Saints Day Bazaar

Fatepur Ssikri, India is where the Saints Day Bazaar was celebrated.

Saints Day Bazaar

Unsure if I have the temperament
to travel to India while my mother falters,
I read advisories
and newspapers report terrorist unrest
of the Tamil Tigers erupts in border towns.
Malaria pills taken,
guide and history books read.
I make a passing acquaintance with an epic-
Himalayan born Rama journeys
to Sri Lanka to rescue

Sita, his chaste wife from immolation.
My whole perspective askew. I expect (and find)
oppressive poverty, trash, humid temperatures.
Can I survive the assault of hunger
and need and unknowing, be able to pack
and travel to the next destination intact,
unscathed? Advise, oh goddess of travel.
(St. Christopher, protect me.) I fake
awe at the Chola bronzes in the Madras Museum,
where to find the best bargains

in rugs, sapphire rings, silk saris,
thinking only of the oppressed starving entire
country many moving stones
for skyscrapers a few bricks at a time
balanced on their heads.  
Will the women and children crack
into a million pieces under the tonnage
their bodies support? Sadhus contemplate
their next life, diapered in dhotis, they see
the futility of our choices, the materiality we pick.

Legless beggars navigate Delhi on rolling
wooden boards, no tricks,all this out in the open,
on the streets. I dodged fish escaping
market baskets as cobras dance out of cloth
bags to flutes. Shopkeepers brew chai tea
sit crossed legged waiting for customers
to enter their shops, their brown eyes liquid,
seductive, fresh from the temple of Lakshmi
incense curlicues before her shop shrine.
In any instant, my heartbreaks.

I enter a mosque, kick off my shoes,
no temple socks, quick, a boy takes
my hand abrupt and culls me.
Barefoot, I step in red spit
and dog shit
and a whereareyoufrom America I will guide you,
my temper flares 
come to my family’s booth,
here bones of the Sufi saint rest in the marble
tomb-ShiekhSalamChirsthi.
I try to shoo my guide away, his grasp tightens,
his rant continues, I cannot flee

the crush of pilgrims on this Sufi saint’s day
bazaar engulfs me Who blesses childless couples
his voice insistent, in my face.
Jostled, I falter, almost faint, await rescue.
What can a single person do? There is no escape.
The mosque gate recedes, the boy throws a fit.
This way this way. He persists
berates me to buy some trinket,
tugs me towards his tent.

And I turn into stone, his epic rage joins
my subcontinent, his desperation a souvenir
I resist, and take, and outside 
temple beggars, a wall of hands,

which one, which one,
do I hand these few rupees to?

Pushcart Prize Nominee. Middle Creek Publishing & Audio
Fall 2020.