Priya Sarukkai

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet and novelist. Her publications include the novel The Other Garden (Rupa&Co, India, 1995, ISBN 81 7167 3228) and Dialogue and Other Poems (Indian Academy of Literature Golden Jubilee Imprint, 2005, reprint 2006, ISBN 81 260 1991 3) and as editor, the anthologies All Poetry is Protest (2006)and Open Spaces: 50 Poets 50Poems.(2007). She edits Talking Poetry India at www.openspaceindia.org.  Her next novel, Generation 14 is in press with Zubaan, An Imprint of Kali for Women, India. A seminar-cum-utsav The Image of the Writer in Literature was curated by her in 2007 for the Indian Academy of Literature. Sarukkai-Chabria has collaborated with artist from classical dance, cinema and painting. Her work is published or forthcoming in Adelphiana, Alphabet City, Atlas, Drunken Boat, Kavya Bharati, Quarterly, South Asian Review, Soundings, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Voices from the East and archived at various sites.  She’s at www.priyawriting.com.

DIALOGUE--1

1.

She says to her lover:

I'll tell you this in advance –
You who will be enclosed in my flesh, your rhythms
mine, our hands like a thousand comets descending
towards pleasure, your sweat becoming my skin,
listen: All this I want, and more.

Yet in your passion, do not scar me.
Do not split my lip, nor stifle speech.
Do not force my cervix out of shape 
nor ram my individuality.

I am parched. Riven
by longing, caked by the long dust of denial.
And yet I'll come to you like the first rain,
fragrant and trusting.

-- from Dialogue and Other Poems, (Sahitya Akadami 2005, reprinted 2006) .First published in The Little Magazine, 2004  and Quarterly 2004

Invocation: Spirit of Water*

Make me dew that touches all

without distinction.

Like snow-flakes let my perfect structures
yield to the melt of being.

As an underground river flowing during drought,
make me draw from secret sources.

Sweet and salt, estuarine,
let differences mingle in my blood.

Tidal courage, I call upon you to return after the ebb:
Spirit of water, give me hope.

Print on me oceans covered with sky;
when fiery fissures open, remind me of life.

Fill my marrow with glacial ice that cuts
rock to nourish springs.

Add one more wish to this:
Make me a mountain lake,

calm and deep,
that reflects light.

* audio at www.priyawriting.com

1. from  Dialogue and Other Poems, ( Sahitya Akademi, 2005, reprinted 2006) Audio at www.priyawriting.com

Poems from Babylon and Persia, 2006*

Salma, pi-dog of Baghdad says:

Americans are kind.
They leave blood on the streets
for us to lick,
and morsels of human flesh

stuck
to charred clothing.

They return us to our ancestors:
Wolves.

 Salma’s friend, pi-dog Imrana replies:

You don’t hear and see so well
ever since the bomb went off in the neighborhood
dump where you had littered
six pups,
one-eyed, one-eared, scar- faced Salma.

Listen:
I’ve heard
the scene of feasting is shifting
overseas
and underground,
in tunnels long and deep.
And that the bombers talk in a language
we can understand, so to speak.
I’d trot there myself for the spread
if it weren’t that I lack
front feet.

-- first published in Soundings, Issue 34, Autumn 2006