Who made dinner while Rumi whirled?
Who mopped the floors while Rabindranath sat in quiet contemplation
And did he lift his legs off the ground obligingly
For a faceless hand, who fed and bathed the children,
Brushed down their hair, mended a torn sleeve
While the great men of learning
Peered deeply into the unknown chasm,
Clutching at threads to weave tales
That other men would read.
And womxn- well womxn-
To be a woman is to imagine
A history of the world retold from her eyes,
A stone, that would, if it could be flint to kindle a fire,
Medusa,
The witches of Salem,
Soorpanakha,
Lilith,
Draupadi,
And the satis offered upon a dead husband's pyre,
As little more than the timber they sat on.
The womxn traded as spoils of war
Seeded as fertile soil,
Or those, left behind, a wailing baby at her breast,
And three more to feed,
What of them, of us?
So we too bow to the Devis of stone in our temples,
While we slave away in smoky kitchens,
Our soot-stained lives wiped clean
Before a meal is served on gleaming plates,
For the men, who eat first, always first,
And don’t know when the women will eat,
Or if they any longer let the food travel their systems.
The Goddess is just a vessel of chants
That used to hold faith but now not much
Men were looking for hope
She wanted words to hold her anger hostage
But those screams never made it to prayers
Today, a man fell upon goddess' feet
She said, “what do you want?
What do you want? It’s always about what you want,
What he wants, what the cocks want,
What about what we want?”
Yet we will kneel, won’t we, to Marium,
And lower our heads to celebrate people
From Khadija to Aisha to Mariah as mothers of Muslims
Sing paeans to Lakshmi, Saraswati, Durga,
Asking, seeking, blessings
Meanwhile Hera, Artemis, Athena put their legs
On a table and pity our contentment,
To be as small in our voices, our bodies, our thoughts,
As allowed and offer up our sacred wombs,
To men who will decide their fate on our behalf,
But we busy ourselves with more pressing things,
Such as dinner.
Nashrah Tanvir writes poems about mental health, feminism, and Islam. Her poems have previously appeared in The Hindustan Times, Magic Pot, The Teenagers Today, The Radiant, gulmohur quarterly and AZE Journal. She has performed spoken word poetry with Kommune Delhi NCR and Delhi Poetry Slam.