Seed healings, nourish cravings. Here.
Prize-winning Poems
“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
“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
“Light dissolves in black holes, destined…” from “In the distant light, you witness potential” at Tilling the Earthwoman
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
“The girl whose every nerve/ is assassin” from “Had Penelope a kiln, she would outcast” at The Cincinnati Review
“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