My name is not Apay.
Not the vowels and one explosive sound from his lips
as he stands on verandah, calling.
I can eat him
but I detest the taste of linen;
ivory buttons lodge like thorns in my throat.
The chickens run underfoot,
clucking chaos:
They bulge for a moment

{between my claws}

before bursting into blood-soaked feathers,
balls of no consequence.

 

Some days, I think about power.
I have seen the black and white shadows –
stamped on hastily-strung bedsheets in the garden
on nights of human festival.

Have seen the men dressed in skins of my kind,

rubbing the oils of murder into their dense matted hair,

yowling senseless war cries, wearing the pelts of my neighbours.
I have seen how one thing tries to steal the power of another.
Just as I have woken to the smell of Ceylonese tea,
and watched the one who calls me dress through bamboo shutters.
He puts on the skin of the white man in three pieces;
hangs his gold watch on the taut drum of his belly,
a hibiscus in his lapel.

 

I know if he wants to,
he can eat another man.
Never mind what colour.
Eat the yellow ones.
Who smell of penises of my kind
taken through their mouths.
Eat those, who want to steal power but are confused about its source.

 

My name is not Apay.
You will not know how to say.
Open your mouth.
Show me your teeth.
Rattle the bars of your cage.
Rend the flimsy veils of canvas they drape to hide us at night.
Hide but never mute us.

 

My name is Grkkgrkrawrrawgkkrakppprrrskkrrssmmnnhmkkrrpp.
I do not eat him.
I do not relish the taste of tanned leather.

Shoes. Belt.

They hold in his softness.
Lace and rein.

 

Year on year, my orange stripes lighten.
The one who calls talks to his associates about
a white version of me.
I imagine a bleached self.
He is coming soon, insists the one who calls.
The albino with blue eyes from Kashmir.
From the snow-white ridges of Kashmir
I will never see.

 

My name is not Apay.
Some day, it will be nothing.
But now, it is the bitter-sour pungent scent-sound of
a bullet that has already left the gun.

 

 

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