Seed healings, nourish cravings. Here.

Prize-winning Poems

“A woman’s body is a mess/of paper” from “Whistle” at swamp pink (2024 poetry prize winner)

“we are all the horses//crossing rituals as if they were nations” from “Visas” at F(r)iction (2023 literary contest poetry winner)

“We all visit/amnesia, hoard silts of migration…” from “Helix of the gift, lineage song” at Writer’s Digest (2022 Poetry Awards Winner)

“But appearance itself/ is the first aspect to loss…” from “In a womb – a new era – & Kali’s tongue” at The Writing Salon (winner of 2022 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize)

“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 (2nd place winner of 2017 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes 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 (2nd place winner of Sixth Annual Abortion Rights contest)

Poems from Miracle Marks

“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

“Your bangle, wet/ with absences…” from “The poet enters the game of lila” at Lantern Review

Poems from Terrain Tracks

“The mehndi is leaving my hands,/brown swirls dissolving into brown skin./Somewhere you are traveling…” from “Loss is an art, traversing one world to the next” at Split This Rock

“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 Big City Lit

“Light dissolves in black holes, destined…” from “In the distant light, you witness potential” at Tilling the Earthwoman

Sundry Poems

“a young woman turns/into cartwheels — —” from “You believed only a girl born of dandelion can be ferocious –” at Poem-A-Day

“In the first worship,/you make the one devoted to devotion devoted to you…” from “Mira pushes aside the mountain you are climbing” at Poem-A-Day

“You dream of living on less & less water. You dream of drought…” from “Burning is ocean shared” at The Spectacle

“Our saints//do not differentiate/between a disease/& a miracle…” from “I am always searching for something dark & holy to overcome me” at Triquarterly

“The girl whose every nerve/ is assassin” from “Had Penelope a kiln, she would outcast” at The Cincinnati Review

“You wonder if here 1 + 1/ = 0, egg of the future…” from “Saraswati is perturbed when the swami says 1 + 1 = 1” from Dialogist

“Your 2.5 children, reading         serenely…” from “Saraswati achieves householder perfection and razes the garden” at Triquarterly

“Sometimes a man gets between you and God.” from “Saraswati births a revolutionary at the shrine shut to women” at Ms.

“Her corset is an apple inside…” from “Frida’s casa, a house held by azul” at Ms.

“Braid//as if your hands/were an anthem/rising from my spine” from “Uncolonial this shelter, home my skin, bring me ocean & a song of tangling limbs” at Bellingham Review

What is distance// if not love in need of nearing?” from “In your car, you track the distance of lost homes” at Another Chicago Magazine

“thronging to freedom/scuffling/to sovereignty” from “We know fires before the fireworks” atVolume Poetry

“as if it were citizenship, your palm/clutching minutes as passing papers. You belong…” from “You Hold Twilight” at The Margins

“…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

“…an immigrant/is always/imagining belonging/while holding tight to one’s/longing…” from “She has a crown — an antenna” at About Place

“Eschew not I spires & domes but inhabit devotion in a Taj of my own” at Painted Bride Quarterly

“warmed by the light of God or maybe her dark mother…” from “Her hands are a furnace” at Four Way Review

“Survival is not a habit. It is, she/admits, a surrender. At an edge…” from “You birth a mythology in red” in About Place

“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

“Creek rubs a trombone of stones. You ache…” from “Watering Iridescence” at Ecotheo Review

“…The sting of passion to latch a kiss./I slice through layers, body bending…” from “Plush as carmine/(tender) as a sore” at Asterix

“Sometimes, despite death, the canine spirit barks…” from “Sometimes you need to shoot a dead dog. Again.” at The Rupture

“with embrace of easeful & tender revolution–” from “Tía rebuilds her house as she snores” at Philadelphia Stories

“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