Tin Men
They always said the same thing.
That they had lost them, that they broke,
that they calcified or plated over, wore out,
went under, never recovered. They always
said, I’ve been trying to find one, I’ve been
looking so long. And always, each time,
I would think I could almost hear it,
a distant drumming, a little life, my cheek
growing cold against that armor, my ear
pressed hard against the dead
echo of an abandoned cavity.
In those days, I thought I knew something
about disappeared hearts, and how to retrieve them.
Once, waking from a strange dream, I followed
a trail of blood, drops of rubies along a road
I had already taken, thinking I would trace
it to its source, that pulsing, elusive thing,
and cradle it in my palms with all the love
I thought it could give back. In my joy,
I tried to call out – but my voice came
tumbling in a breach of shredded scraps
from the slit at my throat.
The butcher’s knife with its bloody prints,
its gleaming alloy glinting like a grin.
My own heart gaping open, mined.
How much metal have I absorbed,
warmed in my body, and what
has it done to me?
Some nights I don’t know
what causes all that clanking.
My grandmother’s ghost in
the kitchen, or all the tin men
I have taken to my bed. A sound
like the drought wind on
a roof gone rusty after
years of percussive rain.
Banishing
Never forget that once invoked,
a goddess cannot go away
until asked to.
Leave your door open to me three
nights in a row and the circle will
come complete with me within it,
and in your rooms the smell of
sweet burning things.
Cover your mirrors, you who
cannot bear to look at yourself.
Rub sugar and spice over your doorway.
Bury your precious stones in ash.
Prepare for poltergeists.
Wash your body of the salt of
my fire eater’s tongue, black as
prophecy. Exorcise from your memory
the distant thunder of my voice.
Night bleeding into light,
the last crow before the sacrifice.
Make your offerings. Wood to oil, oil to flame.
I am more benevolent than most. Draw me
the outline of a door and I will withdraw, quietly.
I will not walk backwards. In your house,
not a shudder, no trace for days
but a relieved exhalation.
It is not what I will take;
it is what I will leave behind.
SHARANYA MANIVANNAN was born in India in 1985, and grew up in Sri Lanka and South East Asia. She is the author of a book of poems, Witchcraft (2008), and is working on a second collection and a novel. Her writing has also been published or is forthcoming in journals including Drunken Boat, White Whale Review, Ghoti, Softblow, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, Istanbul Literary Review and Pratilipi. A fortnightly personal column, "The Venus Flytrap", appears in The New Indian Express. She can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.
