It passed with time and life from generation to generation, from women to women, from men to men, from mother to daughter, from father to son. It passed without fail, with all odds, with all might, with all colour, in every form and everywhere. History with its pale hue left us to count. Is it the inhumanity of the narrative or the plot? That’s not the question but it’s to question.
Superstitions, witches, hysterics, mads, silly, cry-babies, screams, rebels, sluts, myths, patriarchy, dictates, abuse, accuse and subterfuge.
The women in my life were the women who stopped me, who corrected me, who stifled their dreams, who buried their freedom, who were flamed, chained and burnt alive.
Educated, progressive or a landlord commanding a slave. You like beating drums or head but why these shoes, why not sticks? You have changed the tools and, heart? What change? What Justice? What respect?
Power to sin is impotency. Eerie, yep. This town has no women.
The force to make an atomic bomb < giving birth. Adjusting to what we are not. Just snip, snip, snip. And layered, layered, layered like a dead mummy.
Object, not the subject. Words, not the deed. In imagination not in reality. Inhuman not human. Slave not friend.
About the Author
Pulkita Anand is an avid reader of poetry. Author of two children’s e-books, her recent eco-poetry collection is ‘we were not born to be erased’. Various publications include: Tint Journal, Origami Press, New Verse News, Green Verse: An anthology of poems for our planet (Saraband Publication), Ecological Citizen, Origami Press, Asiatic, Inanna Publication, Bronze Bird Books, SAGE Magazine, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere.
