Forced, against her will,
pregnancy was not her choice,
yet she loved her babe with a heavenly force
Upon giving birth, he was stolen away,
she never even had the chance to nurse that day
She ran behind him, with panic and fear,
knowing his end could be near
Now, what to do with all this milk?
Sold for profit; lies told to the people at the market
Her baby boy, never will she see
Now, her inner light, diminished in sadness and grief
Rosa, Malala, Coretta, Michelle, Winona, Angela
saw the barriers, jumped the hurdles or stood in front of them
saying I’m not jumping any more. I’m standing here, a woman,
who learned from my mother and her mother and her mother before her
that to persist is the same as resist. To go the long way, to step up and out, go high where they go low. I’m standing here, a woman,
to say the words I must say.
I didn’t know the girl
raped by her uncle, the one
who told her dirty jokes,
the neighbor women whispered
poor girl, eleven, disappeared,
gone to ‘the home.’
I knew about The Home out on
the highway for girls who got
themselves pregnant,
as though they caught
a disease because they
didn’t wear a jacket.
I didn’t know the girl
on the sidewalk downtown,
her head lifted to catch
moving air in the wrinkles
of her shiny black neck, road tar melting
in hot July, baby
in her 14-year-old belly.
I didn’t know. I stuffed my white
gloves into my pocket, went back
to my whiter-than-white neighborhood.
hung my white blouse in the closet,
coat hangers jangling
their impatience like little girls who
just want to play outside.
The cast was made by those
Who came before me
And continued for some time
Those young girls straight out of
High school eagerly waiting
For their one carat Tiffany setting
Knowing their place
In the world of identity theft
Baking apple pie
The side dish always by his side
That was then
This is now
Non-biodegradable
Don’t be so sexist
Pressing and pushing down
with stubble musk
condescension
Women need power too.
Why do we talk about women’s rights?
When shall we consider them human rights?
Why do we put up with a man
who calls a woman “disgusting”
when she wants to extract from her body
the precious fluid that helps her baby think and thrive?
Albert Einstein said we should never stop asking questions,
but if he had been a woman,
her statement might have been trashed.
When little Rita died, her anemic Ma cried,
This eight-year-old was the quietest
Of the big quarreling brood.
Always caring for me and others,
Bringing leftovers from the families
Where the child ceaselessly worked long hours,
Her slender back broken by the labour of two adults,
Now she is no more, my precious child!
What will I do now?
Who else will do her chores?
She brought a few hundred rupees in our unlit hovel
We are poorer by those few hundreds.
Another rugged woman muttered,
Grieve not, sister Sita,
Your second daughter is finally free
From regular beatings by her drunk father,
And hunger and possible multiple rapes
By the rich slumlords and others in eternal wait.
The poor child is free at last!
And gone to heaven, we all hope so,
The poor are the favourite of God,
So the holy books say.
But we, the graying women
Are still hapless prey
To the male lust and power
That makes us cower,
In impoverished homes.