Triage

By Margaret Mascarenhas

Savage. Searing. Compelling. Images and words that are like ice picks piercing the heart. Mascarenhas dazzles ... and hurts.- SHOBHAA DE In this evocative collection of poetry, flash memoir and sketches, Margaret Mascarenhas challenges still prevalent myths about romantic love, treating it as a medical emergency, whose obsessive nature transcends gender and sexual orientation. This is a body of work that also subtly conveys the intimate and visceral traffic between text and image and, in the process, asserts the curative and restorative powers of writing and art.   'Imperious, yet insistently vulnerable, Margaret Mascarenhas writes into the still unhealed wounds of loves past and present, exposing through her tightly knit, even queer, verse, the glorious vagaries of the human heart.' - Rosalyn D'Mello 'Give me bread and poetry, and make the poetry the rich, sensual, kingfisher-coloured poems that make up Margaret Mascarenhas' Triage. A wickedly intelligent, major voice in Indian writing, Mascarenhas will remind you that poems are as essential, and as satisfying, as fresh-baked bread.' - Nilanjana Roy

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: May 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9789351160069

Margaret Mascarenhas

Margaret Mascarenhas was a writer, editor, teacher and independent curator of American and Indian origin. She wrote two novels Skin and The Disappearance of Irene dos Santos. She died in 2019.

Book preview

PhD Thesis: Ovid

Empty nights

shattered by storm dreams

and demon shrieks

that echo in the shadow corners

of the bedroom

My skin crawls for you

Midnight relocation

to the study

Hollow eyes squint at Cambria,

convert to Arial

or should it be

Franklin Gothic Medium?

Exactly what is the point

of translating Latin verse?

Words of wisdom, never followed

Remedia Amoris?

Of course he was kidding

New Moon

New moon and my black night

Gunmetal against my thigh

Clean coral at my core

Don’t touch it

No belly round for me

I will not be consumed by fat hauntings

and murderous confessions

I will not be erased by your darkness

I will look only from the corner of my eye

If I don’t see you tomorrow

my love will last forever

Lost

Walking me to the car

he puts his tongue in my mouth,

a swift and cunning transfer

of bodily fluids

before I can take stock

decide yes or no

remember he’s not the man I love

That extra beer

his insistent tongue

those happy pills

prescribed for fractured hearts

Not a good amalgamation

There is no halfway house

where I can rest

this is mythology

There is no neutral ground

No quarter given

Nor quarter taken

And I have lost my way

Do you know where my love resides?

Five ghosts on the crossroad

point in all directions

I drive the labyrinth

until finally the iron gate

insuperable barred passage

I don’t know the magic words

that will open it

You said

Blessed are the weak in spirit

and in my mind I am guessing:

desperate?

abject?

kaput?

Despite my ruined state

it is repellent

to speak these words

to be these things

to let them be

the open sesame

And so although I have arrived

I am still lost

Bodyspeak

The smooth and perfect

topography of your back

so inviting yesterday,

today emits

a toxic vibration:

unsafe camping grounds

moist expanse

of skin

velveting

over liliputian hillocks

of spine

creaming

blade