POEMS

Itisha Giri

Itisha Giri is a Nepali writer based in Kathmandu. Her poems have been published in La.Lit and she works freelance as an editor.

I HAVE CREATED

I have created –

a country for you where your fractured self

lives by multiple names –

and no pen can pin you down to be the one that

belongs to someone else.

I have created –

a land for you that is yours

to dig deep for roots

that give life to the blood

running through the many layers of you.

I have created –

a town for you where you can walk

hand in hand, coupled together

in your fits of desire.

I have created –

a womb where your tiny apparitions

float on their backs until you flip them over–

into your salty embrace and

you both come up for air.

BUILDING HOUSES

Drive a stake through the heart of the city,

squeeze a square outwards –

thrusts a spike upwards

and own what lies beneath.

Bury the land’s history, its muffled screams,

with layers of concrete,

uproot the trees that line your claim

and replace them with steel grilles

tied together with plastic tendrils.

Lays the bricks –

one on top of the other

one floor at a time, upwards

and then stare down at me.

Hammer those nails of lead,

first into the door hinges,

and then into my head,

every thud, thud, thud,

a cerebral point you make

of desires that have turned into needs –

as I feel my insides rattle,

on your cement conveyor belts.

WHEN I HAVE A DAUGHTER

When I have a daughter,

I will pinch her every day so her skin turns to rhino hide –

so she feels no pain when cornered by a stranger’s hand at play.

When I have a daughter,

I will lash her with my tongue –

so she is ready for it when someone else calls her names.

When I have a daughter,

I will cover her room with a thousand, wide-open cutout eyes –

so she is used to someone else’s stare.

When I have a daughter,

I will teach her to disappear into thin air, like a ninja –

so she is never in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

When I have a daughter,

I will teach her of lust and of pleasure –

so she never feels any shame.

When I have a daughter,

I will bathe her in milk tinged with acid every day,

so when someone decides to attack her,

like a snake charmer, she is immune to the venom and its decay.

ZEBRA CROSSING

I don’t care for zebra crossings,

nobody does, in a poor country.

Everybody just wants to cross,

whenever and wherever.

Everybody wants to get to the other side,

of all that needs to be left behind.

Things were different when I was small,

I cared for the Scouts and their badges,

I cared so much that one day, the whole day,

in my pleated skirt and my feathered hat,

I asked people,

to use the zebra crossing.

HOME

On the streets of Brick Lane

with a sting in my eyes

and a spring in my step

I smelled fevered hay

smoked under the sun of Bastipur.

In the shop on Drummond Street,

my grandma’s kitchen unravelled itself.

The tiny corner in Muzaffarpur,

where eggplants the size of my thumb

played touch and go with mustard seeds.

The officer’s quarter in Begusarai

next to the canal, turned to Camden in my mind

as in front of me

the red water snakes glided along,

keeping time like the N29.

In a courtyard in Spain,

under the shadow of the Caracoles

a lemon tree interrupted

the spread of concrete under my feet,

and I was once again in Bastipur where

a blood-splattered goat

flapped around headless as I squinted away its pain.

These places from my past,

are now difficult to tell apart.

When I’m asked to pick one as my own,

or choose one to be the truth I know,

I hide inside the hardened shell on my back,

made from a wet paste of my crushed bones,

and like a snail,

I feel

at last, at home.