DOSHI, Tishani


The River of Girls

In memory of India’s missing girls
This is not really myth or secret.

This murmur in the mouth

of the mountain where the sound

of rain is born. This surging

past pilgrim town and village well.

This coin-thin vagina

and acid stain of bone.

This doctor with his rusty tools,

this street cleaner, this mother

laying down the bloody offerings

of birth. This is not the cry

of a beginning, or a river

buried in the bowels of the earth.

This is the sound of ten million girls

singing of a time in the universe

when they were born with tigers

breathing between their thighs;

when they set out for battle

with all three eyes on fire,

their golden breasts held high

like weapons to the sky.



Ode to The Walking Woman


(After Alberto Giacometti )

Sit -
you must be tired
of walking,
of losing yourself
this way:
a bronzed rib
of exhaustion
thinned out
against the dark.
Sit -
there are still things
to believe in;
like civilizations
and birthing
and love.
And ancestors
who move
like silent tributaries
from red-earthed villages
with history cradled
in their mythical arms.
But listen,
what if they swell
through the gates
of your glistening city?
Will you walk down
to the water’s edge,
immerse your feet
so you can feel them
dancing underneath?
Mohenjodaro’s brassy girls
with bangled wrists
and cinnabar lips;
turbaned Harappan mothers
standing wide
on terracotta legs;
egg-breasted Artemis –
Inana, Isthar, Cybele, clutching their bounteous hearts
in the unrepentant dark,
crying: 'Daughter,
where have the granaries
and great baths disappeared?
Won’t you resurrect yourself,
make love to the sky,
reclaim the world.'



Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods


                  for Monika


Girls are coming out of the woods,

wrapped in cloaks and hoods,

carrying iron bars and candles

and a multitude of scars, collected

on acres of premature grass and city

buses, in temples and bars. Girls

are coming out of the woods

with panties tied around their lips,

making such a noise, it's impossible

to hear. Is the world speaking too?

Is it really asking,  What does it mean

to give someone a proper resting?  Girls are 

coming out of the woods, lifting 

their broken legs high, leaking secrets

from unfastened thighs, all the lies

whispered by strangers and swimming

coaches, and uncles, especially uncles,

who said spreading would be light

and easy, who put bullets in their chests

and fed their pretty faces to fire,

who sucked the mud clean

        off their ribs, and decorated

their coffins with briar. Girls are coming 

out of the woods, clearing the ground

to scatter their stories. Even those girls

found naked in ditches and wells,

those forgotten in neglected attics,

and buried in river beds like sediments

from a different century. They've crawled

their way out from behind curtains

of childhood, the silver-pink weight

of their bodies pushing against water, 

against the sad, feathered tarnish

of remembrance. Girls are coming out

of the woods the way birds arrive

at morning windows—pecking

and humming, until all you can hear

is the smash of their miniscule hearts

against glass, the bright desperation

of sound—bashing, disappearing. 

Girls are coming out of the woods. 

They're coming. They're coming. 



The Day We Went To The Sea


The day we went to the sea
mothers in Madras were mining
the Marina for missing children.
Thatch flew in the sky, prisoners
ran free, houses danced like danger
in the wind. I saw a woman hold
the tattered edge of the world
in her hand, look past the temple
which was still standing, as she was —
miraculously whole in the debris of gaudy
South Indian sun. When she moved
her other hand across her brow,
in a single arcing sweep of grace,
it was as if she alone could alter things,
bring us to the wordless safety of our beds.