Tishani Doshi (born December 9, 1975) is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer based in Chennai. In 2006 she won the Forward Prize for her debut poetry book Countries of the Body. Her poetry book A God at the Door has been shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize under best poetry collection category.
LOVE POEM
Tishani Doshi
Ultimately, we will lose each other
to something. I would hope for grand
circumstance — death or disaster.
But it might not be that way at all.
It might be that you walk out
one morning after making love
to buy cigarettes, and never return,
or I fall in love with another man.
It might be a slow drift into indifference.
Either way, we’ll have to learn
to bear the weight of the eventuality
that we will lose each other to something.
So why not begin now, while your head
rests like a perfect moon in my lap,
and the dogs on the beach are howling?
Why not reach for the seam in this South Indian
night and tear it, just a little, so the falling
can begin? Because later, when we cross
each other on the streets, and are forced
to look away, when we’ve thrown
the disregarded pieces of our togetherness
into bedroom drawers and the smell
of our bodies is disappearing like the sweet
decay of lilies — what will we call it,
when it’s no longer love?
===
MONSIEUR TOUT-LE-MONDE
Tishani Doshi
for Gisèle Pelicot
It could happen to anyone. Firefighter,
plumber, retired sports coach, Monsieur
Tout-Le-Monde, who exchanges greetings
with you at the baker’s, steps over the threshold,
half undone. Men who married their childhood
sweethearts, who tuck patients nightly into bed,
fled faraway countries, acted under duress. It could
happen — the desire to leave the body, because the body
is the house, and beyond the house, the street,
the village, the hinterland of memory.
I was fourteen, and all I wanted
was to be in my body, to feel the hips and smooth bones,
the power of my own … I was taken in,
no question. An air-conditioned room. Summer
murk of Madras. Was never asked, Do you want,
or, Shall we embark on this sweetness together?
It was taken. There was no escaping that. It could
happen. Body sidling away from the brain,
earliest ancestors, trancing around a fire,
asking the spirits to put potency into their spines,
so they could pull arrows of sickness out from
one another. I tried hypnosis once but couldn’t let go,
kept thinking, What if I open my legs? What if I
open? All those paintings of Brunhildes and sleeping
goddesses, Venus with Cupid’s fingers pressed
against her lips, Shush, Mother, just shush.
Museums filled with the adoration of naked defenceless
necks. Shepherdesses, nymphs. Legs askew, bare-breasted.
Women tangled in deepest something: sleep, death.
Incubus on belly. Satyr – husband? – crouching
at the foot of the bed.
And we can tell ourselves
it is softness we are after. Heard no sound of protest,
so kept going. Felt no pushing back, so kept going.
Afraid of all my missing parts, so kept going and
going. It is a hot night in March. I’m in the house
alone, and all the tooth-rimmed-terror multiplies.
In the bathroom, a kerfuffle of feathers —
little banded goshawk flown in through
the window, trapped by glass. Not allegory
or metaphor. Bird as real as all the shame
I carry. Monster, we say, for what is both warning
and unordinary. I reach for the goshawk’s face
to remove its mask, but find only goshawk
underneath. It could happen, couldn’t it?
Ambushed by some inner-Leviathan – our own
human creature – while making coffee, or taking
the wife to the doctor. Fork in the road:
Monsieur Tout-Le-Monde in the mirror.
======
WASPS AT THE FAUCET
Tishani Doshi
February, and there are wasps
at the faucet, flying in droves at dusk
to collect water to cool their nests.
They must carry each drop between
their legs without getting their wings
wet. It is a dance we do—me with a broom,
thrusting it between them as though
it were a pitchfork on fire. Their brief
confusion on the battlefield before
surging forward again. If only we could
turn away from each other in disenchantment,
renounce our harvest of sorrows. But here
is the world, egging us on with acres of low
grass, the beginnings of a silver tooth
of moon. Retreat, attack, on your knees.
This is your husk of time, decide.
In the scattering between thirst
and death, what will it be?