In this forest of metal, chudail emerges with mask
wrought from oil-entrenched years, arms melted
to gossamer folds. What she wants is soft,
unborn. Her words float through sour air, plop
wetly onto sterile grey; it is not in the world of
flesh. She continues her search, paints her tongue black
with burnished jamun, uncovers a child
around smooth violet seeds. Once–once she was idol,
marble-pure, molded in the gaps between pearly milk
teeth. Once a girl learned what it means
to be holy: how bodies are sugarcane fields,
vacated and ripped bare and re-sown by the first red
twilight. The night sky keens in tautly strung wind. At
the street’s end, a woman curls into the gaping womb
of a sewer drain. Chudail wonders if
they fester still, the decades congealed
over linen, undone by his fist. Fulgent
beneath chalk-white moon, two snakes writhe,
entwined, lost in an instant.
Translation:
chudail – In South Asian folklore, a woman turned into a witch after death during childbirth. Described to have long hair, backwards feet, and a black tongue.
jamun – Hindi for black plum.
Tanya Rastogi is an artist and writer from Bettendorf, Iowa. Her work has been published in The Adroit Journal, Gone Lawn, Kalopsia Literary, and others. She is the founding editor of The Seraphic Review. When she’s not hunched over a screen, Tanya enjoys playing the flute and watching video essays.