"ojha : rituals" by Raena Shirali

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 11, 2019   ojha : rituals   Raena Shirali

Ojhas are [medicine men, "the ones next to God," religious ministers or priests who deal with the daily struggles of the village people]; this dynamic allows the village ojha to control the circulation of rumors, and he is the village member who has the power to trap daayans (witches). In some trials, the ojha reads grains of rice, burn marks on branches, and disturbances in the sand around his residence, for signs of a daayan. certain beliefs precede his name & yet he goes by many : dewar, bhagat, priest. passive ear, the kind of listener you'd give your own face. + first, the village must [agree that spirits exist]—some benevolent, some deserving of fear. everyone wants their universe to have reason. so it must be a woman who stole your portion of rice, woman who smeared your doorstep's rangoli, woman who looked sideways at your child. + give him your gossip & the ojha conjures herbs to [appease the evil] : her raving, innocent mouth. & by that token what is truth. the other rumors, too, could corroborate—that bullets pass through, his body barely there but for the holy in his hands. + he chants her name with fingers pushed into his ears. just the sound of her bangles undoes : a single woman on a plot of land, unbecoming. he reads her guilt [in grains of rice, in the light of a lamp, using a cup which moves and identifies]. makes a circle around himself. white sand between him & the world. it's the dead hour. now, he shouts, arms covered in ants, sing.            Copyright © 2019 Raena Shirali. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem investigates the ongoing practice of witch hunting in Jharkhand, India, in the form of a persona poem. While I have written widely into the persona of a daayan (a woman accused of being a witch), the ojha (witch doctor and village priest) has presented for me a particular challenge of (dis)embodiment. 'ojha : rituals' explicates the methods by which ojhas determine whether or not a woman is a witch, while also asking the reader to consider themselves, alongside the village(rs), as equally susceptible to inherited social systems that devalue women, that deem women suspect and disposable. Finally, the poem integrates, in bracketed text, anthropological research into the poetic exploration of these politics of accusation." —Raena Shirali   Raena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), which won the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. She is an editor and teacher, and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Poetry by Shirali   GILT (YesYes Books, 2017) "Her Kind" by Ann Sexton "100 Bells" by Tarfia Faizullah "A Man's World" by Tracy K. Smith March Guest Editor: Maggie Smith   Thanks to Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Smith about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038