Editing

[SivaRamanathan]

You offered words like 'Dieu Culinaire,'
'Nourriture Divine,'

I scooped up Diviyya Prasadam; Payash
is the warm milk that filled our cups.

‘All the men folk knew the thin bare shoulders’
and you inserted connectors like,’of’ and
a sea of meanings changed.

We ate out of your casseroles, you showed
me how deftly you could manage chopsticks.

I liked how we had cleared our plates and washed
the dishes. Warming up was a delight. I show you
my collection, you yours.

‘Why the third weird mongoose?’ and I said
it is the only tangible plastic one of the other two,
the first has a halo and the second was a hallucination.

Your daughter showed me how you had preserved
her baby tooth in see-through boxes; you talk of squirrels
in eaves in tiny square plots and din the words, ’Be Selfish,”
as we scrub the metal coir with soap suds
we have tidied up my poems.

We are two women with spines talking of writing
and editing poetry. I return having used your well living.







You offered words like 'Dieu Culinaire,'
'Nourriture Divine,' I scooped up Diviyya Prasadam;
Payash is the warm milk that filled our cups.
‘All the men folk knew the thin bare shoulders’
and you inserted connectors like,’of’ and
a sea of meanings changed. We ate out
of your casseroles, you showed me how deftly
you could manage chopsticks.I liked how we had cleared
our plates and washed the dishes.Warming up
was a delight. I show you my collection, you yours.
‘Why the third weird mongoose?’ and I said
it is the only tangible plastic one of the other two,
the first has a halo and the second was a hallucination.
Your daughter showed me how you had preserved
her baby tooth in see-through boxes;you talk of squirrels
in eaves in tiny square plots and din the words, ’Be Selfish,”
as we scrub the metal coir with soap suds
we have tidied up my poems. We are two women with spines
talking of writing and editing poetry.
I return having used your well living.

[dyerfrank]

You offered [proffered] words like 'Dieu Culinaire,'
and 'Nourriture Divine,' I scooped up Diviyya Prasadam; [over punctuated imho - no need for a semi colon it is a poem for goodness sake!]
The warm milk that filled our cups.

[no need to explain the warm milk, if follows on that it is diviyya prasadam, unless this is a
name of a person or some deity then use small letters not caps.]

‘All the men folk knew the thin bare shoulders’

[all the men? some maybe, men who were interested in thin bare shoulders, whose? yours? why not say? What are you saying here, men of a certain age, full of testesterone or village men, the men of out village knew your thin bare shoulders and what? loved you, lusted? or were they fmailiar with?] You could say if you wanted to, The young men of our village knew [recognised, were familair with her thin bare shouders and would call out to her!]

and you inserted connectors like,’of’ and
a sea of meanings changed. [sea of alternative meaning became apparant- how to say it though, that's poetry- your job]

We ate out of your casseroles, you showed me how deftly

[we cannot eat out of a casserole, we can eat out of a casserole dish, a caserole is a dish but we cannot eat out of it although a casserole dish is emmently eatable]

[Y]ou could could use chopsticks. I liked how we had cleared
our plates and washed the dishes.
Warming up was a delight. I show[ed] you my collection, you [showed] yours.
‘Why the third weird mongoose?’ I said [remove 'and']
it is the only tangible plastic one of the other two,
the first has a halo and the second was a hallucination.

Your daughter showed me how you had preserved
her baby tooth in see-through box[es] [only if plural teeth]
You talk of squirrels in [the] eaves in[of] tiny square plots and [d] in the words, ’Be Selfish,”
as we scrub the metal coir with soap suds
We tidied up our poems. We are two women with spines [two women with backbones? or prickly' you the poet has to say. We are not down-trodden by the world , we are tough, we are poets]

talking [We spoke of writing, we editing [our] poetry.
I return[ed] having used you well, living [and loving life].

Who wrote this work? It cannot be the same person that posts so often on here. It has a signature and I do not recognises it. A I stupid, maybe? I liked the effort, I see the story, it isn't so cryptic as we get on here at times, and for that reason it is prefered, but that is just my personal opinion. There are many basic English usage errors and the work seems delibrately careless, possibly that is delibrate to meet with the name of the poem... I don't know. I found it an interesting piece, I enjoyed and wish it has been more clear because I am slow on the uptake. I wish you , the poet , would spend some time on revison, it could be so much better.

[meenas17]

It looks like a narrative than a poem.

[mojave]

You offered words like 'Dieu Culinaire,'
'Nourriture Divine,'

We ate out
of your casseroles, you showed me how deftly
you could manage chopsticks. I liked how we
cleared our plates; rich saffron pulp, tamarind,
black cardamom fills the kitchen.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.*

We scrub our metal coir with soap suds
and tidy my poems; two women with spines
talking of writing and editing poetry. I return
having used your living well.

*Elizabeth Bishop

[SivaRamanathan]

I am posting three poems that were edited by my poet friend and mentor Donald Nigli

their mind, fine tuned to the Dhivya Prasadam.
Dieu culinaire (God’s culinary)/ Nourriture divine (Divine food) or Dhivya Prasadam

All the men folk knew ( of) the thin bare shoulders.


Vol. 25, November 2012
POETRY | INDIA
Three Poems
Sivakami Velliangiri
The Asia Literary Review





Silent Cooking and Noisy Munching

When I came to my husband’s hometown
I saw for the first time old women with gagged mouths
cooking for the gods, in silence.

Their breath did not pollute the offerings,
nor their spittle desecrate the dishes
only their arms swayed and perhaps their eyeballs.
I thought how unlike the witches of Macbeth
they looked, for these women moved about with grace
their mind fine tuned to the Dhivya Prasadam.
Not any woman can cook for the gods.
One must be chaste and pure, like unadulterated ghee
boil like jaggery and rise like milk. In short,
it takes thirty years to graduate.

So for thirty years I have done my silent cooking
made manna with words and said simply
in my heart of hearts, eat god eat
line by line, crunchy words, palatable punctuations
tangy rhythms moulded with meaning, and
thoughts weaned in silence but spoken as poems.


Chattai

The first time grandma wore a blouse,
she felt she had tarnished her brown skin.
All the men folk knew of the thin bare shoulders.
She ran to the temple and confessed
that she had merely obeyed the Maharani’s orders.

Sure she had lost her native natural gloss
when she carried rice pots on her head
(the anthapura boasted a female barber
who shaved off armpits and whatever).

The Maharani bade her women wear blouses
even to the temple. What my grandma missed
was the breeze on her skin. What she acquired
was a certain coy feeling and a sense of hiding
which was akin to sin.
____________
The anthapura was the harem of an Indian palace.


What She Said to Her Girlfriend

Though my lord has given me
a palace in every city
to match the seasonal mood
with interiors like an Inside Outside magazine
and furniture that speaks of star war design
I wish he had also thought of a poison-apple tree
at the back door of the house
where I could whisper and confess to it
all he had done to me the previous night.

Unpublished
The Marina and the Mongoose[tmi1]
(Why) The Third Mongoose
Sundays the extended family went to the beach.
For me it was the double-decker airplane kites.
Not sand pies and sand castles.
Further away a hawker sold plastic mongooses
trotting on two batteries. They got it for me. Nevertheless.
Making me familiar with three mongoose,
the natural mongoose that harass snakes
the battery powered plastic one
and the weird mongoose that came from nowhere sporting a fire halo
and ran exactly thrice around me as a baby
until grandma shooed it away with the palm fan.

[tmi1]The title should set the supernatural tone