Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Lion
- Entomological Specimens
- Practising Your Skills
- Insomniac
- Taster
- What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
- Bad Day in the Office
- You Are Not
- The Gold Bangles
- My Mother's Hair
- ‘Jesus Saves’
- Ticking
- On Ellington Road
- Cousin Migrant
- The Daughters
- Different Principles of Enclosure
- Day Ghost
- This Morning
- The Bird
- Almost September
- Phone Call on a Train Journey
- Small Hands
- In the Coroner's Office
- April
- 18th of November
- Notes Towards an Elegy
- The Urn
- The Rain That Began Elsewhere
- Gloves
- My Father Wants to be a Rooftop Railway Surfer
- Ghazal
- Ghazal
- Ode to a Pomegranate
- Bulbul
- Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Lost Poem
- Large and Imprecise Baby
- Wireman
- Barbule
- The Found Thing
- Woman at Window
- Mr Beeharry's Marriage Bureau
- Mrs M Unravels
- Hummingbird
- Ballad of the Small-boned Daughter
- Acknowledgments
You Are Not
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Lion
- Entomological Specimens
- Practising Your Skills
- Insomniac
- Taster
- What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
- Bad Day in the Office
- You Are Not
- The Gold Bangles
- My Mother's Hair
- ‘Jesus Saves’
- Ticking
- On Ellington Road
- Cousin Migrant
- The Daughters
- Different Principles of Enclosure
- Day Ghost
- This Morning
- The Bird
- Almost September
- Phone Call on a Train Journey
- Small Hands
- In the Coroner's Office
- April
- 18th of November
- Notes Towards an Elegy
- The Urn
- The Rain That Began Elsewhere
- Gloves
- My Father Wants to be a Rooftop Railway Surfer
- Ghazal
- Ghazal
- Ode to a Pomegranate
- Bulbul
- Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Lost Poem
- Large and Imprecise Baby
- Wireman
- Barbule
- The Found Thing
- Woman at Window
- Mr Beeharry's Marriage Bureau
- Mrs M Unravels
- Hummingbird
- Ballad of the Small-boned Daughter
- Acknowledgments
Summary
You are not the ageing tortoise shell. You are not the pillows of my hands.
You are not the metallic taste in my mouth
when I wake
(though you could be those threads running underneath my tongue).
I doubt you are the strands of hair which survive
on my windowsill
(and are likely to have lost their film of neem oil).
Though you could be the windowpane itself, which
allows me the view of the sky;
the interesting birds.
(You are not the birds).
You are not hidden in bone, you do not bloom
in the marrow,
You are (in my opinion) not the rain in November
that studs my scalp.
(But you might be the heat pressing against my body in the market souk near the mosaic-mirrored shisha stall).
You are not the sacred cow, a murmur in the heart or blood-spit in the sink.
If I open my book you might well be the fly's open wing dashed on the page.
You are not the hand of god on an incoherent
foetal face.
But yes, I think you might be that moment
when the clouds ripen
(just before the rain, before it hits the cloth of my dress, my cold hands).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Small Hands , pp. 10 - 11Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015