The Wardobe's Best Dressed: Bird of the Indian Subcontinent by Subhashini Kaligotla

REFUSING RAMA

Mother gave birth to a crop
of root vegetables. Like a clay pot
she swelled, leaking me

to him who tilled the land
with blood and everything of mine.

Mother, quick, sow me back—
my husband is calling.

This selection comes from Bird of the Indian Subcontinent, available from the (Great) Indian Poetry Collective. Order your copy here. Our curator for October is Tausha Fouts.

Subhashini Kaligotla is a poet and architectural historian of medieval India. A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in Creative Writing and a Kundiman poetry fellow, she has published in such journals as The Caravan, diode, LUMINA, New England Review, and The Literary Review. Anthology appearances include collections of Indian and diaspora poetry, most notably Penguin India’s 60 Indian Poets and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. Kaligotla is Assistant Professor of South Asian Art at Yale University.

Tasha Fouts is the 2018-2019 SAFTA Writer in Residence at Firefly Farms. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University. Her work has appeared in Salt Hill, Bateau, Glass, Birds Piled Loosely, and Small Portions. She is a co-founder and an editor at Packingtown Review and hosts the podcast Getting Drunk with Writers.