Associate Editor Connor Yeck: Purvi Shah’s “Had Penelope a kiln, she would outcast” is a finely edged mediation on intimacy and action, histories both vast and minute. Carried by a mythic yet restrained tenor, we glimpse a figure reckoning with bodiliness, patience, and a looming sense of arrival. Shah carries us through this work with prismatic language that disarms us at every junction. Here is a landscape of immolation, assassin, and ash, all infused with an unwavering aura of patience, the timeless voice that “[beckons] / each suitor into a smaller chamber . . . [lengthening] the quiet / of an afternoon.”
To hear Purvi read her poem, click below:
Had Penelope a kiln, she would outcast
that needle. Knowing woman-
hood is a burn
against promise, she rubs
immolations. This girl whose every nerve
is assassin. Pause
of lovers as freedom
beyond lust & dusk
—in this shroud, you
stowed the megaphone
of yourself, the unbossed
& unburdened.
Soliciting luxury
of solitudes: you beckon
each suitor into a smaller chamber. You lengthen the quiet
of an afternoon. You spool your reused
thread. In horizons,
an ash hovers.
Purvi Shah relishes sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice. She is the author of Miracle Marks (Northwestern University, 2019) and Terrain Tracks (New Rivers, 2006). Her work opens space to invoke immigrant belonging, gender & racial equity, and healing. With Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive public art at https://circlefor.com/.
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