Something falls
silent
the night we return
from the chariot festival
to celebrate Lord Jagganath;
the last time I’ll come home
with the face of a flushed and happy
six year old just back from a street fair,
the smell of cigarette smoke and sweaty crowds
pressed on my flesh like perfume
when pushing my way
like a mole through soil
for a seat on the small wooden Ferris wheel –
tumbling-boxes we called them,
painted a lurid red and yellow, tilting dangerously,
overloaded, and moaning like an animal
in pain. It is late when we walk home,
a long way. Running to keep up with my neighbors
and a friend of my father’s who
has never witnessed this lavish Hindu festival,
a sailor called Salvador from Bombay
and whose ship is in town. I am in love
with him, all three and a half feet of me –
in love with his name, his beaked nose,
his stories of dogs, the sea, Jesus. How I blush
when he visits. Everyone teases me
as he blows me a kiss when he leaves. I never
sleep that night. Neither do my father,
mother, or grandmother. Holding me
in turn, they knead my thighs and calves,
as wave after wave breaks within me, my muscles
convulsing. My father curses the neighbors
who made a child of six walk such a distance;
my mother’s high voice says she has fever,
wipes my sweat, lays her soft lips on my forehead;
granny mutters girls shouldn’t be
roaming around anyway…; and I,
writhe on the bed,
suck in their terror like a black hole
while some invisible disease
like a wrathful angel
wrestles my flailing limbs to the ground,
leaves me to learn my broken body,
drag its burden the rest of my life.
Zilka Joseph was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata, and now lives in Michigan. Her work is influenced by Indian and Western cultures, and her Bene Israel roots. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review Online, Asian Literary Review, The Bombay Literary Review, as well as several international anthologies. Her chapbook Sparrows and Dust won a Notable Best Indie Book Award and was Notable Asian American Poetry Book. Her books Sharp Blue Search of Flame and In Our Beautiful Bones were Foreword INDIES prize finalists. Sweet Malida, her new collection of poems and prose, was published in the US in February, 2024. www.zilkajoseph.com
