How I Lost My Name
At some point Christian missionaries came to the temples
and interrupted the scholars and questioned the philosophers
and took my family’s land and took our books and took our heavens
and spoke of new scripture and reaped the bounty
of all this taking with one decade after
another they told my ancestors that this
god had always been theirs they built their schools
and spoke of charity they brought
their liquor and their tobacco
and let the soldiers come and rape my grandmother
and drew too much attention and
grew careless so new thieves came and took the gold
and the brass and left a fire that burned the house with all of
the photographs and my mother’s wedding sari.
Savasana
This is your time, your practice, your message
earth mother power lover you
want another tattoo one for women
remind yourself to look up Sanskrit words and
honor each sunlit space with truth and love
and purity. Tell us all about them
shanti shanti shanti
with your deepest breath out
know that I brand you
smiling thief most wicked colonizer
star mandala unalome chain maker
butcher of language burglar of vedas
harbinger of plagues death caller
given the chance you'd suck bloody henna
from my hands and wipe your mouth on my hair.
Rita Mookerjee's poetry is featured or forthcoming in Lavender Review, Sorority Mansion Review, and Spider Mirror Journal. Her critical work has been featured in the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. She is a PhD candidate at Florida State University specializing in contemporary Caribbean literature with a focus on queer theory.