Parneet Jaggi (Voices Within)

Parneet Jaggi (b.1975) teaches English in a postgraduate college in Rajasthan, India. She has four collections of poems in English and two research books to her credit. Her poems have been published and reviewed in anthologies and journals. Her name appears in the Directory of Writers in America’s famous magazine Poets and Writers. She was awarded the “Star Ambassador of World Poetry” at the World Poetry Conference, Bathinda, Punjab in October 2019. She was declared the ‘Poet of the Year 2019’ and ‘Critic of the Year 2019’ by the UK poetry website, Destiny Poets.

The Page I Tore

While the teenage footed with a rampage,
I was reading a book of wisdom,
Name I don't remember,
it had a green cover.
It talked of disparate attires,
pastiche of unknown sources,
potpourri of mystifying aromas,
medley of native tunes metered into a partaal,
tales of old grandmas
who would blend the grace of their grey hair into murmurs.
It had an advice for the runners,
to win and lose in a way Lord Ram did,
to immerse and emerge in a way Nanak did, (from Veyin river)

 to fall and rise in a way Buddha did.
I tore the page into tiny, uneven strips.
With grey hairs trouncing my scalp,
I am searching those bits in my house.

Identity

What if the word 'Identity' vanished
from books and bowls of language platters-
that serve spicy peppers coated with saccharine chocolates
that glues to the root cavity
to be ruthlessly extracted with the tooth,
for the decay
induces a twinge
that travels like a stream
meandering its way
through the uninhabited ,
untamed terrains.
The identity dish savours the palate
lending a prismatic taste to tongue,
but pokes a tint of colorlessness
in the gushing waters of the self
that flow to reach the source.

The Embrace

The embrace that steals you,
like a pearl secretly picked from the sea,
as a tremolo that benumbs you
from the innumerable sounds of the world
to leave you in the company of a glitter-
a matte, flattened, embedded glitter of the pearl,
naked, pure,
in essence and beauty,
deprived of the gaudy finery,
is the embrace one lives for.

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Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020