by Fire
In the old tale, a mother asks her sons,
her tongue as swift as forked lightning—
to become a lie,
bending truth a little,
just enough for her to win.
They refuse.
Her words fall like burning embers—
a future of fire is spoken.
I grew up with that story,
unaware that its syllables can crack
open inside my spine.
I too had a mother,
Who fed me with knowledge so ancient,
And called me her brightest star,
until I misspelt a note from the sacred chants.
Her silence thickened—
a forest before rain.
That night she came,
unbearably bright,
Her matted hair uncoiling into serpents,
her familiar palms raised not in blessing.
Wakeful, I tasted ash
in the underbelly of the earth
I coiled beside a serpent—
one of them, who did not comply.
His body cool, and eyes unblinking.
We are both bewildered children,
studying the shape of our mothers’ wrath,
as if it were a holy scripture—
indecipherable.
We only wonder,
why would shelter become sentence?
when does love harden at the edges?
and how can refusal mean betrayal?
He remembers the earthiness
of her body, curved around them in the dark.
I remember her finger pads run through my hair
the quiet pride in her breath—
and the soft hush that I’m chosen.
Perhaps the fire was only grief,
a wound too disciplined to cry.
I kneel before her
not in terror,
but in the old habit of devotion,
that survives even fracture.
If she must burn,
Let me endure the heat.
If she must curse,
Let me hold its echoes gently.
*
The Trance
They tell her
the trance ends
when the pulluvakkudams
fall silent,
and the Maninagam returns
to the netherworld.
They tell her
the body is a door
that must be closed again.
But Maninagam doesn’t believe
in borrowed time.
He learned her hunger
the moment she started trembling,
a dry leaf in wind;
and her voice free of grammar,
For once, her body
was not a vessel for lineage,
not a field already claimed,
but a landscape that answered itself.
He coils where the borders blur:
behind the navel,
along the spine,
where obedience thins.
The pulluva priest commands the snake
To leave her body.
Her husband waits,
Confused, and blinded by reason.
Everyone agrees the god must leave
so the woman can belong again.
Only she understands
what the serpent has seen.
How he watched her bow for years
to small permissions.
How marriage trained her mouth
to say later, little, or never.
How even desire had learned
to knock softly.
That night, she carries him home
under her blouse,
under her breath.
She does not ask for forgiveness.
She does not ask for permission.
By morning,
she wears her marriage like before—
competent, intact.
No one suspects the difference.
But beneath the calm of her skin,
something ancient remains awake,
untranslated.
***
Priyanka Aravind P. is a poet, translator, and researcher based in Pattambi, Kerala. Her poetry has appeared and are forthcoming in anthologies and journals including the Wild Court, Muse India, haikuKATHA, The Wise Owl, Madras Courier, etc. When not reading and writing, she enjoys music, playing with her toddler, and responding to birdcalls. She translates poems, fiction, and non-fiction between Malayalam and English. You can find her on Instagram: @__priyanka_aravind.
