Bitch, we will chop your body parts

rip your vagina

sweep up the strips

hang them like festoons

says a short message

It is not so easy to kill a poet

she is not just a body to inflict wounds with weapons

but the inner soul of a thousand ancestors

We will mass rape you

shoot a video

show it in public

says an open mail

It is tough to rape a poet

from her vagina springs the seven seas

phalluses are mere pebbles

We will burn you alive with your family

not let you live anywhere

in the world

anyone beheading you

earns a good bounty

howl a thousand voices

It is not simple to put a price on a poet’s head

her head is ten planet earths

everyone who walks on the furrows

made with ploughshares

is her family

The food growing in her akshayapathra*

is not merely food

We will throw you in ten prisons

at the same time

not let you leave the country

a chorus of petitions and court cases

It is difficult to imprison a poet

can life sprout in any planet once

time is confined to a prison

[*Akshayapathra: Manimekalai, heroine of the Tamil classic by the same name, possesses a food-growing vessel.]

(Leena Manimekalai is an Indian filmmaker, poet and an actor. This poem was translated from Tamil by Ra Sh. Poem courtesy: The Wire.)