C. CHRISTINE FAIR - POEMS

C. Christine Fair is a provost’s distinguished associate professor within the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  She studies political and military events of South Asia and travels extensively throughout Asia and the Middle East. Her books include In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (OUP 2019); Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (OUP, 2014); and Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008).  She has published creative pieces in The Bark, The Dime Review, the New Reader Magazine, Clementine Unbound, Awakenings, Fifty Word Stories,  The Drabble, Better than Starbucks, Sandy River Review, Sonder Midwest, Black Horse Magazine, and Bluntly Magazine among other venues. Her scholarly website is ChristineFair.net. She blogs at https://shortbustoparadise.wordpress.com/. She tweets at @CChristineFair.

Sita of Suburbia ​

​That afternoon, the sky turned black,
Split open like a fish belly slit.
Poured hail like hapless spawn 
That smashed lifeless upon our roof.

Even though I walked through fire for you
Unscathed, your rage was not appeased.
Your hands fluttered about me
                              Like feeding Coragyps.

Your serrated words
                                  chopped me down, cut me up
Into pieces you could manage
Into voiceless pieces you need not hear
                    Into impotent slabs you need not fear.

As I surrendered, you turned soft 
Immured me with your lanky arms.
Brushed back my tears with your fickle palms,
Pulled back my hair and kissed my scared-frozen neck.

Hissing that you loved me, you 
hoisted up my skirt, slammed in and up into my belly.
With a grunt collapsed atop me 
                  with your full dead weight.
Repulsed you withdrew, 
                        stood up 
                                  and glowered down
                                                                        in disgust.
Your face became a familiar map of contempt. 
Your neck strained as you kicked me furiously.
Torrid tears traced my cheek, then neck, 
                       pooled on the cool floor,
                                           As your fluid slid out.

Weary and wary I begged Mother Earth 
to open up and swallow her defeated daughter and bring her home. 

Mother Always Asked Uncle Art to Babysit 
​

His avuncular fingers 
                          plunged deep 
                          into my 
                          girlish flesh,

Plowed furrows and planted seeds of rage 
                  that grew into Sequoias 
                           stretching upward 
                               towards the sky 
                                   to scratch his deeds into the crisp cerulean
To draw the eyes of my
Daunted mother, demanding that she countenance 
His crimes just once before cancer claimed her. 
Having at last seen, slump in shame and pain, and
Beg her only daughter for absolution.




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