Truth of the Pelvic Girdle & Other Poems
Truths of the Pelvic Girdle
The ilium is the largest bone in the pelvic girdle.
Its crest is what my lover holds
sometimes like a steering wheel
patiently pushing pleasure forward.
When I wear a tight belt around my
waist my mother sees what all my lovers
do.
A body in motion that can pleasure and please.
The belt scares her; silences her.
She recoils at the constraint brought onto my
body. This bookshelf she made out of her flesh.
She asks me to loosen this burden.
That accentuates those parts of my manhood
that negates a penis. That soft accessory
always on the brink of falling. For me, for
everyone. One cannot change their skeleton she
says.
That even after people are buried they will show
the spot of their gender on the breadth of their
hip. Even when archeologists remain confused.
And men measure bigger hips and
women exist without a child
without breaking their pelvis.
The finger of truth will be pointed there.
To that belt that lets me stand, stroll and sprint.
In search of my long hair and the polish of my
nails. For the truth made of skeletons and not
flesh.
The truth in service of dying and not life.
Dried Flowers
There in my drawer,
unused condoms lie
beside Descovy pills.
One of the packets torn.
Latex dry from the oxygen.
The molecule that fires
seek.
Which when blown on molten iron
makes it purer. The molecule that
tells us time went by. Makes the
pink and orange of flesh less taut.
More brown like clay from deeper earth.
These are the first things I see
on waking up in the middle of the night.
Intimate things longed for, now gone.
Like the form of a dried flower. Even more delicate than the live
one. Who knew the dead were so
soft?
So easy to crush. So light to weigh.
Like all those digitized pictures
inside my father’s hard drive.
A black rectangle in the corner
not occupying much space.
A purchase before the internet
Allowed us to store pieces of
ourselves in exchange for a meager
subscription.
Before the fearless submission to the
cloud was a thing. Before photo albums
became obsolete. Like hotwheels.
Like phishing schemes made of lemonade.
Like people on the street selling cotton
candy. Like plastic telephones with curly cords.
That the fingers would train to wrap around
while pretending to talk to somebody.
A lover. A friend abroad. A relative returning
home. Good or bad news. All reception began
from: ‘Hello, hello. I can’t hear you. Can you be
louder?’
Like Rain
In one video call from Los Angeles to Jorhat, your grandmother looked you in the eye and said- who is this girl? You cried for her neural synapses that stopped passing electricity. Then for yourself. For being seen when someone lost their memory. Being seen for the present and not the past. For being called out to with curiosity. You think maybe she recalled that one time you were in your mother’s heels. When she had turned her head left and right to wonder what spirit went inside an innocent young boy.
Walking in those heels was your childhood dream. To become your mother. That you were disciplined out of. Like a piece of cloth washed on a stone. Rubbed and thrown enough times to tire the scent of soap. But then ten years later you became your mother. Like rain becomes the same thing again and again. The same nose. The same eyebrows. The same chin. The same contours of being. You become her after leaving. You become her, walking around in cities without any family. No shame. No laboring ideas of being caught. You become your mother even without those heels. Without those sarees, she kept for your wife, locked in the almirah. The iron flaking in different spots. The hinges creaking when she opens to dream about your wife who will never kick a pot full of rice during Ghar Pravesh. You count all the deaths you have encountered so far. Of people, expectations, and destinies. Of rituals that have passed on for a hundred years. Which you will have stopped. So you mourn that death. Of a world you could’ve belonged to. Instead, you live in a world where your grandmother forgets her daughter and calls you a woman. You live in this scoop. A harrowing scoop of possibility.
Mayookh Barua is a Los Angeles-based writer from Northeast India. He is currently a PhD candidate in USC’s Creative Writing and Literature Department. His work explores sexuality, art, mythology, education, and family through a queer South-Asian voice. A 2023 Roots.Wounds.Words. Fellow, his work appears or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Pedestal Magazine, The Audacity by Roxane Gay, Litro Magazine, and elsewhere.
