Self-Portrait as the Oyster Yurt in Opus (2025)
If you’re a brawler, stick with diamonds.
After all, the stories of their scarcity are
fairy stories spun by nude emperors &
other orange hacks. They’re simple tourists
& you should never trust a tourist. Don’t be
alarmed by the heaps of spent shells
& forgive my fragrance. Like the icon says
I wish I could say you get used to it, but you
won’t. It’s all worth tolerating to witness my
riddle. You’re welcome to count the detritus
but there’s no need to be precious about it.
Gauguin poisoned your minds with ramblings
of Tahiti, his fixations with Māori queens.
The truth is that you can pluck oysters from
the Pacific, the Chesapeake, & the Gulf.
While we’re on the subject, isn’t it cheeky how
tourists name everything ; as if anyone
named Martha could call a grape from the clay.
Prince Edward couldn’t open a bivalve if his
life depended on it. Before the tourists went
sailing around playing house, the island’s name
was Epekwitk. She prefers you use that, I asked.
Here, think of the bloodspill as liquid reparations
because trivialities like flavor & pain were never
really part of the equation. Haven’t you heard?
Didn’t you know? Pearls seldom enjoy company.
Poem Because I Mourn Hind Rajab & Ran Out of Places to Store My Grief
In 2001, I couldn’t fathom that people all around
me would see my face & read terrorist. Eleven seems
a bit young, even for Al-Qaeda. But jokes didn’t
stop the judgment. Didn’t spare me stares or TSA patdowns.
From my tower, I warn writers do not leverage crisis to
elevate your brand. Genocide is no one’s muse. I know;
I’m a hypocrite, but don’t give up on me.
From a memory foam wedge, I watch reels of children
pulled from collapsed dwellings. A baby hangs from
a man’s elbow like a sleeve. She is young enough that
her neck would probably be just as limp & loose had
she lived. I think of my own neck, the mulberry silk
behind it. The audacity I have to stick it out continually
inviting chaos & cuts & months of bad press & for what?
I’m no martyr. I am no daughter of Mecca. Just little miss
brown millennial, mentally ill & middle class. No bombs
are dropped on my New England town. I read the words
of Aria & Hera & Nafisa & Zara. Studying their pain is like
seeing my face in the bottom of a well; it looks like me, but
I’m not really there. It’s not me who will drown.
Rita Mookerjee is an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. She is the winner of the 2023 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award and the author of False Offering (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her poems can be found in CALYX, Copper Nickel, Poet Lore, New Orleans Review, and The Offing.
She can be found on Instagram @melanincholia.
