Meher Manda
Meher Manda is a writer, culture critic, editor, and educator, fully formed in Bombay, India, though currently stationed in The U S of A. She's the author of the poetry chapbook Busted Models (No, Dear / Small Anchor, 2019) and her work has been published in The Margins, Los Angeles Review, Catapult, Epiphany, Kweli, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. A Best New Poets and Best of the Net Anthology nominee, she is currently at work on her debut short story collection and collaborating on a political graphic novel forthcoming from Hachette India in 2026. Her writing wrestles with the tensions that splinter the self from state / woman from body / singular from spectacle / guttural from ordinary.
Sisters on Gravel
in all the games, we played secret roles you wouldn’t want to be
caught dead in, dangerous, swashbuckling butter knife-flingers,
with our mothers in the kitchen, we took mythical old-timey folktales,
twisted them in over our heads, we swung genders, played heroes,
tucked our skirts between our legs, we disrobed, took showers,
and cut through water with leaps and punts like wushu champions,
landing clumsily on naked butts, with our mothers in the kitchen,
we mixed soap and glycerine, and blew rainbow bubbles down to
wishing wells, watched them fly deep down below, slinging rocks to
measure the danger, daring and rescuing the sine qua non of our existence,
our mothers in the kitchen, we touched gently our plucky teats, compared notes
by squeezing tightly between our fingertips each body, we learnt to hold
by holding the other, we discovered textures, patterns, curves and edges
by walking over our bodies, noting down the twists and turns, our mothers
in the kitchen, we took kitchen playware, filled model vessels with dirt,
we collected rocks, crop shellings, plant offals, cooked meals for devils,
we refused to play woman, wrote stories with snakes in them, the snakes
were our friends, our mothers in the kitchen deep-fried cornballs to tame
our energies, imagined us as mothers in training while we yanked heads
off doll necks, we gave puppets crazy eyes, laughing witches-like, we
cleaved down plants from strange trees, rubbed their chunks on our shins
for magic, we played rough, we kissed roughly, we had to unlearn our kisses
to kiss others because we kissed each other ferociously, by choking pores,
we sucked the planet’s air between our mouth, and poured it into each other,
our mothers in the kitchen, we loved with our bodies, our lips, we distilled
our love in secret homes, far into neglected backyards, my sister and I grew
to be unwomanlike together, to be everything our mothers in the kitchen were
not, so when my sister dropped my hand, she taught me my first lesson of
betrayal, when she sieved my name through love notes for a man, our mothers
stepped out of the kitchen to let me know—to be wild is to be temporary.
in all the games, we played secret roles you wouldn’t want to be
caught dead in, dangerous, swashbuckling butter knife-flingers,
with our mothers in the kitchen, we took mythical old-timey folktales,
twisted them in over our heads, we swung genders, played heroes,
tucked our skirts between our legs, we disrobed, took showers,
and cut through water with leaps and punts like wushu champions,
landing clumsily on naked butts, with our mothers in the kitchen,
we mixed soap and glycerine, and blew rainbow bubbles down to
wishing wells, watched them fly deep down below, slinging rocks to
measure the danger, daring and rescuing the sine qua non of our existence,
our mothers in the kitchen, we touched gently our plucky teats, compared notes
by squeezing tightly between our fingertips each body, we learnt to hold
by holding the other, we discovered textures, patterns, curves and edges
by walking over our bodies, noting down the twists and turns, our mothers
in the kitchen, we took kitchen playware, filled model vessels with dirt,
we collected rocks, crop shellings, plant offals, cooked meals for devils,
we refused to play woman, wrote stories with snakes in them, the snakes
were our friends, our mothers in the kitchen deep-fried cornballs to tame
our energies, imagined us as mothers in training while we yanked heads
off doll necks, we gave puppets crazy eyes, laughing witches-like, we
cleaved down plants from strange trees, rubbed their chunks on our shins
for magic, we played rough, we kissed roughly, we had to unlearn our kisses
to kiss others because we kissed each other ferociously, by choking pores,
we sucked the planet’s air between our mouth, and poured it into each other,
our mothers in the kitchen, we loved with our bodies, our lips, we distilled
our love in secret homes, far into neglected backyards, my sister and I grew
to be unwomanlike together, to be everything our mothers in the kitchen were
not, so when my sister dropped my hand, she taught me my first lesson of
betrayal, when she sieved my name through love notes for a man, our mothers
stepped out of the kitchen to let me know—to be wild is to be temporary.
Poems
An Abecedarian to Mother’s Tongue: https://losangelesreview.org/an-abecedarian-to-mothers-tongue-by-meher-manda/
“Self-Portrait as Love and Its Offering” & The Rains Catch Me By Surprise: https://aaww.org/two-poems-by-meher-manda/
Some of Many Women: https://thisissporkpress.com/sporklet/10_20/manda.html
An Abecedarian to Mother’s Tongue: https://losangelesreview.org/an-abecedarian-to-mothers-tongue-by-meher-manda/
“Self-Portrait as Love and Its Offering” & The Rains Catch Me By Surprise: https://aaww.org/two-poems-by-meher-manda/
Some of Many Women: https://thisissporkpress.com/sporklet/10_20/manda.html
Interviews
https://hyperallergic.com/537472/in-india-a-wave-of-political-webcomics-are-chronicling-huge-nationwide-protests/
https://www.thepolisproject.com/listen/conversation-with-meher-manda-and-mayukh-goswami-creators-of-the-web-comic-jamun-ka-ped/
https://brooklynpoets.org/community/poet/meher-manda
https://hyperallergic.com/537472/in-india-a-wave-of-political-webcomics-are-chronicling-huge-nationwide-protests/
https://www.thepolisproject.com/listen/conversation-with-meher-manda-and-mayukh-goswami-creators-of-the-web-comic-jamun-ka-ped/
https://brooklynpoets.org/community/poet/meher-manda
Other Links
Fiction:
The Year it Poured: https://magazine.catapult.co/fiction/stories/the-year-it-poured-short-story-meher-manda
Aliza: https://epiphanyzine.com/features/2019/10/31/aliza-by-meher-manda
Journalism: https://www.jgnt.co/author/meher-manda
Fiction:
The Year it Poured: https://magazine.catapult.co/fiction/stories/the-year-it-poured-short-story-meher-manda
Aliza: https://epiphanyzine.com/features/2019/10/31/aliza-by-meher-manda
Journalism: https://www.jgnt.co/author/meher-manda