Shafinur Shafin, BANGLADESH

MY MOTHER

My mother was my first grave

Sheltered me in her warm womb

My mother was my first mistake

Welcomed me to a world

against everyone's choice for a boy

My mother was my first adversity

Shackled me in a society

Where eyes make me uncomfortable, filthy   

My mother was my first darkness

That Let me to kill my will,

To Envelope all the secrets in the heart

Where windows are shut to let

the light to come in

To deceive myself always 

But me looking at her

Can't say anything

She is my only hopelessness

From my birth

I can see me in her

Bound to a life

With an unending fear

For my unborn daughter

REACTIONS

I'm not a good Poet
I do not know
HOW to write poems
You Men like my poems
just because
I am beautiful
Just because
I have an appealing voice
and
I can talk in an impressive way
You men appreciate my poems
just because
I'm still young
just because
I'm a female
This is the way
How you react to
the beauty of my poems
Thank you although,
At least
you have one eye
to see
one side of the truth!

I WANT TO WRITE MY FEAR

I want to write my fear tonight

I'll not talk about

my fear of the thunderbolt

when it sparkles

and draws uncanny

violet lines on

the blackish sky

I'll not talk of

the loud noise

that makes me shrink

to myself

I will not depict my fear

of getting frozen

sensing no love

between our sweat

I won't talk of the fear

of your return,

you who I once named

'spider'

I won't even talk of

the worst of my fears

of being raped

in a world

where women are rated

by their age,

religion, caste

and people

make fun of

those things freely -

"so, you are Muslim,

I have every right

to rape you,

even if I were to drag you

out of the grave."

Or,

if I happen to be

a Hindu girl,

my mom will ask

the rapist to go slow,

and one by one

so I at least

do not succumb!

I'll not talk about my fear

to live

to leave

I will not.

Trust me.

Tonight

I'll talk about

the overhung

spider web

in my wash room

how I feel so annoyed

of having a shower

before its eight eyes

wide open.

(Published earlier in Period Magazine)

Shafinur Shafin is a Bangladeshi poet. She has published her debut book “Nisangam” which is a collection of Bangla poems in 2016. She is also the poetry-editor in an e-zine named Prachya Review. As she cannot paint, so she wants to create image with the power of words. She writes in both Bangla and English languages. Her Bangla poems have been translated into seven different languages including Nepalese, Hindi, French, Spanish, German and Italian language. Her English poems have been included in two anthologies published from New York and Philippine, and also her poems appeared in several international magazines.

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Women, Power & Creativity :: Setu, March 2019