MASHUQA
Rima Banerji
Passion.
She comes suddenly, as if she is memory.
Dazzled, by what
is sin.
Dazzled, by what is.
The home of pain.
Letters of a lover. Rustled
pages and remorse.
This body needs gestures.
All tongues are omens.
Kisses.
Snow crushed into quartz.
Tender, the curve of heel.
Tender, the curve of
breast.
Pressed flowers, pulled from the thighs of books.
A triangle of scent.
Beyond her, a sheath of prayer.
The arms of the beloved, the arms of longing.
Blue music of flames, in decrescendo.
Then an echo: sound repeating sound forgetting itself.
And
she is a spy, stealing treasure.
After the hour of nameless ritual has passed.
The gift of another.
Hiding in a pool of memory.
The opening
of lips.
Petals of skin, closing into each other.
Falling into caverns like
home.
Spilling out of edges and lines.
leaning over the precipice.
A turn
of wrist, undressed.
A robe of hair, undone.
Eyelids closing, moist under
lashes, a film of tears.
Fluid , liquid, shapeless.
A body cascades. Caught
in deluge.
Mercury trapped in flesh.
Blood as libation.
A nail on a ring, a hand in a circle, a
palm of spirals.
Inside, a tulip of flesh.
Tearing at palisades, a thin lacuna
of membrane.
The tulip of flesh, split.
Haunting of the place of secretions,
a taste,
emissions from the place of beginnings, another taste.
Shoulders,
dunes, elbows, cities, neck, corner, stop.
Body, holding carnage.
Mouth, met with promise.
Tongue, drawing lies.
Skin stretched taut over ribs,
now an ornament, filigreed of teeth. Eyes mute.
Eyes without suspicion: the only truth.
Map of no destinations, all dream of waterfall.
The lagoon filling with milk, her last offering.
Streams and silent blurs.
Seasons of breeding, lost.
Love, made.
A slur of light. Fade to speech, fade to dark.
Body woman body.
Symmetry like palindromes.
Glass body glass.
Mirrors of teal.
Shaking, slipping out of fingers, out of reach, crash.
Light
timbles through half-opened doors,
falters through prisms of glass body glass.
Skin pure and subtle, dark.
Skin pure with female light.
A
slant of wood under footprints.
Sheets, canvas, bed.
Impressionist brush strokes,
tongue, water, tongue.
Touching frost.
An early courtship of silver and maroon.
Marbles wet with moonlight,
scattered by her feet.
A body seized, spilling
oil on canvas,
mixing colour, sprawled on cloth.
Then. Soft like wet sand, another body. T
he fragrance of hair,
clinging to cheek neck arm.
Kelp, dragging along a beach.
A necklace on her
stomach,
beads of sweat,
into strings of pearls on her forehead.
A swell of
breast, wrapped in lace, undressed.
Fingers streaked gold, hidden, underwater.
She tastes gold.
Then. A garnet of blood,
the prize of conquer on her thumb,
translucent and crowning her wrists.
She is empty.
Collapse into rivers,
hunger
paused between legs,
to swim through and drink holy.
Later: there is more
gold stolen into liquid,
more crystal tearing into Yamuna.
The magic of her
alchemy. Then.
Lovers. The word,
beginning with lip and tongue.
Almost a
kiss. Love. Verse.
A love poem.
To love verse,
to memorize language for sex,
to know the supple lines of bodies like poetry.
Low. Verse. A whisper.
The
way they make love in the dark
so no one but their fingers can touch,
taste,
feel. Love. Hers.
She loves her,
she loves what is hers,
she is what she is
inside her.
Passion.
THE END