Of Struggle And Resilience: Poems From The Northeast

Garden in a Graveyard

My mother will one day tell my daughters
what she has always told me,
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Only this time, I’ll make sure they know
that if it’s feeding them poison,
it’s okay to burn the kitchen down as well.

Michelle Rungsung, Manipur

(Michelle Rungsung, 29, is a self- declared introvert born in Manipur, who lives in New Delhi. Garden in a Graveyard marks Rungsung’s inaugural collection of poems and prose. She has grappled with expressing her thoughts and emotions openly. Writing initially served as a coping mechanism for her loneliness, evolving into a passion for poetry.)

Geranium

And after the battery of winter
Petals shredded from sepal
Leaves lacerated, too limp to lift for light

Buds still swell against the tender licks of Spring
And bloom

T Keditsu, Nagaland

(T Keditsu is the pen name of Theyiesinuo Keditsu, an indigenous feminist, poet, academic and educator.​​​​​​​)

What Poetry Means To Ernestina In Peril

What should poetry mean to a woman in the hills
as she sits one long sloping summer evening
in Patria, Aizawl, her head crammed with contrary winds,
pistolling the clever stars that seem to say:
Ignoring the problem will not make it go away.

So what if Ernestina is not a name at all,
not even a corruption, less than a monument. She will sit
pulling on one thin cigarillo after another, will lift her teacup
in friendly greeting to the hills and loquacious stars
and the music will comb on through her hair,
telling her: Poetry must be raw like a side of beef,
should drip blood, remind you of sweat
and dusty slaughter and the epidermal crunch
and the sudden bullet to the head.

The sudden bullet in the head. Thus she sits, calmly gathered.
The lizard in her blinks and thinks. She will answer:
The dog was mad that bit me. Later, they cut out my third eye
and left it in a jar on a hospital shelf. That was when the drums began.
Since then I have met the patron saint of sots and cirrhosis who used to stand
in every corner until the police chased her down. She jumped into a taxi.
Now I have turned into the girl with the black guitar
and it was the dog who died. Such is blood.

The rustle of Ernestina’s skirt will not reveal the sinful vine
or the cicada crumbling to a pair of wings at her feet.
She will smile and say: I like a land where babies
are ripped out of their graves, where the church
leads to practical results like illegitimate children and bad marriages
quite out of proportion to the current population, and  your neighbour
is kidnapped by demons and the young wither without complaint

and pious women know the sexual ecstasy of dance and peace is kept
by short men with a Bible and five big knuckles on their righteous hands.
Religion has made drunks of us all. The old goat bleats.
We are killing ourselves. I like an incestuous land. Stars, be silent.
Let Ernestina speak.

So what if the roses are in disarray? She will rise
with a look of terror too real to be comical.
The conspiracy in the greenhouse the committee of good women
They have marked her down   
They are coming the dead dogs the yellow popes
They are coming the choristers of stone

We have been bombed silly out of our minds.  

Waiter, bring me something cold and hard to drink.
Somewhere there is a desert waiting for me
and someday I will walk into it.

Mona Zote, Mizoram

(Mona Zote is a poet living in Aizawl. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including the Cordite Poetry Review, Indian Literature, IQ Magazine, India International Centre Quarterly, Carapace, Sangam House as well as in anthologies such as Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India, the Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, and The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, Poetry.​​​​​​​)