Devyani Saini's Blog, page 2

Temple | Poetry

I wash the sin from my hair at dawn

With rose water and the last remnants of moonlight.

I scrub my feet with rags dipped in milk and yesterday’s prayers.

I have sandalwood incense sticks for fingers,

Braided coconut husks for ribs,

And jasmine blooms for a womb.

Swirling mandalas trace themselves on my thighs in fine ash,

Bright vermilion pours from my parted lips.

The fire is stoked with charcoal and cinnamon in my belly,

The bells are silent in my throat,

Waiting for the ritual to begin.

Qamash tied around my ankles

Pulls my legs apart.

This is where you come to pray.

Colonisers | Poetry

They came on ships

With horses and gunpowder they stole from the neighbours.

They stood in rows of red,

fresh wounds carved into our backs with garden rakes.

They made us serve them on our dining tables

With forks made of braided veins and splintered bone.

(They didn’t know we ate with our hands).

They strangled us with collars,

Turned us into their guard dogs

And set us loose against each other.

They split our house down the middle with a pen.

Its ink

Was my grandfather’s blood.

How easy it was for them

To put a hand into our home

And pull out the honeycomb, still sticky with our pride and will and gold.

It is no wonder

The bees learned how to sting.

– I wish we had learned too.

On Korean | Poetry

it rolls of the tongue like

honey drips from the hive

like it was meant to be there

sentences strung sideways

and backwards

foreign to my mind yet familiar to my heart

a single word conveying all of my

happiness

love

anger

fear

yet there is no one to hear

Quest | Poetry

plane tickets, cities coloured on a map,

a promise made in our youth,

a whim,

a business deal,

a passing word on the sidewalk

between strangers –

this is how our quest

begins

Butterflies I | Poetry

The butterflies in my stomach

Have wing-beats like hurricanes.

My eardrums feel thunder-struck

As the echo remains.

 

Sometimes the pressure is so high

You could shove your hand

Down my throat and

Pull out diamonds.

 

 

To All the Instagram Poets | Poetry

Do not feed me lies

Of how I am perfect

Of how I am deserving

Of the highest order of love

And call it poetry

On Meeting You | Poetry

I met you thinking

You’d be a footnote.

 

You were the entire novel.

Joy | Poetry

I am tired of sad poetry.

I want to crumple it in my fists

Throw it in the trash where it belongs.

Where is all the poetry praising sunshine,

Snickers bars, crop tops, and Jon Snow’s butt.

Every word from a poet’s mouth is twisted and

Bloody, dripping down their chins, gums bleeding,

Heavy and red with their suffering. Eyes black with

Hate and regret. Must I plunge a knife in my gut

To carve out my art, because it seems all you

Want to see is the working of my bloody

organs, how they pump and squirm,

Alive and pulsating, slowly dying.

Let me write about his smile,

The music I heard today,

The cloudless sky.

Let me write

about

Joy.

From conception to release

After two long arduous years my novel A Violet, Violent Spring has finally been released in paperback format.

Not many novels written during NaNoWriMo get past the editing stages, let alone the publication stage, so I feel a lot of pride in being able to say “I wrote this novel in one month” – though what was completed on November 30th 2015 was only a skeleton of what I have now released. I chose to self-publish this novel because it was written primarily as a work for me. I didn’t expect anyone to read it let alone like it, and I certainly didn’t think I’d publish in paperback – but here we are.

I won’t be disappointed if this book gets bad reviews, or if it fails to sell even a single copy, mostly because I wrote it for myself. What I will choose to traditionally publish (and you can expect that I certainly will), will be cut from an entirely different cloth that you will not even recognize that it is the same author who has written it.

Now that this journey is FINALLY over, I can put my mind to the next big task – MARKETING *shudders*

Until my next novel,

D. 

Heart Eater | Poetry

Those silly girls

Putting their hearts

Into other people’s mouths

Not expecting them to bite down.

 

Those silly girls

Pouring their love into

Chalices served on silver platters.

The sound the glass makes as it shatters

 

Is deafening.

They don’t hear it.

They merely refill the glass

Now they have reached an impasse.

 

For the Heart

Eater will not drink,

And those silly girls will keep

Pouring and pouring until they fall asleep

 

In a puddle

Of their own tears.

I can’t understand those girls,

Giving away their polished pearls,

 

Asking for

Nothing in return.

How do you love a demon

Who cuts you apart while you are screaming.

 

I never understood those silly girls

Until I met my own Heart Eater.

The way he smiled.

And sang.

And laughed.

It was so much easier

So much sweeter

To put my heart in his mouth

To pour my love into a cup

And forget about his teeth

Biting down, draining the life out of me.

– i am a silly girl