Priyanka Roy

February 26, 1995 - India
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To the women from the graves

Women are rising from their graves, from their coffins in tattered clothes and battered bodies from the circle of death and are now marching down the streets, in flocks to let the world see them, borne in blood, tied to their mother's cord, they ascend with countless scars on their bodies, amassed over time, by centuries of oppression.
Thwarted and bodies fatigued of years of tales of protection and tenderness by agonised chaps.
They are marching downtown pouring stories like mud on their way for other women, mothers to collect and preserve.
Some crawl, some limp, some crouch -
Does Lord know what they have been through?
Some walk, steadily, clenching the burden of their breasts, oozing milk, neglected by their haughty inborn, defending them from strangers in congested buses, markets and clubs from uncles, cousins, paternal-maternal male relatives.
They are rising from their graves again
after a blistering deluge on Earth.
Dispersing and pinching out through the dark clouds - smiling, humming, lullabying
in languages local, rusty, thick.
Women are rising from their graves today
to avenge their mothers' outcry.
Call out.
Call out.
Call out.
To the women from the graves.
They are walking stout high,
holding their burdened breasts in their hands bleeding of injustices, like stigmas to the sky.
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