Clitbait

fire, burning

there’s a fire that makes up my very core; raging and thrumming, it constrains yet consumes, fueling my every reason and it is the life behind my every word. those words that can so easily be laid prettily onto paper. in speaking, it is that fire creates and nurtures the venom that drips from my teeth as my sharp tongue lets loose with a snarl. 

and when i do, i snarl with due respect to that heat: a big “fuck you” to the guy-boy-imbicile that looked (looked, looked? peeked–examined–gaped–stared–scrutinized) my body up and down and asked how far my legs could spread. 

it is the same fire that warms my body, and creates the heat my cool fingers slip into as they coax galaxies from my most intimate space. when walls (the sacred-divine-safe inviolable-heat) clench, i am certain it is only my fingers of which they are unwilling to let go. 

and at the end of the day you can call my beautiful words ‘vulgar’ (and maybe they are (oh, they definitely are)), but i find no need to apologize for showing my power. i like the knowledge that when i move my hand between my thighs, it is i who has the ability to touch the universe; something you could never comprehend (nor will you ever learn to understand). the fire burning in my depths does not rage and rise with the purpose to scorn only for me to allow my voice to be meek. so in the inevitable turn of events where i cut you with my words, i will never not remind you that it is those very venom-laced words that are backed by sharp heat fueled by the fire that fuels the very wild- free, heat of my coveted divinity.

Caleb Sa

Don’t dare to go outside, my sweet lady

Although we’re just a bubble, ever-ready to burst,

You’re safe with us, I promise

I remember catching a bus a day before we would meet again

Crying, because I thought I was going to kill you,

For I had stepped into a world

Which was trying to live with covid while you have cancer.

And it feels like I can’t breathe knowing you won’t,

Between the grief-stricken gasps, gritting teeth through glaring tears

One might be assuming symptoms of that thing, when they are effects of the other

And I hate how the two interchange,

How our fear is preyed upon by them both.

What is going through your sweet head?

While I usually wear my heart on my sleeve, I stiffen up

When I see that you are guarding yours behind secret chambers,

For you’re a headstrong rationalist, a chin-up kind of woman,

But when the night has been rough to you,

And you wake up vomiting, with words I’ve never heard come from your mouth before,

That proud chin drops in your hands

And what I see before me is a scorned child with a distasteful gaze

As I try to hand you your peeled grapes or spiceless daal.

I’m sorry sad one, I feel like a terrible parent,

When we say the world outside is too big and bad for you right now,

For best intentions look so opposite

When the blue-suited baboons control what comes next.

I felt like I couldn’t offer much at first,

Helplessness hurts the most.

But I’m trying, really hard, to be your doctor,

Your friend, your mother, anything you want and need,

Even if that means at moments I have to stop being your daughter

So that I can get you to keep on being my mother.

It’s selfish, I know. And I’m sorry. 

-Anonymous

Metamorphosis

Bloom serendipity in my hands

I’ll pretend it’s uncalled

My hands, worn out. 

Today

I’ll try to sleep before midnight 

Bloom before I wake up

Strike me in the path

where rainbow is a decorum

Spit me to the dimension,

in it, I could see time

accused with duplicity.

Bloom

into the night.

Into the night 

which fail to surge my moan into a gender spectrum

I shall not see trees

painted black again 

nor I wish to see my

breath lessen between my smokes 

Bore me

if in melancholy, into the new space 

before it’s too late.

Bloom serendipity 

before my morning wakes.

Abhishek Arukuti

Pink Gouache

my orgasm is pink gouache,
dipped in water, bursting like a late sunset,
And it’s like fireworks,
the week I bleed,
earthy mud red.

this is a petition, for women,
to make the most of their ‘dirty’ blood days,
drink watermelon
and bleed,
and bleed,
coagulated pleasure,
pink, acidic,
vulgar.

fish, dipped in mustard.
sushi and rose water.

I can almost smell your disgust.
It turns me on.

this is a graph of pleasure,
a week long experiment,
a thesis, perhaps,
or a poem,
of fleeting sensations,
frantically bleeding unto paper,
blood, red,
pink pleasure,
oscillating this week,
between words and the clit.

a religious text for bodily dearth,
a pilgrimage site,
that smells like rust.

Bidisha Mahapatra  
bidishamahapatra.squarespace.com

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