At the Movies
Watching Raj Kapoor disrobing Zeenat Aman for this role,
singing in the rain in a diaphanous white saree with no clothes
underneath, his paean to female beauty innocence and carnal
awakening, but really taking his power to new lows
forty years before the #MeToo movement arose…
Sitting in a darkened University theater in Ann Arbor
rented by some Indian student organization to screen it,
I don’t know how they got it, pirated it I think now in retrospect,
in the year of it’s release, Nineteen Seventy Eight.
I sat contained between you and Kumar, your erections on display.
We went back to our apartment, you couldn’t wait for night
I always thought your lust was a compliment to my pink delight
you banged me before dinner as Arcy and Kumar stayed
waiting for you to be done, so I could set out dinner plates
The first year of my marriage, what memories arise…
I was not yet twenty five.
Of those who read here, Farida Indira Svani Jhilmil Kalpesh Mange, a little bit of India. For Joan, because she doesn’t want to miss anything!
