Frodo Soup

The Deliverer by  Tishani Doshi OUR LADY OF THE LIGHT CONVENT, KERALA The sister here is telling my mother How she came to collect children Because they were crippled or dark or girls.  Found naked in the streets, Covered in garbage, stuffed in bags, Abandoned at their doorstep.  One of them was dug up by a dog, Thinking the head barely poking above the ground Was bone or wood, something to chew.  This is the one my mother will bring. * * *  MILWAUKEE AIRPORT, USA  The parents wait at the gates. They are American so they know about ceremony And tradition, about doing things right.  They haven't seen or touched her yet. Don't know of her fetish for plucking hair off hands, Or how her mother tried to bury her.  But they are crying. We couldn't stop crying, my mother said, Feeling the strangeness of her empty arms.  * * * This girl grows up on video tapes, Sees how she's passed from woman  ...

Chainsaw versus the Pampas Grass   It seemed an unlikely match. All winter unplugged, grinding its teeth in a plastic sleeve, the chainsaw swung nose-down from a hook in the darkroom under the hatch in the floor. When offered the can it knocked back a quarter-pint of engine oil and juices ran from its joints and threads, oozed across the guide-bar and the maker’s name, into the dry links.  From the summerhouse, still holding one last gulp of last year’s heat behind its double doors, and hung with the weightless wreckage of wasps and flies, mothballed in spider’s wool . . . from there, I trailed the day-glo orange power line the length of the lawn and the garden path, fed it out like powder from a keg, then walked back to the socket and flicked the switch, then walked again and coupled the saw to the flex – clipped them together. Then dropped the safety catch and gunned the trigger. No gearing up or getting to speed, just an instant rag...