Another Tara

Tara takes many forms

she spreads from breast to bone

I am just like her, just as good. I slope the way she slopes, and whoever does not recognise our sameness will be punished – he promised me that. Remember the slurping guru who refused to acknowledge me, who stood there with his wide legs, asserting his masculinity like a cowboy, until I raised my eyes that look like hers, making my fires known, and how little I fear retribution. We were both raised by motherless mothers, our etymological roots so close they might be touching.

Tara has a short body
a protruding belly and hard breasts

He mistakes my lowered eyes for my quiet humouring smile, his testosterone diffusing in the small room, although dissipation is my secret power. I hold my breath, holding myself in till I shake, his body convulsing as the poison spreads. Our hero skims the yellow froth brought up by the churning oceans, lapping until his throat turns blue. This is a learned pain, and when you touch me with wet hands I dissolve into pear-shaped crystals, a heap of salty edges on the ground.

Tara has three eyes
her hair lies in matted locks
occasionally scraped into a top-knot

She likes to take her clothes off after a few drinks, not for any sexual reason – she is a martyr for laughs. How ironic that a few years later she went on to win ‘best hair’ in the Miss India beauty pageant, and I’m ashamed of how sincere his face looks in this light, and what it might mean that his hands are trembling. It isn’t so black and white, and demons don’t exist in the usual sense, but we face the best direction in the cremation ground, and wait for her to sound the bell for danger.

like Kali she holds a sword and a skull

like Kali she wears a garland of severed heads
one for each sound of the alphabet

Her sexual posturing does not mean what you think it means, remember this is a feminist imagining, in the other version she grows from the tear that rolled down his cheek. When you look through her camera you feel strange, and ashamed at how much you didn’t notice. She scores lines into blue petals with the scissors that stay in her bag, big kitchen scissors better suited to animal slaughter. A global Goddess, possessed by so many languages, she variegates like a mood ring.

she sits in the centre of the waters
in a white lotus or sometimes a boat

We have similar lips (hers are wider), similar colouring (I’m a darker hue), and from a distance the same lotus leaf eyes. Sometimes we look the same in photographs, the letters of the alphabet stringing round our necks, cutting symbolism into our skin. I paint faces onto white petals in horror movie red, remembering when the guru drew on my forearm in blue biro, tracing a tattoo that the Goddess would approve of – the three eyes, the three harvests, the three good women.

like Kali, her tongue lolls
and her mouth oozes blood

Did you hear about the holy man who killed his pet mongoose, their little friendship destroyed by the black serpent’s blood, and a missed pause becomes meaningful. This is a caricature, but some of the features are cleverly drawn, the pale-skinned boys, the cloddy hands, the unmanly minds and the unwomanly bodies, drawing over each other again and again. When I picture you crying, the tears pollute your face like acid – how much harm cultural conditioning does to us both.  

she wraps a tiger skin around her waist
her body not as naked as Kali’s, but still indecent

like Kali she stands upon the corpse of her lover

she presses her foot upon his rigidity

He is interested in my mind, keen to learn my poetry, but when he discovers us rolling ourselves in the moss, dreamy smears of green and wine, he is embarrassed that he could fall for someone so base. She poked fun at my mosquito bites, then years later said something about curvy, but I’m not the type of woman whose explicit femininity saves lives. Our lips are stained red and the repetition syncs our bodies with the common voice. Her unbrushed hair signifies wild promiscuity.

serpents twist round her neck and legs
when it is Tara’s turn
she will unlock their jaws

She is not one of those mothers with red-cheeks and bosomy kisses, who memorises your numbers, while their own clouds disperse. There was a period when she refused to brush her hair, as if that could pale her beauty, and she only wore silver, although now she understands gold. And she took him to her body, saving him, her lover’s milk which stopped the spread of blue. The queer details exist in relation, and you say her name with the self-assurance that accompanies enlightenment.

like Kali, Tara will destroy the false you
facilitating your rebirth