Mangoes
after Hanif Abdurraqib
When I say that loving me is kind of like
longing for mangoes in the winter
what I mean is that there is a season
for everything, even the sunlight.
Man goes in search of a shadow,
comes home with a tan, his skin shadowed
with sin. From his rear view mirror, my front
seat passenger father scans roadside vendors
for only the ripest mangoes. For all his collection
of knives, he still eats mangoes like a child, memories
salivating on his tongue. I imagine his hands,
pressed close as they juice the pulp — the dussehri
bending, breaking under his thumbs, teeth cutting
through skin — mango hair stuck beneath loose fillings.
To say I am nothing like my father is to say nothing,
my perfect finishing school fork and knife methods
tremble beside his knuckles. If to devour is to destroy,
let me whisper savour, saviour, once more tonight.
I feel least like myself on the days I am told I can
be anything. I long for mangoes, even in the summer,
an abundance of amaltas pressed between my toes – first
fruit of the season, forever, lingering, an aftertaste in jawbones.
What Comes From Nothing
“Tum saala ghulam log hamari jooti ke neeche hi rahega.” (Lagaan, 2001)
To imagine an ant useful requires special skill, and I must confess
I’m not careful with my footsteps, sometimes even a little too eager
to be more guillotine less severed head. Power is only a pedestal
- position, podium - look ma I won a medal, this neck is worthy again.
My mother freezes spinach, strawberries, even lemon juice - cooks extra
to store. We have always lived this way, saving more than we savour.
What does it mean to make a living? History wipes itself on my grand
mother’s saree, sheds silver like locks of hair. At night, she wraps
her secrets in yet another knot on her pallu – I’m afraid she’s going
to run out, leave me an inheritance of knotted garments that stretch
like borders – a legacy of laboured love. And that’s what the women
in my family do, turn tables overnight - building, binding - like a colony
of ants, unwanting of men who fail at more than they do. What does it mean
to earn a living? When they came for our house, the dacoits, they only took
all of my grandmother’s jewellery, which has nothing to do with anything
save that she feels she has so little left to leave behind now. Ants communicate sound
less with endorphins in their bodies. These days, all I hear is the silence of my house.
My grandmother leaves me her sorrows when she holds my hand to walk. I brush
my cheek against hers each morning and somehow it means love. We do not hold
our own bodies as often, unaware of the waves we let pass like the wind. Regret
comes easy to me, cradled in a language to overcompensate grief. But language
is slippery. Grief finds a metaphor in the moon that makes this guillotine tongue
as pretty as the scars on my neck. Power is only a parable - phonetic, palatable -
look ma I found a poem, my syllables are worthy again. It bothers me
to know that ants can recognise themselves in mirrors when all I see
is a wordy mosaic of myself. What does it mean to deserve a living?
When they come to tax our tongues,
the colonisers their teen guna lagaan
this accent thick
in muddy voice boxes,
what will we save? What
will we have to barter?
Nana’s walk to India Lagaan
Nani’s buried treasures Lagaan
Dadi’s tea gardens Lagaan
A boy, British, gifts me
his colonial guilt,
asks me what his country took
from mine.
I say
nothing,
empty change from pockets,
show him what’s left.