Café Dissensus

By Shyamasri Maji

The Psoriasis Girl: Four Poems

Psoriasis is long-lasting, noncontagious autoimmune disease characterised by scales and patches on the skin. It is not curable.

I

Scales swathe my lacerated skin.
Eyes impale the frock’s fabric thin.
Wherever I go, their queries tow,
whispers, gaze, tis a murky maze,
I steer through the hideous throng
from hell to hades,
meeting the doleful eyes
in the fish mart, on the Ganges ghat
in family weddings,
in the funeral

I shudder
at the thought of their curious eyes
ogling at my cold bare body,
my close lids moisten as
I watch women asking each other
if ever a man trod this scarred land,
Twenty years ago
they’d asked me the same question
after giving me a sponge bath
on a white hospital bed

II

Walking the inferno
I heard bats screeching
in the caves of your body.
My fingers felt the pus
while caressing the sticky
wallpaper of your mind
The lesions of your heart
I tended with care,
you reminded me
of my thinning hair,
and
proposed to sell the flat you own
for treating my uneven skin tone

Sighing at my shrieking scales
you locked me
in long sleeves of khadi dells,
and
served me a glass of icy drink
to swallow the sun
like a contraceptive pill every night

In the mushaira
when they praised you for
your poem yesterday noon,
I wondered how could the poet adore
the psoriasis patches on the moon!

III

In school, I was the odd girl
wrapped in full sleeves
hiding horror, hiding shame
on my elbows
that jostle like the last wish
of a sex worker diagnosed with AIDS

Before her tuberculosis worsened
she went on a bike ride with a kind babu.
Along the breeze-blazed shoreline
she stretched out her sleeveless arms,
flaunted her mermaid tattoo and
winked at the large heavenly sky.
Her floral dupatta fluttered high.

The sun slowly set on her satin skin
I saw the silhouette of her arms
spread like an eagle’s wings
across the crimson sky
and wished for a while:
What if it is me
going sleeveless on him tonight?

IV

Do you remember the day
I shared a few snaps
of plaques on my knees with you?
That was the first time I did such a thing
in twenty-five years.
Trust me! It takes tonnes of courage
to show someone how ugly you are,
It is hundred times more difficult
than baring a beautiful body before the beau
I don’t know why I had endless faith on you—
even, God never proclaimed to rely on Him!

***

Backless Blouse

The eagle flies high, across the tailored sky
dipped in chocolate brown.
The brocade clouds adrift, above her molten midriff,
the silken sun kneels down.

Narrow edges glide, the voyeurs chide
flaky skin flaunts fashion!
Stay in your room, mock epic of a broom,
fasten your shrewish passion.

Framed in a fragile knot, an acre of patchy plot
the moon melts on the river cold.
She catches a flying fish, unbuttons a dewy wish,
her blouse—backless and bold

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Wrinkles

Lying prone on her little breasts
the senile sun heaves a sigh,
her skin hums an evening raga
dusk and dawn have a knot to tie.

Shreds of love on a lotus leaf,
stars fathom the midnight blue,
he counts the lines on her face
moonlight peeps into their loo

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My Mottled Skin

Tonight, the sea raves
in black and white waves
salt and pepper in the air.
My mottled skin
wrapped up in sin
sips moonlight on a chair.
Shame has lost her senses.
Sprinkle water on her face!
She may die of salt and pepper
I’ll sip moonlight on my chair.

***

Sinkholes

I’m tired of flawless skin,
the fairness creams,
the waxing screams,
white underarms, sexy terms,
of ‘going sleeveless on him’
of all those reinventions
with a lipstick and a liner,
of fighting and quarrelling
with the lines and the circles,
like a warrior on the losing side.

I walk through the windy fields
past the singing sinkholes
of cosmetics and capitalism,
I smile for being ugly and free
like the fiery moon
on the forehead of an abysmal night

***

Alopecia: A Woman’s Poem on Loss of Hair

When I cut my hair, I cut my dreams
from the tree of life in the trunk of which
an insect gnaws at my desire to see
my long wavy hair fluttering on those lips
that sip the sunset from a goblet of crimson wine.

Tipsy smiles from a kerosene barrel
witnessed the lacerated skin of the moon drooping
on the charred island of my bald patches to set ablaze
the ancient trees of imagined love canopying
the colourless mirror on the bedroom wall.

My psoriatic scalp counts hair loss in the broken bones
of an ivory comb I inherited from my mother’s mum
on my menstruation ceremony, aeons ago—
My curls, at thirteen, hissed like Medusa’s head.
The echoing lyrics of the feminine songs
didn’t make a prophecy then, that after a decade
when, I’ll sip green tea in breakfast, alopecia will
slice my dreams into juicy red cubes of watermelon
on a silver salver of ruby love, the pomegranate seeds.

***

My name is ‘Witch’

 A dolphin dives into my hairy cheek
along the jaw line of our ancient creek
across the hills and the purple fawn
I will ride a horse in the starlit dawn.
My hooded cloak upon your eyes
cloistered walls burrowed by mice
cats do couch in the cauldron of love
broomstick flies on the wings of dove.
Grandmamas cover their children’s face
lest they catch the air of my knotted tress.
The holy man says he knows me well
“Me too,” I revert ringing the unholy bell.
My spade digs deep into the blasphemous ditch,
the city girl wonders why they call me a ‘Witch.’

***

The French Lady

I am not the French lady you fell for
on the banks of the Ganges—
blowing kisses to each other in the open,
forgetting the stink of dried fish
heaped on the scales of noisy sunlight.

From the foothills
to the Alpine plains
in slow cadence— She settled softly
on my turmeric-stained saree.
I didn’t dare to wash it with detergent,
being afraid of bubbles
in the bucket of a vanishing future.

I watch my brown body fading
in the monochrome of silver rain,
a charcoal sketch of greyish pain.

In a Bordeaux lounge, someday,
you may think of the purple river
we crossed in a country boat:
that evening,
the fluttering notes of your twilight smiles
spread against my bhatiyali sky,
our silhouetted forms blended with the sight
on the colour palette of an unerasable night.

***

The Other Woman

Why do I feel angry
with you, dear Other woman?
Are you not the one I always look for
while playing the queen in a masque?
Your fair skin on my uneven tone
melts like an expensive BB cream.*
In the green room, when I grumble
for losing my blue contact lenses
you tease me for my wrong choice.
I gaze at your butterscotch calves,
you tell me to control my nerves.
Together, we sail on the windy waves,
around us, the green sea howls and raves
The shoreline cannot hear our words
Our words listen to the song of birds

Bio:
Shyamasri Maji is an Assistant Professor in English at Durgapur Women’s College in West Bengal. She was the recipient of Independent Research fellowship 2018-19 at Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata. She wrote her doctoral thesis on “Anxiety of Representation in Select Anglo-Indian Writers” (Burdwan University, 2018). Her book reviews and articles have been published in reputed journals such as South Asian Review, Indian Literature, Economic & Political Weekly, Asian Review of Books, Antipodes, and Third World Thematics. She writes poems and short stories in English. Her debut collection Forgive Me Dear Papa and Other Poems (Hawakal) was published in December, 2023.

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