Author: Clitbait

I let go of her hand 

I let go of her hand when
the men stumble steaming out of the pub.
Her salt fresh, calloused hands
from some sports I don’t
understand,
from warm afternoons under the sea,
the hands that lovingly
rub away my cramps.
I say yes to a threesome
because he won’t leave us alone
and I am weak, bloodshot, drunk,
bleary eyes begging for a taxi.
When they walk over,
I break from her, stumble over words
and she frowns.
It’s all good baby baby
so why am I sick with fear?
Why do they look at us
like slavering wolves
with their slick wet lips?

Millicent Stott

Quiet Love

There is anger in
chairs propped against doors,
worries about thin walls,
turning round first to check,
and her dad being
‘not completely okay with it’.
The pit of guilt afterwards that
you keep to yourself,
the strawberry smell of her hair,
catching slow breaths
and then
secret tears over a bible,
resigning yourself to
agony and torture and flames
for the quietest of loves.

Millicent Stott

girls don’t burn.

this, is not an apology.
this is not an anthem.
this is cold metal rage.

girls don’t burn.
the bravest girl i know,
caught fire when she was six
and she refused to cry.
she wrapped her tiny body in steel
and learnt to dance along mridangams.

courage deserves accolades
as does endurance.
silence cannot be inheritance-
turn it away from your door.

so, what if-
you are reduced to a kitchen appliance, lowest at maslow’s hierarchy of needs -daal, chawal, roti.
the kitchen, a threat.
the butter knife capable of
puncturing pulmonary veins.
provoking you to,
dance, in pain.
scream, mid dance.
and then scream, in pain.

i want to bake my own bread,
simmer beef in garlic,
eat it by the sea,
with my head in a hole.
i want an ice boxed capri.
i want sweet white wine.
crystal, clear, sharp
on my tongue like an apology.

i want to dance amidst women,
i want topsy turvy mirth,
i want paraphernalia,
i want to move my body along the madness.
i want to be hemingway.
once betrayed in love,
alive amidst septet kittens worth nine lives.

i am a catlady,
i am feline devastating beauty.
i am pied piper drowning men in desire.
i am bertha, i am medusa, i am shikandhi.
i am twenty and delhi drunk in hauzkhas.

i am a house on fire
with its women inside,
i am ritualistic penance
at a dead husband’s pyre.
or, foglight at heaven’s gate,
as women burn and burn and burn.

isn’t there oppression in benevolence?

and i don’t want
front-page empowerment ads,
discounted beauty products,
discourses on power, gender, policymaking.

all i need,
are my girls,
a bar and a bender.
my friends dancing nakedfeet
on table tops on too much tequila,
pouring fire
straight down their throats, sliding across dance floors.

if there is a past,
if there is memory,
if there is grief and it’s recollection – let there be drunk table top dancing and most importantly, laughter.

Adrija Ghosh

i am a quitter

i gave up on this poem before i even wrote it;
i gave up on my dreams before i even dreamt them
i heap goal upon goal, hoping one will stick

i am a madman, 
a revolutionist, 
a narcissist. 
i am everything i ever hoped i’d be 
but nothing like i’d imagined, 
my nightmare and my dream, 

i am learning,
growing,
taking a place in a society i never felt was mine, 
claiming a stake, 
teaching my lesson. 

i am worse than i ever feared, 
i am the best of me

Bella Smith

the newer, happier me

she dresses like a 1950s housewife,
with piercings and a denim jacket.

she rides a bike and drives a Camaro
(yes she’s an amateur mechanic).

she wears her afro high, proud, au naturel;
she smiles a lot, for no reason in particular.

she paints for fun, all the time, and she’s good at it too, 
it’s mostly Malcolm x and Angela Davis but it could really sell.

she buys her clothes at thrift stores for a fraction of the cost.
you could write an indie song/and or film,
where she’s a metaphor for feminism and self-love, or something equally pretentious;
she’s nice but she’s having none of your bullshit. 

she plays bass guitar at weekends, 
and ukelele on Sunday mornings.

she’s beautiful in the truest sense of the word.

she reads, the classics and likes Kerouac unironically.
she wears hipster glasses (ironically). 

she’s as woke as they come, unapologetically black,
      a wrecking ball to your complacency in the face of patriarchal white supremacy.

she bakes and cooks- vegan haute cuisine.

she’s funny, unbearably funny, side-splittingly funny, 
     because she really doesn’t care what you think.

she volunteers to feed the homeless and save the planet. she writes music, poetry, plays, short stories – a literary prodigy.

she goes out, she spends her week-ends gallery surfing then bar hopping, just to drink white wine and talk existential despair. 

centre of attention, but modest nonetheless. 

she’s thikkkkk, booty popping every which way! 
she has the type of body they write R&B songs about. 

she travels, practising ethical tourism, volunteering abroad,
     and leapfrogging from youth hostel to youth hostel.

she’s clever, fantastically clever,
cleverer than i can describe, MENSA smart but smarter.

she has friends, close friends, lots of friends 
   whom she has made a meaningful connection to, 
      who understand her in the truest sense of the word.

she’s successful, financially stable, even rich for her age.

but mostly, she’s complete in a way i am yet to understand. 
she’s not bored, she doesn’t lust for love, or for money, 
she doesn’t want for anything. 
she knows what is important.
she is important.
she has learnt the art of being, 
she just is, 
and that is simply enough for her.

Bella Smith

Sunday

Sunlight hitting
your skin

Brings out the
honey within

Your eyes hit me
with their rays

And it stays

For hours after
you’ve gone

The time when we
shone

Haunts me like a
stroke of luck

That will never return.

Hannah Hamilton 

Us Two

I miss two sets of feet
That fall apart and meet like balloons rising in the air
Not particularly going anywhere
Just looking for a better view
Us two, goofy ass walking in the park
Talking about everything and nothing
The whole world is set aside
When wits collide and multiply
Laughter breeds more laughter until it surrounds us
Like toddlers or gremlins, you shouldn’t feed us after midnight
Lest we let free the fright within
But we fit in when it’s just us two
Like tired feet in a favourite shoe
And I don’t feel so alone anymore
Lately it all feels like locked doors
Like cold hands
And frayed shoelaces
Like there’s no saving graces
I wish we were out there
Chatting shit like we don’t care
Wearing shorts in the summer air
Remarking how like glass our legs look when bare
Then sitting quietly for a while
Faces at ease, no forced elastic smile
No barrel of the gun as life picks up some speed
And I haven’t been able to ask, but I think you’d agree
It’s easier to hit the ground running
with two sets of feet.

Hannah Hamilton 

I Can Love You From Afar

I can love you
from afar

The door ajar

And I can see
you through the sliver

Your ring finger
pale and lonely and strumming the strings

The things I
think when I see you

Seem to swim
around each other like leaves caught in the drain

I came to be
near you

But now I fear
to disturb the wonderful that surrounds you

That grounds you
where I can’t possibly get to

At least I get
to watch it from here

Outside the room but still near enough to love you from afar.

Hannah Hamilton 

At The Wing Place

We sat at the wing place with the good Parmesan bones
me – egg wash chicken fried decided on a course
my sister – hard boiled buxom badass that I break against
She’s got this persona, right
a cultivated, professional disdain
no one sneers like my sis
sees so clear like my sis
in a wrestling match nobody’s feared like my sis, right?
You laugh but one time I had to put my forehead down on her nose
I cracked a molar, so I wasn’t all that intimidated

Once negotiated my sister
is dark and dorky and damaged
like her sister at the wing place
is moral and flawed and cynical and loving and flawed
and how could I tell her
how could I tell her
could I tell her

“I would have made a great sister” I ventured at the wing place
Parmesan bones, a lemony, tang sauce air floated
we have had secrets between us, unsuccessful
except for this one, this so large, so large

She canted her head and looked at me with one eye
the wise eye, given up by Odin at the root of a winding tree
I am a year older
I am much more educated
I am childless and guileless before her stare
I am naked at the wing place sitting for her judgement

“Yeah,
you would have.”

I told them all on Fat Tuesday, 2020
She didn’t remember this story
won’t till I read this to her one night, drunk
on affection and love and sisterhood

Nonah Cagney Palmer

 Mother, Father, Sister

Mother, father, sister,
The ceiling is tearing.
The brown brick is cracking 
Underneath the contours of our feet,
The radio doesn’t work anymore.
It plays the same tune again 
And again,
Our ears know routine. 
Rainwater leaks into our home 
Through our eyes, down our cheeks,
But we reach for the cement
And start fixing.
We fix and we fix until-
 

Mother, father, sister,
The water is at our ankles now.
The cushions on the chairs at the dinner table
Are forgetting our figures
And when we eat, we do not remember who we are. 
But there is food, 
And Grandmother taught us how to swim. 
 

Mother, father, sister,
Gratitude feels wrong,
When instead I can carve our initials 
On the tiles in the empty kitchen
Just before the floor gives away. 
 

Mother, father, sister,
The sky is on the ground now
And we will never see the sun again.
All the stars,
All the stars are dead. 
The stove won’t light anymore
But it will never be cold in this home.

Aarti Mukhedkar