Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

All the goddesses  

are gathered at my door. 

It is an old rejection they come to reverse,   

not benign, perverse. 

I do not let them in. 

They are not like me. 

Not Kali, the loudest, 

clamouring for attention, 

the slow dance of skulls around her neck 

bone music to my fears. 

She is aggressive, that one, 

and rude. 

Look at the way she sticks out her tongue 

at all who dare to look at her. 

A red tongue, thirsty 

for another demon to quench. 

She drank his blood,  

each self-perpetuating drop. 

A furious suckling that saved the world. 

Blood mother, 

she would have killed us all. 

It took a husband  

(Lord Shiva trembling  

half-trampled beneath her feet) 

to make her stop, 

and bite her tongue in shame. 

Not Lakshmi, the meekest, 

sprung perfectly beautiful 

out of a tumultuous ocean of milk, 

a lotus at her breast, 

she, a lotus at the breast 

of Vishnu, Lord Protector, 

inseparable bride, 

gentle breathing light, 

riding her white owl 

into the homes of the propitiatory, 

casting dark glances and blight on all  

who dare to slight her. 

Mother of the world, 

a whimsical tyrant, 

feminine and full of wiles. 

And not Durga, the fiercest. 

A cosmic blaze of energy 

in her eyes, 

a pinwheel of mace and trident and sword. 

Terrifying, but derived.  

Free of husband, lord or lover, 

but formed fully of all their powers. 

A sum total of gods then, 

an essence of, 

Shakti, distilled, concentrated, 

burning the throat as it goes down. 

Mother to none, 

a lion between her thighs. 

But 

(and now I sense them listening, hushing, 

pushing flat against the door) 

I have taken Kali’s anger and made it mine. 

My black moods are hers,  

my irreverence. 

I whoop, I rant, I rage, 

a belt of severed hands at my waist. 

I have swallowed Lakshmi whole. 

She runs through me now, 

a river of desire. 

I drown myself, and again  

I rise, a dreaming weed,  

clinging to love, unworldly-wise. 

And Durga? 

Durga has given me freedom, 

and I have paid for it,  

gladly. 

She made a fighter of me. 

She taught me when to raise my weapons, 

screaming, 

and when to lay my head in my mother’s lap, 

a daughter come home again.