Poetry: Prerna Kalbag

Prerna Kalbag

She

Look inward, they say

And you will find torrents 

of insidious cervixes

Of Brutal Pain

An earthquake

You will wonder why you

swam in

the water you drank.

Why you let swishing pain

inside a membrane

lovingly f**k you up-

when you were just a coiled room:

a grilled plank.

You will joggle,

Joggle

then thrust forth 

a lifetime of fervently held 

hallucinogens:

of bubbles

leading up a lurid lane

Of floating green doors appearing

out of nowhere.

Of purple skies wobbling

While the gushing fumes you clamped 

seeped inside your pate.

You will wonder why you gave him

Miles and miles of pavings

Shovelled to reveal

throbbing, disregarded pathways.

And living castles will still 

breathe inside you,

While you will be a colonel’s drawing room: 

Grimy, cluttered, a mere case.

***

The Nun

A pocketful of Catholics

in a gutterlane,

Of frothy Sapphic hugs

in a Convent.

You remember much;

The scowling of her habit for instance,

That still rents your head.

You were a child,

She a woman;

Beneath her surging, secluded

Bleached Church Skin.

The dumping of her innerwear

on a bathroom slab 

for you to clean;

She splayed her legs

while none was looking,

Inviting you in.

Food for Sin,

Food for Sin.

She barters her

food for Sin

She might give you an

extra handout

If you can make her squeak 

in her unseen bower

Under the fan din.

And all those 

umpteen mouths to fill

That recite after her

On piercingly mephitic mornings.

(children just like you,

filling her convent).

Christ is indeed King,

but not inside his

Festooned dwelling

Where prayers are spat out

as often as

his soiled chalice 

hits the sink.

The traipsing through

stacks of donatives

A concoction of 

ruined Benefactor Skin

They who’d rather

Spend their money

in this House of Filth 

than on Unchristian Divertissements.

She left all those 

screams

trapped in your head

Morning after Morning

you cleanse yourself

of Knowing

by spitting out intermittently

the blood

in your phlegm.

Your basin must be

an omniscient Hell

From which still trickle

warring cathedrals

intermingled with Her smell.

***

Mourning

You are supposed to feel

uniformly about a person

At least when they’re on their deathbed.

You must feel peace, or at least a sense of closure.

You must love them, or hate them.

You do not, under any circumstances,

walk around with a bouquet

of pins

sticking out of your fingers.

They do not, under any circumstances,

leave you feeling gutted

on the side of a dark road.

They do not leave you

with a heavy box

weighing in on your chest that you

spend a lifetime

trying to get off.

They do not leave you

with a torrent of unspeakable moments

manifesting for your every lover

as a Wall.

Especially when they were

not even your lover.

They birthed you in pain

and brought you out into

a world of

tumult and horror.

Through them you saw

the depths of cruelty

the world could descend to.

Through them you felt Everything

stuck to and

plunged into you like a

Wildfire.

Through them your innards

Raged under your flesh

and made you bark out

Words (they call you a “Writer”)

Through them “Love” became a term 

both terribly bland and terribly tired.

People like to believe you

loved them and they, you.

People have such a disemboweled,

diminished understanding of

what you went through.

***

Author Bio: Prerna Kalbag has just completed a Master’s degree in Literary Arts from Ambedkar University Delhi. She is interested in art history, sociology, sociology of law, and critical theory. Power relations and the politics of social exclusion deeply influence her creative work. She feels that writing, far from being a spontaneous activity, is a responsibility and a conscious act.

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Setu, November 2021