July 13, 2012, Assam, Guwahati
No sooner she forgets
than she sees herself
again and again, outside
the pub twenty-plus men
teasing her like they would
a caged animal,
Hydra hands tearing off
her panties, her shirt,
black horizontal bar
across buttocks and breasts
the only cover.
Close up, her face dissolves into blank squares. She does not know anymore who she is . She clutches the remote but cannot stop Ravan’s ten thousand mouths from devouring her.
~ Athena Kashyap
Athena Kashyap’s first book, ‘Crossing Black Waters’, was a finalist in the Stephen F. Austin State University Press poetry awards, and published by them in Austin, Texas in 2012. Her second book, ‘Sita of the Earth and Forests’, is forthcoming in 2014, and will be published also by SFA Press. She currently makes her home in Bangalore, India where she teaches English writing and literature to college students and whoever else is interested.
Featured artwork: ‘Wound’, by Ahsan Masood.
