EVEN MALEFICENT

I hold my face in my two hands,
 and the rest of me falls apart.

So I hold my feet in my two hands,

 and now I am on the floor.

Oh not this again, 

me longing to fly.

Searching for wings, 

 I find torn flesh, 

this too, ripped,

 by two hands.

Nameless men, named men. 

 Even Maleficent 

took lifetimes of loneliness, 

to find her wings again. 

© Shaista Tayabali

at DVerse Poets

image from Allure magazine

JEONG KWAN

There is a nun in South Korea
who walked up the side of a mountain
to Baekyangsa temple, when she was
seventeen, and her mother had just died.

You have come here to live,
said the nun who opened the door,
not asking a question; just telling
a truth that had yet to manifest.

Jeong Kwan unpins her freshly
laundered robes and whispers them
around her shoulders. How old is she?
Only the mountain knows.

But the taengja tree outside her window
is 500 years old. Hardy orange, it still
bears fruit, and Kwan uses the sour juice
in her cooking.

She pickles lotus root three different ways,
then checks on jars of kimchi. She never
uses garlic, onions, scallions, chives, leeks.
Too distracting for a monk.

But soy?
Soy excites her.

Sometimes I agree with the world
that to be a mother is everything. Is the key
and the lock. Jeong Kwan vowed at seventeen
to not burden children with the pain of her death.

There is something in that,
for me.

We can't all choose to opt out
or the world would stop spinning
around humans. Bees might take over. Or
rats. Or better still, dust motes of light. Or dark.

Jeong Kwan unfurls petal after petal
of the lotus flower, soaking the skirt
in water. Later, she will pour the water
into a pot and you will want to gulp the tea

as though you are parched. You are parched
and this is the tea of enlightenment. The tea
that rings the bell of truth. Life can be this
way. An art. A craft. A discipline. A dance.

Three slices of lotus root, pickled
in an heirloom of soy sauce.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2017

Jeong Kwan is considered one of the finest chefs of this world by the finest chefs of this world, who are almost exclusively male. Life can be this way. Women can be this way. Happy Women's Day today and every day to all my friends and sisters, my mentors and teachers and heroes. We can be anything. We can do everything. Certainly, we can.

(Poem linked to Dverse Poets for Open Link Night) 

AMAL, NADIA, HANYA AND MICHELLE

For some years I stopped actively seeking out music. I'm not sure why. Music is memory, and not all memory is happy or sad; some memories are layered with depression, anxiety, fear, loneliness. Lately though, thanks to Desert Island Discs, I have found myself returning to music. I love the unexpected choices. I find myself delving deeper into the archives, particularly glad when I discover philanthropists like Sigrid Rausing and humanitarian activists like David Nott, vascular war surgeon. My favourite episode is with Aung San Suu Kyi - I think it is the only occasion when the interview takes place not in the BBC studio, but in Burma, in Daw Suu's home.

These days I am inspired by Amal Clooney, international human rights lawyer, currently attorney to a young 23 year old Yazidi girl, Nadia Murad, who managed to escape her captors and be smuggled out of Mosul to Stuttgart. She has recently been named a UN Goodwill Ambassador, but of course this involves her telling and retelling the tales of crime that were committed upon her person, and the bodies of thousands of women still remaining in the camps.

A friend of mine asked if I wanted to be part of a new book club; the first book we read was Hanya Yanigahara's A Little Life - a book that divided readers last year. Some thought it relentless in its portrayal of the suffering of its central character, Jude. And others, like myself, though no less fatigued by such a detailed rendition of a broken life, found truth in a narrative that does not see its way to an easy resolution. Nadia Murad may have escaped ISIS, but she will never be able to forget. We, in our lives of comfort, safety and daily entertainment, may find it a little too easy to imagine that suffering can be papered over. Especially the suffering of girls, of women.

And so to remind us to shore each other up, and stay alert and conscious to the ever present denigration of girls and women, we have our big sister Michelle Obama, a truly admirable mentor, to speak for us. She reminds us we are right to hold our boys and men to a higher standard than those among them who enslave, assault and abuse with impunity. Some of us, Michelle and myself included, and hopefully you too, reader, know men with integrity, refined intelligence, kindness and a strong sense of justice. To them we turn and hold out our hands. In the fight for human rights, we need each other. We have always needed each other.