From the manuscript of Gods R Us
Simili
Narcissus drowning in onlyness
The rest in duplicity
In the Shower Thinking of Actaeon
Gaily the nymphs pretend
To man her prudity
Hard after a hunt Diana
Flirts water at Actaeon
Still in the Shower Thinking of Actaeon
What Ovid does not offer
What Slavitt does not explain
It was the water I say
It was the water she
Squirted
When you gawked that
Masked your trail
Your curs fell on you
Deaf to Actaeon
Jove’s Collar
How nice to have a wife
Who’s also sister you
Fornicate in the street
Then go home to eat
Cadmus is history
Stacked with crawl
The dermis
Malignant
These jungle skins are one
As Cadmus walks they sync
Don’t come back without her begins his story
Exile begins a hero
Above the ground the trees appear various
He looks at the pointed faces leaves held like shields
His immediate hand darts to hilt
What falls is trunk
Any arborist will tell you that
You can’t uproot history
History’s staunch
Axes scratch graffiti
For details go to Ovid
I just give
The gist of it we
Confront what we are we
Become what we battle
Aphrodite:
Amorous
But no amour?
Your cock-tip smiles
Spurting
Moonbeam
There’s a mouth
Doesn’t lie
On the Tail
What did you
Do with the bees
Hermes
Every which way according to the
Ithyphallic cactii
I am looking for the eyes of God and all I see are hollows
Your smooth lyre a lure
You know the score Circe
See my love 00dispossess
I’ll be swine
I’ll be godswine
Bring hollows
Cupid & Psyche
To p on you
To quote myself
My Daughter Philomela
The desire at the back of it all the
Right of a maker
Your
Instinct draws love
Trust commands duty
Little Philomela
You knead my face-putty playdough-nose
You enter verbs prod nouns
Body – a fact you do not separate yet
Isn’t it fun running in the open conquest of trees wrists knees crunchy hair
Twirling in a new dress Five husbands gawk Draupadi shuddering lockjawed
what’s thoughts where’s mind whose funpark how to be wrapped Krishna
Arms crossed knees fetal your sleeping position’s Leda
Every age imposes its season on you
You regardless permissive
O Philomela
A dog’s fooled when lover returns as thief
Jatayu’s goosed at Sita’s heist
I did not even search his face
I thought him son his
Ardor manner procedure
Honored your sister
Now nightingales
Pity Tereus’s father
Parent place the snakes on Medusa’s head
Ravana’s garden
The news is fragrance
Godliness in Ravana’s garden
Sita’s breath the breeze’s swoon
Ravana’s waylaid by a hair wave on the margin of a leaf
At the leaftip a punctual gliss
He holds the blade between his fingertips as infant hand
Turns it over
Looks at his palms
Turns them over and back
Eyes dilate
A vine relaxes grip
In the shade many shades
Colors without names
Where the trees keep their faces
What’s drooling in a dry web in a petiole
Listens
Lessons rhythm
Symphony expanding to the nth
Brahma’s Blood
Siva’s Pet
Brahmin-Daitya
Nectar-Navel
Ten-Head
Penance-Perfectionist
Seer-of-the-SivaTandavaStotra
Ravana
Turns to the sense in all this
Sita
To describe her
No adjective has Sita
Sita’s Rama’s adjective
SitaRam
Life of Rama’s life
Perfect Prkrti Sita
To be crucible
Had to be clayborn
Density creation’s material
Although
Paris is no Ravana
Helen no Sita
Ravana sees Troy burning
Sita mindless
Heart pendant lotus
Rama’s Coming
Ravana’s Comet
Lanka’s on a tail
Ode to Kali
Kali Ma
Tongue unshy
Your necklace chatters Skirt tassles sigh
Mercy Kali
Everyone’s Ma
Nobody’s Lover
Sister Daughter
Slaughter
As Promised Tithonus
There’ll be clusters ... presses ... drinks ...
Aurora runs
Aurora reddens
In the vineyard
By the corky
Tendrils on the
Stalks :
Raisins
These are previously unpublished poems from Mani Rao’s work in progress, Gods R Us.
This excerpt is an Almost Island exclusive.
Mani Rao is a poet, translator and independent scholar.Mani has ten poetry collections including Sing to Me (Recent Work Press Australia, 2019), New & Selected Poems (Poetrywala India 2014), Echolocation (Math Paper Press Singapore, 2014; Chameleon Press Hong Kong, 2003) and Ghostmasters (Chameleon Press Hong Kong, 2010). Her books in translation from Sanskrit are Bhagavad Gita (Fingerprint India 2015; Autumn Hill Books USA 2010), and Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader (Aleph Books India, 2014). Her latest book Living Mantra— Mantra, Deity and Visionary Experience Today (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) is an anthropology of mantra-experience among tantric practitioners in south India. Translations of her poems have been published in Latin, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, French and German. She did an MFA in Creative Writing from UNLV (2010), and a PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University (2016).