What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
by Mona Arshi
after Sujata Bhatt
Eliminating thought verbs is the key to a successful marriage.
You’re better off avoiding the reach for specificity and
curbing your interest in the interior of things.
The cobra always reverts to TYPE, tuneless
girls tend to wither on the vine.
Oil of jasmine will arouse river fish.
In the poetry of the Sung Dynasty the howling of monkeys
in gorges was used to express profound desolation.
Things you should have a good working knowledge
of: mitochondria, Roman roads, field glasses, making
rice (using the evaporation method only).
When your mother in law calls you smart,
it’s not meant as a compliment.
The lighter her eyes, the further she’ll travel.
Always have saffron in your kitchen cupboard
(but on no account ever use it).
Taunt the sky during the day; the stars
will be your hazard at night.
Do not underestimate the art of small talk. Learn some
stock phrases such as ‘they say Proust was an insufferable
hypochondriac’ or ‘I’m confident that the Government
will discharge their humanitarian obligations.’
Fasting sharpens the mind and is therefore
a good time to practise reverse flight.
Your husband may not know you cheated with shop-
bought garam masala but God will know.
From Small Hands. Reproduced with kind permission from Pavilion Poetry.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Winner Best First Collection 2015
Small Hands
Mona Arshi
About Mona Arshi
Mona Arshi was born in 1970 to Punjabi Sikh parents in West London and grew up in Hounslow. She worked for a decade as a lawyer for the human rights charity Liberty UK, acting on many high profile cases, including that of the ‘right-to-die’ campaigner, Diane Pretty.
Her debut collection, Small Hands (Liverpool University Press, 2015), was six years in the writing. It features poems in terza rima, ghazals and a ballad and the subjects include the loss of her younger brother, who died three years ago. ‘Observing the anguish of a family trying to come to terms and survive was a difficult task, but one I felt I had to negotiate, especially if you believe that one of the functions of poetry is to make the unbearable, bearable.’
She rejects the idea that poets are overly sensitive and that poetry can only be appreciated by certain people. ‘It’s simply not true. Writers, and poets in particular, are pathologically inquisitive about the physical world around them and poetry is simply the world we live in, translated into language.’
She studied for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2010, won the inaugural Magma Poetry competition in 2011 and was joint winner in 2014 of the Manchester Poetry Prize. Her work is included in Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe 2014).
