Kali

Tell me a secret, any secret.
Maybe on how
you live in dark marshy woods
and yet keep your feet spotless white
or
how you squeeze the serpents like washed clothes
till they spew the truth.

Can you reveal
how you wear a dress
tied only at the neck, hemmed with lemon beads
that I suspect to be living worlds
or how you keep the tongue
red hot all year round.


Kali
tell me how you carry
men’s torn heads like vanity
and use their prying arms
as leaves for your skirt

or
pray divulge why you should be
all black and blue
when you have no pending dowry to be paid
nor a man to maintain
and especially when you have a tiger of a pet?

Let drip just one coveted secret
from those luscious breasts of yours
that I can lap up to instantly become your sakhi,
something to stand me apart from your mother,
sisters, denouncers, devotees...


Kali, tell me a secret, any secret,
for how else can you love me differently?

******

Published in Unisun's poetry anthology "I, me, myself."