1. Trans dyke blues

They gave her a canvas.
And asked her to paint.
Down in her head,
In her sacred profanities,
she saw someone.
She painted them.
          Them, in each others hands.
In their small home.
Home.

She grew flowering vines around the painting.
She grew, flowing into that girl she drew
She grew, wilted, regrew, rewilted

Joyful, playful, holy, insane
A little bit of un-sacredness
yet sacred the same.

2. Ode to a night of aching arms

That one night in peak Delhi summer
We talked all night on the phone
You were restless about your bass tone
My hands ached from holding the phone, till
6 AM  in the morning.

I didn’t mind.

Delhi is approaching winter, my love.

My pen aches to write for your bass.
My hand aches to ache,
holding the phone till
6AM in the morning
Again.

3. Sabr… dear heart…sabr

This Eid
There is no waking up to shower at 4, cold.
There is no riding with 5 people on a
motorcycle.
There is no table with banana leaves on,
covered in beef biryani.
There is no rush to the eidgaah.

Here I sit,
in my tattered cargos and corduroy jackets,
Couple of tears on my cheeks
Reminiscing the eids gone

Can the transsexual Eid?

For Us

I was lost
under what they said about me.
I wore all their words,
weighing more than my bones,
carrying them everywhere I went.

I couldn’t find myself
beneath those dirty fingerprints.
It was not me I saw
in the mirror, but I found
myself for you, for me, for us.
I pierced through the sun
to burn it all and to
come to you as I am.

We’ll meet under the moon
while the night clouds
float through my hair.
I’ll hold your hand
and nothing will weigh me down
while I fly in your love.

Author Notes:  My poetry book is a compilation of heartfelt verses that I’ve penned over the past few years, originally meant solely for my personal solace. However, after concealing my thoughts and emotions for an extended period, the yearning to step into the light became undeniable. I aspired to reveal my true self authentically. This petite yet significant book represents a vital aspect of my being, and unveiling it to the world fulfils the desire to be acknowledged for who I truly am. Moreover, my passion for sharing art further motivates me to extend this creative endeavour beyond the confines of my own contemplation. I invite you to explore my art, as I embrace the courage to be seen.

Boy from The Poems was published in December 2023 on Notion Press.

My name is a spell
It can’t be held
In the mouths of oppressors
Reminiscent of territories
Of bodies, invaded
The database collects my name
But cannot understand it
Yet the database decides
Where I will go in this life

Life, is a series of borders
Built and policed by those
Without access to themselves
But if we can be sorted, ordered, owned
By walls, by data
Then so can they
Eventually, borders creep
But our inner worlds
Cannot be stolen, like land

Land is a source
Of our innate, ancestral power
The soil and water
That nourished my infant body
Lives on in me
Even here at the borderlands
Where my Tamil is broken
And our people
Indefinitely imprisoned

To be imprisoned for seeking safety
For fleeing a genocide
For escaping the erasure of language, culture
For leaving a broken country
For resisting the regime that broke this country
For being born in a country broken by Empire
For being ripped from our homelands
For sacrificing ever being home again, whole again
Is to be imprisoned for existing

Existing is not possible
Without building worlds
Made up of music
Sound and stillness
In frequencies their ears can’t hear
Our ‘selves’ are fluid
Complex, interwoven with ‘other’
And at the same time non existent
Not to be contained in 1’s and 0’s
The seeds of liberatory systems

Systems we live in
Could bend and break under
The pressure of presence
Of a stillness so deep
It feels close to death
Perhaps even colonisers could access
Their own stillness, could speak our names
If only they stayed quiet
Long enough to hear it

Notes:

• Dhakshayini read this poem at the 64th meeting of Orinam’s Quilt in Chennai on Jan 2, 2023.
• Image from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy Blogtrepreneur

Swipe right swipe left
Swipe right swipe left
A monotonous motion
Almost like marching
Left right left right
Only with much less motive
And some misplaced purpose
We may have even forgotten about

Occasionally there is a “Boom”
You matched it says..
if it’s on Tinder
You get a room
If it’s on Bumble
You always fumble
Ok Cupid
Could get morbid
The apps never ending
It’s just a business machine
Making us hope there is someone out there
Looking for you

What have we become in this digital age
Staring at screens lying on our couches
Shopping for people like for things
Is this the future of the human touch
Not really wanting beyond this much..?

Orange may be the new black
In the digital date world
You better be ready for that ghosting attack!

Image credit: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hear my story,
Turn a deaf ear, shy away
Walk past, plugging me out,
Cry or console my loss,
Chide me, ask me to shut up.
Ignore me.
I still shriek of injustice
I am but a woman.

Call me the goddess, your alter ego,
The prostitute or the slut,
the feminazi,
The woman you can only
dream of bedding, or
The whore you fucked
last night,
Or your mother
I am multiple orgasms
I am but a woman.

Shred my ego to pieces,
revel in chivalry
Or slap me down
grovelling in the gravel
Mould me to your choice
I will be the lady
and the bitch
I am everything.
I am but a woman

Ban my blood and
own my womb
Taboo my body
for three whole days
Seed it with lust the next
I choose to be childless, to bleed freely
I am but a woman.

Don’t love my love handles,
put me down with my weight
My full grown body
an eyesore.
Try me into body issues
I will not fit in
I am but a woman

Say I am too modern,
Outrageous, or too traditional
to suit your tastes
Judge me with the size of my bindhi
Or the way I drape my
Sari just below
my navel, or the swiftness
with which I cover my head
when seen,
Or my six inch heel.
I am the permanent outcast
I am but a woman.

Thrust upon me
masks of masculinity
Penis-obsessed,
your hard rock ego boosts with
each sloppy kiss-
That testosterone high
Fails to stir me enough
I prefer women
I am but a woman.

Shivapriya first read this poem at the Queer and Ally Arts Festival on May 8, 2016, in Chennai. It was subsequently published in FeminismInIndia.

Purification.

Or so they believed.

We exchange our love bravely and sometimes, quietly
Under the light of the stars and by the shadows of day
Love watches us, giggling at our indulgent mischief
Stripped of legal protection and indefensibly thirsty

Desperation.

For an erstwhile brief interlude.

Why do we promise to never leave each other?
Two atoms in a stormy cosmos of cross-stitched familiarities
Until the floodgates are breached, washing away past, present
And future: Will we stay or will we flee?

Flight–

Not to be mistaken
                      for
                            an emancipation

never learned how to pee standing up
confine a gesture, choke a feeling
in that house run by women of color and conviction
who let me play with skydancers and gender
make a runway out of the walk from the shower
each towel revealing infinite possibilities
to be fabulous

so i thought that embracing myself
after years of stifling this fag,
her lisp, her sway
thought being true to you would be easier
mean returning to my sister, my mother
re-building home in this body
that place they demolished with their
masculinity and pornography

but instead got their:
“mascs only”
“straight acting plz”
and matching body fascism
an entire army of men mistaken as an oppressed community (lol)
wielding dicks like knives
translating the bruises on their backs into
butch and peck // misogyny the only
outfit you took out of your closet with you

~*~*~*SO*~*~*~**
it’s not us it’s you dearieeee !!!
your masculinism ain’t cute honeyyy
bout to subscribe you to this
» FEMMEIFESTO «
until further notice you will be receiving all of the updates

1)
No matter how many people who look just like you you
sleep with, you will still
never feel comfortable in that body
if you consume penis as pill
getting handjobs like handcuffs
shackling yourself to a uniform you mistake as body
fucking: the only way you let people inside of you.
Remember here is something sacred about a curve, a hair, these mortal parts of us that differentiate bodies from billboards
Until you remember that you will always be left wanting more: this is how the market continues to colonize your desires.

2)
Your backwards caps and fitted tanks aren’t cute nor subversive. Rather, they are an attempt to pass as the very men who beat you. This is a strategy used throughout history: where the oppressed become the oppressers. The incorporation of homosexuality in these images is not unique: patriotism and empire have always been the result of men jerking off together. Our attraction to you, therefore, is because your body has been branded as part of a militarized national project that keeps us sexualizing the very institutions that annihilate our capacity for social change.

3)
What you mistake as dancing is indicative of how severely white supremacist patriarchy has incarcerated your body and quarantined your mind from your hips. Your pathetic attempt to ‘twerk’ to “Run the World (Girls)” is neither suave nor becoming because 1) You do actually run the world 2) Your situational appropriation of black womyn’s lexicon and experience to fashion your identity is not a deployment of anti-racist allyship, but rather is a part of a structure of global anti-blackness that oppresses millions of people across the world 3) It speaks to how boring you would be off of the dance floor… So imma take this ‘friend zone’ as a site of resistance from you and your basic PH18 ass.

4)
To the femmes, the sissies, the fags, the gurls know that your beauty cannot be translated into gender. Never forget that the reason they hate you is because they have built a cage around their heart and called it a six pack. Never forget that your ancestors were once regarded as holy not only because of the composition of your body, but because of the way you gave healing to your communities. So see your femme as a collective process of empowerment not a hedonistic guise of neoliberalism. Despite your glory do not forget that you are not a queen. This sacred position is reserved for your mother and all the womyn who have paved the way for you. Never forget that your femme may be more palatable than others’ because you have the privilege to have been assigned male as birth.

5)
The revolution will be fabulous: it lies in your strut, your drop, your limp wrist. So keep doing your hair, keep clashing those colors! Your body is not frivolous or excessive, but rather the canvas where you can show what is to come in a world without time or labor. Nevertheless, do not let material possession restrict the way you articulate your femme – that feeling deep inside of you that cannot be bought at Urban Outfitters or any other corporation that profits off of self-inadequacy.

August 19, 2013 (c)

Republished with consent from Alok’s tumblr.