STATE LINES
California Poetry
Who is speaking? This is the first question I ask when I read a new poem. Sometimes the speaker is the poet. More often I encounter a stand-in or persona. On one level, the speaker of Vandana Khanna’s “Creation Myth” is a mythical goddess questioning her status among gods. But behind that mask I sense a contemporary voice offering a sharp critique of gender roles. The lines “Let spite seal/ my girl-lips against the wildness until there is/ no one left to teach how holy, holy breaks apart/ like honey in the mouth” feel like the poem’s key transition. That statement is a call to subvert another male-dominated realm.
Creation Myth
Who said god and thought of me: the girl with a hundred skulls clattering at her throat — necklace of little deaths, necklace of bony fate. We are the reluctant who turn their backs on wooded fires, on jeweled deer in headlights, on turn-the-page romance that never gets past first base. This is the world they feed you — retouched, winsome and wooed. Only the good get to heaven. Only the fairest get the goods: The guy. The god. The eternal and everlasting. Let spite seal my girl-lips against the wildness until there is no one left to teach how holy, holy breaks apart like honey in the mouth — the hum of incarnation swarming my tongue, rising — unbearable — like a welt. “Creation Myth” appears with the permission of the author. All rights reserved. Vandana Khanna was born in New Delhi, India, and is the author of two full-length collections: “Train to Agra” and “Afternoon Masala.” She lives in Los Angeles.