Poetry Pagepourri
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“In this world, we have but one sky – a holster of glass/and limited grounds, where a gunshot’s/ meaning hinges/on who takes the stand” from “Shooting for the Sky” at Split This Rock (second place winner of the 2017 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes poetry contest)
“You had a name no one/could hold between their/ teeth. So they pronounced/ a sentence…” from “Saraswati praises your name even when you have no choice” at Split This Rock (second place winner of the Sixth Annual Abortion Rights Poetry Contest)
“We are less a country//founded on rights/than on unequal//paperwork. I listen…” from “Texas may not recognize” from CultureStrike
“Even Scheherazade could not outlast/border patrol, quarrel of guns with no ears to hear…” from “Your Body is a Dark Axiom You Are Trying to Prove. Here,” in Truthdig
“as if it were citizenship, your palm/clutching minutes as passing papers. You belong…” from “You Hold Twilight” at The Margins
“…an immigrant/is always/imagining belonging/while holding tight to one’s/longing…” from “She has a crown — an antenna” at About Place
“Your clothes/refuse to fold symmetrically. They have too many stories/to be squared and tucked away. Each curve…” from “The way you have folded laundry, Saraswati folds continents” at PEN Journal
“In touching,/she knows a beloved.// Back into the river she throws/the quivering thing – until..” from “Mira pulls a fish out from the banks of the Jamuna” at PEN Journal
“The sound of your footsteps/is waterfall…” from “Mira longs to be more than a bride” at Four Way Review
“Sorrow: may you be known/ by your other names – black…” from “When promise disappears, Mira speaks to the thorns” at Four Way Review
“Halo of bees pealing: unmantle/stigma. I lick fingers, stinging…” from “Under your footstep, Mira steals saffron” at Jaggery
“Eschew not I spires & domes but inhabit devotion in a Taj of my own” at Painted Bride Quarterly
“…when you were born: forgive fire//for it must reach/its course,…” from “From a train, northbound, the young revolutionary foresees a new history” at Black Earth Institute
“…Breaking out of skin is natural and terrifying. Journey of light into error…” from “Python” at 92Y
“warmed by the light of God or maybe her dark mother…” from “Her hands are a furnace” at Four Way Review
“Sometimes, despite death, the canine spirit barks…” from “Sometimes you need to shoot a dead dog. Again.” at The Collagist
“Survival is not a habit. It is, she/admits, a surrender. At an edge…” from “You birth a mythology in red” in About Place Journal
“Were a single tree a fractal, what need…” from “The Forest/fragments, the heart fractals” at Drunken Boat
” Resurrect flesh/ as rivers:/ Ask who unwombed…” from “Maya knows how the day walks carrying heartbeats” at p.10 of Southern Women’s Review
“She despairs that lukewarm icebox, rank of singed/wood, that thick of kerosene. She wants to drink…” from “Maya shuffles plates, hoping to generate electricity” at p.11 of Southern Women’s Review
“Warm cherry wood, the browns of childhood./In dozens, monarchs rising, proliferating – …” from “Rare, yet true, energy transfers without contact” (nominated for a Pushcart Prize) at TAB
“To reconstruct the world, the painter/sketches numbers: they cannot be zero…” from “The realist painter in exile develops a love of geometry” at TAB
“With harvest, would water/ leap? With dispersal, would you//sing, If there were no music, I would still/ hear my own sorrow. Define betrayal. Define…” from “Infidel, kafir, renegade, turncoat” at Winter Tangerine
“Urge to journey — as when you see a stretch/of New York City streets, expanse to ocean:…” from “Some didn’t make it. Some did.” at Lantern Review
“Rafters you cross. Streets buzzed, a swarm of lightning/in these parks — even Shakespeare would sing…” from “This is MY NY.” at Lantern Review
“Yesterday I saw a father carrying/two girls, one on each shoulder, clasping…” from “To shine a light” at SAMAR Magazine
“I spend 364 days forgetting/& 1 day remembering…” from “It is not that” at SAMAR Magazine
“The new city immigrants are white sheets…” from “Signs there is a hole in Manhattan” at Love911
“…The sting of passion to latch a kiss./I slice through layers, body bending…” from “Plush as carmine/(tender) as a sore” at Asterix
“I cast off all my tears at the gate./Here every drop of moisture is sweat…” from “I Remember We Were Holy, Immigrant Song #1” at Weber Studies
“Did you come for freedom,/mother, or because your hands…” from “I Live in Fear of Remembering, Immigrant Song #2” at Weber Studies
“Some worker in the sweat/of Madras, some former weaver/from Kashmir, some hand in Ahmadabad’s dust,…” from “Made in India, Immigrant Song #3” at The Ajnabee
“Light dissolves in black holes, destined…” from “In the distant light, you witness potential” at Tilling the Earthwoman
“…At four or forty, a man carves space/ to temporarily hold, to grapple…” from “Tree Risings” at Kartika Review (click on p. 59)
“The boat is prepared to ferry, the airplane shrunk/its line of boarding, the train just one whistle…” from “Waiting to Depart” at Writers’ Hub