i wait for images to crystallize

Photography by Ali Choudhry

wait for the moment when
this powindah
sheds her pots and pans
translates herself
stands proud
infant hitched against her hip
with the sideways glance
the triumphant smile
that says
look at me

never mind the plastic lace-ups
that gape open at the toe
the rain that’s stained her clothes
she is heiress to the world

ii

all of ten years old
coming from the water pump
she turns her ankle lifts her pink dhoti
and with arched erect back
balances the brass pot on her head
and lilts daintily down
the rubbled pathway

iii

not wantonness
but abandon
unawakened tenderness
two girls leaning
against the posts
of a disused well
a third straddled flat along them
absorbed in prattle
in the evening light
that diffuses all sharp edges

they’ll grow one day
into the trio by the hand pump
rocking on haunches
loosened with labour
widened with squatting before the stove
worn hands resting
by the nickel cauldrons
they’ve come to scour with sand
keepers of movements by the well

iv

child in the doorway
where the half dark recedes
into piled quilts and bedding
tentative eyes

watching her sisters
separate chaff from grain
toss it up toss it down
there is a man in the corner
swinging an infant
you cannot see her face in the picture
but her naked limbs
betray her
the women see it
as i release the shutter
throwing sideways smiling glances
from secret eyes

~ Ilona Yusuf

Ilona Yusuf is a poet and printmaker. Her poems have been published in book form (“Picture This”, Alhamra Publishing, 2001) and thereafter in literary journals in Pakistan and abroad. She has also written essays on Pakistani poetry in English, and most recently served as guest editor for a special issue on poets from Pakistan for the Canadian poetry journal Vallum. She freelances for several magazines, writing on art and literature. She blogs at ilonayusuf.blogspot.com.