{"id":13302,"date":"2023-12-30T17:16:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-30T17:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=13302"},"modified":"2024-01-09T22:16:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T22:16:03","slug":"two-poems-taneesh-kaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=13302","title":{"rendered":"TWO POEMS – Taneesh Kaur"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEACHED WAIL OF BETRAYAL<\/strong>
\n 
\n\u201c…women will reject womanhood itself, if the condition \u2018unable to move around freely\u2019, both physically and psychically, is seen necessarily to accompany it.\u201d
\n–L\u00e9onie Caldecott, \u201cThe Dance of the Woman Warrior\u201d
\n 
\nBody. You have absorbed and adorned
\nrage from so many angles
\nfrom so many people of different pitches
\nbass to soprano
\nwho don\u2019t know
\nwomen,
\nwhat it\u2019s like
\nto live most of your life
\ndeprived of a clitoris.
\nThe deep betrayal
\ndown to the breath
\nof a beached wail in
\ndistress left in the wake
\nof a wave of your death,
\n 
\nMom. Where was the womanhood
\nsisterhood
\nyou so elegantly displayed
\nto your friends
\nwhen you were flesh?
\nWhere was that sacred bond
\nfor my sex, for me, your daughter?
\n 
\nKali. Shakti. Devi.
\nShining One. Great Mother.
\nAm I a woman,
\nwith pieces taken?
\nKali, Feminine Force
\nCould I carry a child
\nand not hate my womb?
\nThis force that runs from the earth\u2019s core
\nto my root up through my vast mother land
\ncan I accept it
\nwithout using it against myself?
\nMy body?
\n 
\nThese are existential questions.
\nAt the core of society
\nwe are taught to hate ourselves, women,
\nprotecting our cave fertilized, unfertilized
\nwhile doused in rage, enraged.<\/p>\n

\n

 
\n(previously published in Beyond Words Magazine<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/pre>\n
 
\n________________________________________
\nRECLAIM LAUGHING<\/strong>
\n 
\nMy humor is hard to access.
\nIt must be some kind of
\nroom it hides in
\nuntil I have nothing
\nand then it emerges to say
\nsee? Things are still
\nworth laughing about
\nmy laugh reveals
\nlife as a finite
\ngift a mortal joke
\nand I remember that God
\ndoesn\u2019t want us to suffer
\nthat we\u2019re put here,
\nall of us, with our own
\npurpose we learn
\nour strengths our
\nweaknesses learn to make
\nthem our strengths
\nI\u2019m sensitive,
\nand that\u2019s positive
\nand I\u2019m careful
\nwith my words and I
\nlove that about myself
\nand I shouldn\u2019t
\nhate
\nwhat I love about myself
\nand I realize humor is one
\nof my strengths, it\u2019s been
\nused against me, laughing
\nI\u2019ve experienced
\nthe worst of schadenfreude
\nfrom kin
\nand it\u2019s time to reclaim
\nlaughing time to
\nlaugh time to create
\na legacy of laughter
\nto smile at nothing
\nthe whimsy of the clouds
\nand not feel stupid that laughing
\nis a gift and
\ngratitude lifts
\nand not trust fall
\ninto that familiar plaster smile
\nthat hides a peculiar kind
\nof depression<\/p>\n
\"\"Taneesh Kaur is a teaching artist of East Indian descent, based in the Bay Area. She is a social justice advocate whose first love is poetry, and uses nature to understand and dismantle systems of mental and physical oppression. They have their MA in linguistics from SF State with a year and a half of training in Mexico and Chile. Se habla espa\u00f1ol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEACHED WAIL OF BETRAYAL   \u201c…women will reject womanhood itself, if the condition \u2018unable to move around freely\u2019, both physically and psychically, is seen necessarily to accompany it.\u201d –L\u00e9onie Caldecott, \u201cThe Dance of the Woman Warrior\u201d   Body. You have absorbed and adorned rage from so many angles from so many people of different pitches [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[217],"class_list":["post-13302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-art-by-seema-kholi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13302"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13570,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13302\/revisions\/13570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}