Content Warning: violence, death
Smitha Sehgal – Two Poems
Anonymous Thirteenth Year
Queen is a purple devil,
stabbing noon,
she steps back, violating, mocking
tethered soul, Ophelia’s eyelids conceal
folds of darkness,
a peppercorn bloats on her tongue,
green wounds sear, fever
splits snake tongue,
the thirteenth year has come to pass,
papillon flutters,
cannabis nights in the moon,
Brihannala gathers the clothes of vanquished
to adorn dolls.
Rebirth
Bathing my corpse
On crepuscular stones retrieved from
the sea bed, surrendering to the cry of herons
I become a lantern
When fish leaps over the tide
in a Fibonacci sequence
there is rain
in half-asleep eyes,
the recursive formula of flowers
in the blue-washed valley of Western Ghats,
in voice, the undefined space
of roots, the slant, and the twang
of consonants, the hollow sky inside
the tamarind seed of language, my skin grieves
for the butterfly wings.
Trapped in the smocking,
ancestors buried under purple bougainvillea
plop from the jamun tree.
In the decline of the horizon
layers of hardened island sun multiply
on the exterior of islands,
fibrous core, endocarp of poetry
stored in the piquant vesicles,
spuming, riding the crest of the wave,
I offer myself to this bitter winter
in the lagoon of light,
Harbouring rivers,
becoming mulch in this forest of loneliness
disarray of languages
mingle in my throat,
gurgling sounds of the estuary blur into my dreams,
I am reborn in the sea of languages.
Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional and poet who writes in two languages-English and Malayalam. Her poems have been featured in contemporary literary publications such as Ink Sweat & Tears, Panoply, Marrow Magazine, Marathon Literary Review and elsewhere.
Artwork: Medea awakening by Giuseppina Brandi
Giuseppina Brandi lives in Naples, Italy. She has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literatures, with a dissertation on European Poetry of WWI. With a great passion for poetry too, she believes in the power of art and poetry of healing and connect. Autodidact, she has always loved drawing and painting and she takes inspiration from natural world and human emotions.