I am suffering from a lunar hangover.
I haven’t managed to cross the border.
My physique and my self remain on this side.
I finger the earth beneath my feet,
I till the senses against each other for cash crops.
From genuflexion, I look up …
One step, two steps, and three … there’s the border.
I stare at it. Then I eyeball it.
I clench and crush the soil until
The land becomes one with my hands.
Emancipating and excruciating, all at once!
The string that threads lights / overheated / broken.
Like a fish that has absolute faith in the water,
Only my conscience flickers through the fluid moonlight.
I won’t come to the border. The border comes to me.
And it stands up on my fontanel.
Flags entail flying expectations.
After Marina Tsvetaeva, Ruth Fainwright says,
‘I am a Jew in the world of Christians’
I am a woman in a man’s world.
In power relations of every breath,
I am a woman poet.
I’ve been rooted right here by such consciences.
The border flows into me and utters
‘I will always be “the other” inside you.’
Whatever you label it,
Right here, and right now, let me repeat it one more time,
There is only one single moon that illuminates the planet earth.
I too am underfed with moonlight.
My physique has been mortified by
moonlit hugs.