four poems

by Prahi Rajput

straight outta pandora 

                  You are the only one who can save me. Throw yourself (at him). 

                                “dialectic between presence and absence”

absence from consent empties the dandy’s availability, 

artificial if abundant— in right-hand presence & praise, complicity 

is not The Vice because it agrees exclusively— one Object 

is not a commodity 

until it has been spilled & spelled at large— the abbreviation 

of greed by all that is human, treacherous & tortured —

fate scheduled as waste, origins 

consuming & smoking landfills in waiting poise. 

                                     Epochs cheeky, Symbols cheekily 

Dandy, fine & fining —Bourgeoising desire’s appetite, it is 

demanding within/out of reach —parallels 

Lulu swings from arms & hardwires, nothing 

More mortal as the first grip, 

excruciating & striving — attainability is the curious 

work of the lesbian’s agony, unspeaks 

after each catastrophe, tight-lipped attester, 

unveiled in mourning the decadence, fickle. Become extinct, the style 

In emaciated unheardness/erased as the audience 

As much as us in our pathology —homeliness is the faintest hint.

In typical fashion, The Perversion is The Unasked,

slight as a characteristic*, showing up to get Lost

(*negativity breeds negativity

negativity meets brutality

negativity with one pair of eyes can multiply unendingly 

it comes onscreen if it only has eyes 

for the object/negativity lurking is thus 

prowling, on fleek) 

Commitment of/Committing to the lesbian is obsessive 

for it is The Spontaneous (bystander) with shoulders 

someone loves once as a confidante — reliability of enough 

trueness to move with the times. The One 

who re-surfaces, without a boned hope to pick, the guileless past, 

ensued. The Icon — sentimental & subversive. Hundred  

Years as an aesthete with a flair for libertine love, The Nature 

to associate is Falling on hard times, 

reputation on thick water like ice keeping the propeller 

from running except in Circles & in this leisure, 

allure forms a chastised body, in exchange— apart from that— 

relinquishment to de rigueur 

doom, inhibiting all voluptuous from separating 

until a losing streak is to defeat what discreet is to penance. 

Therein is the merge awaiting, 

fusing denial & compelling emasculation

Is kinky in the hands of anyone, shortening the possibilities 

Of claim if it swells like territoriality, a deathless & deathbed 

kind of thing          “dialectics at a standstill.”

my mother banished me to the queer quiet 

and I didn’t have the chance to know the difference between 

the skulking lesbian, the galled lesbian, the malfunctioning lesbian. 

I have been de-fetishising as capably as the toolbox 

I never had the pleasure of knowing. I met my father 

and he was in another refuge and we didn’t pretend like 

I could be more unfamiliar with his corduroys than I was. 

I learned to practise aloneness at six every morning 

and practiced silence much earlier 

To tease. It takes many hours to practise from scratch 

when his carpenter pants didn’t even sit right on him 

and the number of times he wore them, he must have practised 

creasing a little less. Hardly ever, I mean. I do not see traces 

around my eyes, chin, or cheeks. 

In short, I am not jowly. I know a stern lesbian 

when I see one. I know a missing lesbian

and I can dissect a lesbian like nobody’s business. It is not the business to forge 

the knife in the back, in the throat, in my arms. My jaw vibrates 

when a lesbian sees the light. My jaw vibrates 

when a talking lesbian implants with a bare thread 

and the last body I gave was his. I think giving up a body is necessary 

for precise measurements of names. I do not want to make the mistake 

of slipping out of a tight space again. 

The lesbian opening up, it can only be surgical.

It can only be restorative, to put it back in their place. 

In Foucault’s words, The Homosexual was now a Species 

First off, the jacket said, do not disturb 

at this unseemly hour— we are going through dismissed        

                   weakness dragged into a minivan 

next to authoritarian whim              the disposed, the disposing 

like sealed binders of masculinity            rats squirting 

on pitch-black pages in amber bloom         bridle of stench on the attacked  

vacating crumbling houses that she does not cheer 

at her age —half-coerced & we do not elbow frontally— half-seductive 

either way, we never think it is a mislaid effect 

like putting cause in the rebel — we haven’t thought of velvet 

negligence as recklessness that we salvage in gender food—obscene 

alliances striking 

paliperidone injections on the unabashed, conquered butt

out of enthusiastic machismo 

out of souvenir blight 

out of megaphones, the flip-pity phone 

when we breathe, we gulp mouthfuls of drapes segregated, 

nursing-mothering laced —our affixed parts in this pleated closet, 

our hardly worn soirees         treatment so far (uncured) abandoning, administering, testing               imaginary & quizzical filth from the long sullied      one with the walls 

when we disinfect —masturbating as top-half and bottom-half, 

our non-binaries ripe as canoodling, clinging our boundaries in sequence

cajoling —we cannot disappoint ourselves & all that can be done 

to a patient is encouragement but she turns her back

encouragement but the drool makes its way to her

encouragement but the blemished needs more pillows

encouragement but the small mirror is a speckled miniature

encouragement but in a swindling bathroom, water comes out 

of a sedimented tap like it extracts openness

encouragement mangling the patient          gastric upsets, clogged tracts, accumulation cleans & alternates misery, demonstrates folding 

affection more than twice 

                                 (unfolds when she doesn't see the censoring, the excision)

It is not the phantom dick working through us — it is the embodied eerie 

tethered to fermented dialects     short-haired, small-town dyke, cigarette behind ears          imploring a sexual commerce of credibility for unsuitability, 

ivies of expired vicinity              neologisms like spectral awareness 

of bulldykes are humanoids            in flesh —disarticulation of the full, bulging human              

                  They steady. 

It is Thursday and it is Dyke Night 

When taken by surprise, I does not exist 

whilst fiddling a wallet recently purchased 

that is still to show signs

Of damage, the wear and tear of the man about town. 

I wore the Stud  

colours, glimmering & bouncing off pavements 

that the roadkill 

Of I’s neighbourhood did not leave a trace. 

I finds no pride 

inside the glaring heat & noise throbbing, 

unmindful of winters. 

I moved from the bar 

to the dancefloor & durations sprinting,

Seasons piling, 

I does not have time to understand why lez girls 

Were all the Los Angeles girls oiled up? 

I holds the glass 

To all our chests & questions out aloud, maybe Turkish oil wrestling 

was the thing for sliding inside ropes.

I lost some of the rigour when 

I lost a father & standing straight is all I can. 

I was in the middle of learning a whole vocabulary 

after entering/exiting a fatherland last year though 

I is not sure how skin shrunk of memory goes up in flames. 

              Here is another news that I did not disclose, 

I came to own the hunting rights over granting rights. 

I is not that formal to announce it as identification. 

I is not legal until recovered. Tonight, I will not 

solemnise, bequeath any love. Try as you might,

I never had the deed for a runaway.

Photo of Prahi Rajput

BIO: Prahi Rajput (she/they) lives in Lucknow, India. Their work has appeared in Muse India, Voidspace Zine, t'ART, Gulmohur Quarterly, Roi Faineant Press and elsewhere. Theory as criticism seeps into my writing, and I like exploring how identities are shaped through language. I can be found on my Instagram: @theplatypussies