Sharanya Manivannan

Sharanya Manivannan was born in India in 1985 and grew up in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. She is working on her first novel, Constellation of Scars , and has completed a book of poems entitled Witchcraft . As a spoken word artist, she has performed at dozens of venues in the last six years, from small indie cafes to the Borobudur Temple, Indonesia.

Between August 2007 and February 2008, she has or will be performing at the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale in Indonesia, Singapore Writers' Festival, Poetry with Prakriti in Chennai and Kitab in Mumbai. Sharanya can be reached at http://sharanyamanivannan .blogspot.com.

Sample Poems:

 How to eat a Wolf

Does all lust start and
end like this? Don't get me
wrong. I loved my wolf .
I held him tethered like
a pussycat. I nursed
the rumble in his belly
with hands gentle as a burglar's.
He lived on milk
and blood and ocean. He
had violets for his furs.

It's just that he was
beginning to devour me.
He nuzzled me with claws,
fondled me with fangs
sharp as yearning
He snaked a tongue so
hungry in its kiss it
turned my body to salt.

How do you douse a
dervish swirl? I asked.
Devour it, you said.

So I fantasised
about eating his balls,
rolling them in semolina
seeds and roasting them
golden. I got blooddrunk
on the thought of the
crisp tender cartilage of his ear,
left to simmer in tequila
and cilantro. The dry teats turned
sweet when baked with cinnamon
applesauce, or drizzled with chocolate.
The tangy musk of austerely steamed eyelid.

I set traps.

Mine is the deepest void,
the deepest void you'll ever know.
And so I lured him to a well.
A wolf can drown in its own
wetness. But mine swam
and lapped and doggypaddled
until I waded back in to get him.

Mine is the darkest smoulder,
the darkest smoulder you'll ever know.
And so I conspired to let him burn.
A wolf can poach in its own juices.
But mine danced on coals and leapt
ablaze, until I pussyfooted back in to get him.

I became desperate.
I preached to my wolf
about suicide, proselytized
about reincarnation. Come back
as a sleepy kitten, I said.
Come back as a hibernating bear.
Come back as a snail with a flag trail of surrender.
But my love was indefatigable. It was
volcano and oceanic tremor. It was a black lace bra and
too much jazz at 3 a.m.
My love was as big as betrayal.
I pleaded and pleaded until

you finally looked up and said,
You can only kill a wolf
you don't want to have,

and only then did I see that

your love
was exactly
the size of two fists.

______________________________________
   

  Inventories of the Heart

You have:
two books
half the aftermath
a shoulder for the blame
nothing I thought I could leave behind

I have:
a movie
miscellaneous fears
things I'll know I'll never say
love that wasn't enough for the both of us

what we lost

the inventories of the heart.
the

instinct that makes me find your horoscope
right after mine in the magazine
someone lends me to 'keep me occupied'.

a year, a month and a day