* While reading an article in the Religion section of the Huffington Post about the Hindu/Buddhist practice in Nepal of worshipping a living girl as the reincarnation of the goddess Durga (Goddess of destruction and blood) the idea for this poem came to me.
Kumari Devi, living girl–
Durga, goddess incarnate.
Select of priests in beauty schooled:
your neck like silkened sea conch shell,
brown eyes of cow–plus thirty more.
Your horoscope must good foretell.
You then must pass horrific tests,
And meet masked men and severed heads.
Oh living goddess, girl divine!
From thence even your feet are blessed—
But bleed; Be gone!
A Little Lift of Lemon Drops! 