consumption

appraising identity

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why 176 cms? 60 kgs? — fucks to give?

my anatomy//structure is a wilderness, drinking
through the air, one part mulch, the other
a hybrid of gas-dreams.

why rate my brown-bread-skin through
its number of moles and grafts of love?

why try to measure the length&girth of my life through
an arbitrary number of years?

my freedom isn’t your sugar & flour ration
that you can scale and take away per your
desired capacity for consumption?

how do you measure the taste of my ilk,
my sun-settled eyes, the fight of my cauterized
heart?

how do you see and experience my queer body, in-
tact, (w)hole, sweet&sour&salty like the rim
of your empty shot glass?

why do i succumb to the standards set in my core
by the (ir)regularity of your burnished soul?

i shred figures and hopes, letting the well-paced,
untold story of its desire to take its toll, leaving me
to rot, with a rumbling disdain for this mirror of
your eyes, that cannot tell or realize
the plurality of my roles.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 29
(Inter)National Poetry Month

Edit: (Previous title, the value of existence) Linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at WRT (June 4, 2019), where I am hosting this week and I have shared a poem by Kamala Das for inspiration and acknowledgment.

 

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when attention demands tension

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and by the virtue of a dying god,
I laid open some old thoughts,
and assassinated each one

by
one,

the blood spurred on my face, the
fates danced in my dreams, I saw
a night so young and delectable,
that I ejaculated my venom, rubbing
against its folds, my heart stung,

it’s a morning of blossoming
shades, lilac and violet, that I enclose

in my arms,

the winds whip my hair gently, the sun consumes
my face by its silent glare, fuchsia rings adorn my
brown cheek, and I decide that it is time to sleep-

my face upheld by the strings of the sky, mouth open
for hovering bees – there’s a certain kind of violence in it.

.

A fragmented and anxious piece for Day # 7 of my 30 Days, 30 Poems Challenge.

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