Nourish your poetry cravings here.

Prize-winning Poems

“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

“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

“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 The Ajnabee

Sundry Poems

“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

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

“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.

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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“…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 Collagist

“…Breaking out of skin is natural and terrifying. Journey of light into error…” from “Python” at 92Y

“Halo of bees pealing: unmantle/stigma. I lick fingers, stinging…” from “Under your footstep, Mira steals saffron” at Jaggery

“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

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