Voices Within: Jagari Mukherjee

Jagari Mukherjee is a poet, writer, and reviewer from Kolkata, India. She has an MA in English Literature from University of Pune, and was awarded a gold medal and several prizes by the university for excelling in her discipline. Her writings, both poetry and prose, have appeared in several newspapers, magazines, journals, anthologies, and blogs. She is a DAAD scholar, Best of the Net 2018 nominee, a Bear River alumna, and the winner of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 for book review. Jagari is the Resident Editor of Poetry & Poets.

AFTER CONVERSATION

Yesterday, we huddled together like

children against the cold, under

the blanket of poetry.

My dark, woollen-green words,

thick and unadorned, swaddled

you like a newborn, while

I nestled in the silken cocoon

of your yellow lines.

(The world thinks that I am

a fanciful butterfly and you,

a suave man of the world, but)

those moments are the quietest

when we breathe in the silence

of our days and nights –

soft, heavy, soporific

with unshackled verse.

A POEM FOR MARIANNE

Marianne, you are a tree
tall and wide with kindness
as befits a mother of four
who worked in camps in Greece.
The exotica of your tales belong
to the desperate and the poor.
I know that you stole from
the moon to light their lamps.

Marianne, your kaftans of
colorful chiffon are fragrant
with damask and ambergris.
You loved, and lost, a man forbidden,
and I know that the pain of love
is never scant; the soul is scooped out
till it is shattered and sore.

Marianne, you met him on a
morning warm and blue.
On a hot moonlit night, you
broke a taboo in a tent amidst
a serenade of insects wild.
The romantic Mediterranean
was nowhere to be seen, and
your untamed thirst could not
be contained or mild.

And now, in cold Michigan,
you and I nurse our loss.
Broken hearts do not respect age.
You write a poem in a notebook
with a touch of green moss.
Marianne, I cry at your tears
as I destroy poems from
page after page.

MY MOTHER BIRD

My Mother Bird is a Muse-master

who teaches me how to fly.

I have seen him in blue,

I have seen him in grey.

He gives me golden straws

to build my home in

green trees with orange flowers.

My nest is lines for warmth

with his feathers.

On white mornings, I wake up

with him in my eyes.

At sunset, I dream of his

Soft satin skies and

Turn his feathers into quills.

These quills are stained with

the ink of twilight, and so,

My Muse-master is a Mother Bird,

and love –

the art of unfettered flight.

VICARIOUSLY YOURS

I imagine what it is like

to be you –

to be a mother and

spend your evenings with

a child on your lap,

to pick your son up from school

and your daughter from her tennis class.

Tell me

how long does it take

to knit a tiny woollen cap?

What happens when your eyes

meet that of your child’s and

the drowsy late evening

is filled with your lullaby?

I imagine what it is like

to quickly jot down a poem

after a child has gone to sleep.

I imagine the feeling of

driving home from work

and gathering a small being

in your eager embrace.

I wonder if to be you

is a desire or a dream

brimming at places where

Lonely creatures live.

Now you know why I imagine

what it is like to be you;

do you also sometimes wonder

what it is like to be me?

Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019