This poem is the third of six written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). For this poem, I borrowed from the story of Akka Mahadevi, a 12th century sanyasini (female saint) and poet from Karnataka in India. Her entire life was spent in a search for the Divine, to the point where she refused the proposal of a local king (but then was forced to marry him). One day she left home, renouncing even her clothes, and traveled until she found an ashram. She remained there, writing a few hundred poems, or vacanas which tell of her journey, her struggles, and her devotion to the Divine (in this case, Shiva). If you want to read more about her, check out this article on her and this post from Read Write Poem profiling her and her work in their obscure poets series.

-Nicole

——————————————————–
You’ll probably think
that it’s the old story of the woman and the snake, claim that I
took in strange fruit like a foreign cock, think that I
shed my robes of loyalty for something
on the edge of the forest with drumbeats that might
make you smile like death in a clean red curve
across your neck. But the truth is,
you never knew the breath beneath the brass, the chimera
unfolding in a time-lapse burn under
layers of gold trophy paint. You shined my skin, checked
your reflection in my mirror, and moved on,
our lives burned on to the back of your eyelids like
you and I were the Ten Commandments written in
rock. Thou shalt be beautiful, and I shalt
never be home. I, your trinket goddess,
an Aphrodite in blond and curve. I was always
on your shelf, at your table, and in your
bed. And now I

walk,
casting off these clothes,
dropping the dream behind me in textile letters as I
split the forest open behind our house. First, my
shirt, sliding off my shoulders like button-down sin. Then, my
skirt, deflated and lying open-mouthed in
crumpled shock. Next, my
bra and underwear, wept like tears in black rayon
behind my back. And finally,
my shoes: I walk out of them, leaving behind
a pair of screaming twins – two mouths of
agape, empty leather. This is where
the snake meets the apple meets the
unripe woman in the forest meets the
music of jasmine light. It’s
the accident of seeing angels shed their skins in your dreams
and wondering why you never noticed how
your own skin is so wrong –

how it crests where you dip,
how it opens where you close,
how it juts out like elbow razors into the air
where you are rounded like breasts. I
almost step on a snake’s discarded skin,
a forsaken dead shell in dulled, brown glass like
a dirty prayer cast in the dust of weary, old-boned life and then
preserved to be rewritten in
some dead text that forgot that

God
breathes in diamond dust on their worst days and
scatters sparkle onto the ocean’s sun-crowned, dancing back
on their best days. You can’t tell me that
what I hear on the edge of the forest

isn’t their song.

And now, I walk on, past that discarded shadow
of crinkle, eyes, and scales. I walk on,
shedding your golden trophy skin from my body. I walk
on, breaking through the forest until I reach
the other side, that liquid song, that light, that place where
naked is holy and holy is everything
that you never were. But I think that

someday, you will finally understand
this. It will be the day when the
light inside you refuses to stay dead to the dawn,
when the keening in your chest rises to a roar
and threatens to break you open,
and when your heart quits writing lamentations to get your attention
and begins carrying picket signs instead. Then,
and only then,

will you ever
understand.

Written 1/15/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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