Corporeal Needs Questionnaire
poetry by Shastra Deo
When the sun slows its trickle like molasses,
I take the manta ray out on walks.
They recoil from the crowds,
hugging closer to my cheeks.
We sigh when the breeze finally comes.
I am turning the corner of Charlotte St
when the scent visits. I reach up
to pinch a tiny blossom from the shrub
of orange jasmine.
If I close my eyes, I am back in Molo, standing
in a churchyard cluttered with sampaguita.
Pulling a fin back, I drop the petals,
like plankton, into their waiting mouth.
They hum all the way to the clinic.
Embracing my face as I talk to Esther,
they catch falling saltwater.
A few blocks away from home,
when there’s no one else in sight,
I unpeel the sticky manta ray from my cheeks.
They twirl around my finger for the rest
of the walk. In the bathroom, twin rays swim
in an aquarium of suds. I wrap each fin around
my knuckles, lather their slippery tails
with soap.
I leave them to glide around the basin
as I try to write the poem. Past the hour
of lorikeets and magpies, the manta rays
hang from a rack on my balcony.
Clouds twist into their pandemic
of colour, elaborating wreckage.
The manta rays billow in the wind, wings straining
to flap until they wriggle free from the clothespins.
They fly into the wound.
Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.
