A general propensity to question has continuously made me rethink what it truly means to be writing poetry. Born and raised in Kanpur, I learned one of the foremost lessons was stitching my tongue. Poetry came to me as the unbridling of my tongue from the strains of patriarchy. What aided my craft unknowingly was my grandmother’s retellings in the form of bhajans, religious hymns, and couplets, which became the first sounds that remained with me. She introduced me to what I now understand as Bhakti Poetry — writing love poems to the divine. This formative definition that drove me to pick the pen has become more complex over the years, but the essence remains unchanged. I write poems to love and document the hauntings of my memory.       

I moved to America in 2018 to pursue an M.F.A in creative writing, which furthered my understanding on a craft level — specifically in terms of formal Western poetics. I acquired the language to encapsulate my gendered experiences into forms that aided my voice. My work has grown by reading my foremothers such as Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Eunice de Souza, Adrienne Rich, Ismat Chughtai, Agha Shahid Ali, and contemporary poets such as Safia Elhillo, Tishani Doshi, and others. The distance from my home and land has also helped me gain perspective on what becomes “othered” via the centralization of Western poetry. This has stimulated me to return to the forms I grew up with, such as ghazals, dohas, and odes. 

For the past two years, I have been working on my poetry collection titled The Mother Wound, which explores the inheritance of grief, loneliness, and trauma from my mother. Poems published in the magazine are a part of this work. Working on this manuscript, I have realized that the collective understanding of being a woman is tethered to instances of both violence and tenderness. The commonality of this experience is what binds women across the globe. My poems often deal with issues of domestic violence, abuse, and distortion of the female body. At the same time, I am wary of publishing anything that adds to the misconceptions about subaltern women. I am at a time in my writing journey where I am straddling the overlaps between personal and political through my work.

I like to think of my practice as worship. My writing has remained personal, but as my understanding of my privilege has become layered, my craft and voice have deepened to reach a space of looking inwards. Reflecting on the malleability of art forms and the intersection of ideas has, in turn, led me to pay attention to musicality in my work. I often return to my training as a Bharatanatyam dancer — my foremost education in encapsulating emotions — a skill that I continue to develop through poetry.  

As I continue to learn, build, break and rebuild my work and voice through self-revision, I have realized the strength of a community-orientated practice and aim to make my writing more accessible. I believe in the transformative power of literature and writing groups; they are safe spaces for feeling seen and, ultimately, loved — something my younger self needed. So I hope to continue to heal and reclaim through the fluid grace of poetry, and the capacity it holds to both instruct and delight. 

 

Nectar falls from the moon tonight.

We stand under the pink bougainvilleas

draping every cross-stitch of the cage, where our dog lived

and died. Quiet, so our thin limbs don’t convulse

the many faces of the moon god. We are in the verandah,

to collect droplets of the divine liquid

freeze it and wreathe a pearl necklace.

We smile knowing this will be a gift for Ma,

who makes us believe: Amrit rains from the sky tonight.

Waiting, we buzz like flimsy moths, under the silver light

stretching our arms towards the grey sky to catch just a few drops.  

Some maidens swallow these tiny tears tonight

for good grooms, with clasped hands as each globule gathers

on the tip of their ripe tongues. The first drop plunges

and corrodes our skin. This is how we learned to drink mercury.

 

I turn to Kabir again, dear God. 

Let me be a kafir. In all my ways. 

Let me undo, dear mother who will not grow out of me. 

A friend says they will marry the Muslim they love 

after their parents die. 

Amma asks, if you love someone 

Won’t you set them free? 

Is loving someone not enough 

to set them free? I ask. 

The boy I love says Kabir was separated from Islam 

so his songs could be tuned to our burning incense sticks. 

My mind blooms with my favorite story.

Where Kabir the poet, kafir and saint, dies. 

What he didn’t get in life, he finds in death. 

A mystic, weaving garlands is avowed by both, us and them

as a child of our god. On the banks of the holy river, 

they quarrel about his body. 

Swearing to fight death with blood.

But when the sun spills the sky orange

his body dries to flowers. 

A shroud of bougainvilleas. 

They pouch them in equal halves. Burn some, bury some. 

The boy I want to love tells me if I marry him I will not be buried. He will not be burnt. 

The question I remain with is why can’t our bodies turn to flowers too? 

Ma’s collection is piled 

in a pink pouch embroidered with gold spades 

tucked in her cupboard 

my milk teeth rattle with glee 

searching for orange melts 

as I chance upon this treasure 

the tinkling of a thousand coins 

tricks me for temple bells 

every time I reach my hand 

in the back of the cupboard 

the stack grows taller 

now I hunt for jewelry 

and feel the metallic chinking 

of the emblems embossed on the coins

until I find one in auntie’s cupboard 

and then in ama’s and then in dadi’s

Ma explains all women 

we never leave

the piles only grow bigger 

change remains unexhausted 

in our termite-eaten cupboards 

first the roses 

  shriveled in my palms

it was not the thorns

that milked my heart of blood

but knowing me knowing you 

this week I killed 

  the last plant 

in our glass house

  a money plant creeper

that you insisted

is the devil’s vine

mine to carry

in not watering it

  I was saving the spider

 spinning a silken home

  silvering the dark brown 

  roots of the ivy 

 I hoped the spider would find

another house to hold 

 but every week the black widow

became more familiar 

and the webbing blinding

when the ivy browned 

  all the way up to the balcony 

where butterflies flapped

  and you once read Marquez

I poured and poured and poured

too late to save anything