Meena Kandasamy

Ms.Militancy

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A poem By Meena Kandasamy

She thought she was dying—ants crawled

under her flaking skin, migraines visited her

at mealtimes, her tender-as-tomato breasts

bruised to touch, her heart forgot its steady beat.

Floundering at forty, she twisted safety pins

into spirals, chewed on pencil-ends, tore down

calendars, became a hurricane about the house.

That wetness, with its lunar reek, never came.

Her monthly drip had disappeared.

Her no-money man was back home by then—

ditched and duped by his dancer mistress.

She forgave that bitch, buried the bad blood

between, gave him her anklet of rubies to sell

and begin some business with. He went.

A week later, she received his body bag

With the executioner's seal on the toe tag.

She stormed the palace, flung her other anklet

at the bloody throne. The royals too saw the red.

The king died of shame, the queen died of shock.

On the edge, Ms. Militancy bayed for more blood.

Vending vengeance, she made a bomb

of her left breast and blew up the blasted city.

Long after that land had turned to ashes,

the rest of her plucked breast bled.

Watching that breast sprout back from its roots,

the lone woman learnt to outgrow her loss.

When the scars no longer showed and

the faraway sea could be smelt between her legs,

she dissolved in a mist of aftersmoke.

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Poem By: Meena Kandasamy