my grandmother lost her virginity
A. to an attractive young man
B. when she fell off the back of a motorbike
C. when he never turned to check her
D. when she rose, the silt that painted the roads
and palette of Bangalore khaki sifting around the dull
pain in her feet and watched a shrinking bike not turn
back
E. when her mother paused before whispering
“You can’t trust that man to take care of you” as she
wedges her passport somewhere between the western
clothes and toiletries carry on
F. when her cries fill and cross an ocean, the
70s white women praise the multimedia for the
browned legs now donning short shorts as subject for
incision, study, autopsy.
G. when she finally birthed a daughter by
gaining an adoptive son who only calls her in
depression
H. after faltering on dichotomous in fetishism,
where each crust of this chasm begs ungodly, fertile,
colonial whore, mother, decaying, monstrous,
untouchable
I. when she never conceived and her bloodline
gazed at this sundried garden. she apologized that
there’s be no lit incense festival of harvest this spring.
J. where I inherit their melancholia, citrus in
cooking, peeled and blanched like tropical fruit, my
name given and preserved after decades of warcry to
someone’s guttural cry. when the end of her lineage
stands makeup dissolved or eaten off the bottom half
of my face, bottom, shirt aromated by the musk
cologne clinging to my chest, underneath, twin
bruises shaped like a mouth on each breast, ass
bruised, legs shaking. somebody’s child again tried
to mark their territory on land
K. with claim.
