Tanya Singh
Most Days We Are an Enterprise of an Excavated Archaeological Site
after the fourth wife’s only husband
most days we are an enterprise of an excavated archaeological site,
and some days we are politics of identity, who are better at being headless.
every now and then gestalt psychologists fall prey to the unmercenary
doctrines of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
i’ve heard that some parts don’t make a sum as big as the whole.
and if you put a kettle on the stove, that’s where the kettle stays,
unlike birds whom you may place adjacent to grey ribbons in sky,
and later find them vicariously hidden between its folds of cellulite,
i asked for another day after tomorrow when I am finally home,
still to contemplate the prospects of a start-up that builds start-ups,
the bird doesn’t find itself back in the sky after displacing itself,
over generations of snake charmers. even when mumtaz called out to them,
they are brainless creatures with tiny brains, the size of a leprechaun’s
uniform, and simper lankily between whites of purdah and chick peas,
and when we fall among the gallery of ruins, our pits covered with feathers
of some ostrich’s dreams, the size of its egg, there will be quietist bodies
vibrating to a persian bebop siren. say we want to be alive when we grow
up. how impotent is being potent. you mean ‘important’?
mumtaz was not taught english in the mughal era, she only married
a bewitching misogynist who hides his contempt in the ivory walls
of the seventh wonder of the world, among others such as patriarchy,
see birds are closest to kings after drainage systems named in their honour.
and from what i’ve heard i know birds don’t build their graves in the sky.
Tanya Singh’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Literary Orphans and Dear Damsels, among others. Tanya serves as the blog editor for Moledro Magazine. Interested in all things poetry and philosophy, she lives in India.
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