They Will [Not] Speak Of
Ellen Kombiyil
The women will not speak when they speak,
they will speak of that time. When they speak,
wiping hands on apron checks, they will not
speak of what mustn’t be named. One might
say that time while pounding out dough and men
will stroke graying beards in a living room
laden with apples and pine, girls with down
cast eyes. They’ll say we didn’t tell her
because. They’ll say it’s better she not know.
Insert your horror here [ ]. It was years ago.
Silence grows louder, ever outward:
We thought she was making it up
to hide an affair, those grass stains on
her nightdress (unable to lift arms
in protest), dirt clods in her bed.
What was once quiet pasture becomes
voices shushed in latticed pie crusts.
That’s all behind us now, the civic
leader rings out, naming it wild female
imaginings. It’s still happening.
They will speak of forgiveness. They will not
say violence. The minister comes round,
tall hat bobbing, speech not a rhapsody
but could be. God chooses his people
with tests of fire. She is milking a cow
when he says this, aware of heat friction
fingers chafe over chapped nipples.
She won’t look at him. If you won’t forgive God
can’t forgive you. The shaking woman
rocks back and forth and says I forgive him.
From Histories of the Future Perfect
Available from Small Press Distribution
Also available from the (Great) Indian Poetry Collective
Ellen Kombiyil is the author of Histories of the Future Perfect (2015). She is a recent transplant from Bangalore, India, where she lived for nearly eleven years, teaching creative writing and yoga. A fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2013, Kombiyil’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, BOOTH, Spillway, and Poemeleon, among others. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and has read, performed or taught workshops at the annual Prakriti Poetry festival in Chennai, the Raedleaf Poetry Awards in Hyderabad, and Lekhana in Bangalore. She is the co-Founder of the (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship-model poetry press, publishing innovative voices from India/Indian diaspora. Originally from Syracuse, New York, and a graduate of the University of Chicago, she now lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
