Perundevi is a leading contemporary Tamil poet who has published ten collections of her poetry over the past two decades. She has also published three volumes of essays in Tamil on subjects ranging from gender, caste, religion, nationalism and the arts and edited an anthology of critical essays. She has also published two volumes of micro-fiction. Perundevi is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in Siena College, upstate New York, with many academic publications to her credit. She divides her time between Albany, NY and Chennai.
Writing the definitions
How many ways
can we understand the female tongue?
Not as beads of vivacity.
not as a pomegranate's redness
not as a pet parakeet’s song
In its recurring refrain
it is the whirling signpost
at the crossroads of a storm
Heedless of direction
it is not even the trace of a roadmap,
Destination is never its goal
Sometimes It tinkles like
an anklet of disappointments.
Other times it is the prayer
of yearnings never in surplus
Yet other times
it is lightning that wants to play
hide-and-seek with the trails
a flash of light that stings the eye
Not quick to yield meaning
nor like diamonds in its dazzle
nor heralding any divine commandment
nor aligned with any moral
the female tongue is
our concord with freedom, as also
our grief for our distance from it
In the card deck of sentences
that befriend and betray fatherhood
it's a joker-trump
Screensaver
I’ve set a hibiscus
as the screensaver
on my phone
Whether it is day or night
the flower is always in bloom
It’s nothing special, of course
I can playfully
raise or lower
the brightness of the blue
sky in the background
Why, I can even change
the very colour of the sky
The hibiscus in this screensaver
looks smoother to the eye
feels more intimate
than the old hibiscus,
faded red and crawling with ants,
in the backyard
Its compact sky
fits snugly in my palm
Fat woman
I am a fat woman. Even a short walk
leaves me gasping for air
I don’t bother much about grey hairs
I need glasses to read
the fine print
I still can’t read
I fall asleep easily
No racy dreams
Lying on the bed at night
I look out the window
A dazzling festivity of stars
When will that foolish god
realize that there is no need
to offer proof
with such spectacle?
Also see:
‘Eternity, though, never blinks’ – Circumference (2014)
Three Superb, Sexy Poems by Tamil Poet Perundevi – Agents of Ishq
‘Nothing imagined is excessive’– Scroll.in (2020)
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