By Somoshree Palit
I cut open a pomegranate for lunch,
Two cuts at the top, four at the sides,
Arranged them as bouquets of rose – a bunch
Of red rubies – the raw insides
Of Christ of Nazareth raised to the sky.
My penance was to love you as a child hides
Hoping to be found, not as Moses on Sinai –
I cannot love you where your law abides.
I am but a dog prowling the street
Waiting for days to play at your feet.
I cut open a pomegranate today,
I knew you'd come, I knew you'd meet –
I knew you'd love and sweetly say,
"My moonbroch, my soul – eat, eat, eat."
I'd let you wash me for a change –
A baptism starts at the tip of the tongue.
You'd feed them and I would still want more :
Hunger is piety when god bore you young.
What is it in me, such rotten stuff?
Why couldn't you make me good enough?
I cut open a pomegranate tonight,
A night of sin, and blood, and fraud :
If I am in heaven then God is a lie.
If I am in hell there is no God.
Pomegranates must be the food of love,
I will weave a choker of its seeds
And place them on your pulsing neck –
My apology – a chain of rosy beads.
My pomegranates on your chest till it dries :
A wine made sun on your flesh–tint skies.
I heaped the seeds in a bowl,
Pomegranates must be the food of gods.
I couldn't have sinned for a twisted soul
When they are saints for all their frauds.
What if I hadn't partaken of your wine,
You would be knowing. You knew.
With what mouth shall I taste your bread
Now that I have tasted you?
O mother of mine, have I been weak?
Betrayal was the only way to kiss his cheek.
I rolled the red over my tongue,
I am now a believer to atone for death.
I have built a chapel inside my lung,
The other lung shall cease my breath.
In muted dreams the chapel whispers
The Stories when the plagues linger.
Religion shifts and turns and whimpers
For the patron saint of hunger.
I would make a crown for your hair unshorn :
A pomegranate seed on every thorn :
Will he feed me still and not resist
If I had bitten Almighty on his wrist?
A bit of pomegranate stuck in my mouth
Like your finger lodged in my throat,
I am in hell, and god is dead,
Here's a glass to his faintest note.
Do you see me now, look me in the eye,
Answer me with all your powers :
If your son's body is as holy as you
What is wrong with the flesh that is ours?
What is wrong with this flesh of mine,
So diseased it is almost divine?
I do it so it feels holy.
I do it so it feels like blood.
I do it so if he feels sad one day,
He could justify another flood.
In me is a cathedral of lies,
And a haunted altar within,
How should I love, how else blaspheme –
Is my teeth on his thighs a sin?
In this my ruin, fetch me flowers
And Provencal wine from the south,
A cathedral that is his body,
An altar that is his mouth.
Pomegranates drip down my wrist —
What a way to eat, what a way to go —
How should I betray if I'm not beloved,
How should I betray if I am a foe?
Thirty flowers bloom in my field,
They wave their heads like gods on a whim,
Thirty trees till I reach Calvary
Where he chose the cross and I chose him.
Which gospel tells who had loved better?
A mortal shan't love how the Lamb may.
You'd die for me in your Christian love,
I would kill (for) you in my heathen way.
What is this love that I cannot stand —
What to make of a brother that should not live?
Preach me, I cannot understand,
What I'd make of a father that should not live?
And if I asked you would've smiled,
Would you save a misbehaving child?
Calvary looks a lot like my palms,
Ingrown hair, open wounds and skin.
Calvary smells a lot like his hair –
Soil for strangers to be buried in.
What must I eat? I have eaten all.
The heaven will be my sinner.
I am starving, love, what must I eat?
The heaven will be my dinner.
What sin was mine that you had made
A Christ to fear, forsake, atone,
A Christ who was a currency to be shared —
Not a Christ for Judas, and Judas alone?
Your Christ is a pawn with thorns for a wreath.
My Christ is a woman with gravestones for teeth.