Voices Within: Jagari Mukherjee

Jagari Mukherjee is the Founder and Chief Executive Editor of the literary journal, EKL Review and is the winner of the Reuel International Prize for Poetry, She has authored three collections of poetry--a chapbook and two full-length volumes, the latest being The Elegant Nobody (2020) published by Hawakal. Her poetry e-book, Wine-Kissed Poems (2020), co-authored with Dr. Ampat Koshy, became an Amazon bestseller in India and the US. She is a gold medalist in English Literature, a Best of the Net 2018 nominee, DAAD scholar from Technical University, Dresden, Germany, and a Bear River Writers' Conference alumna. She has won numerous prestigious awards, including the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for Book Review (2018), the Women Empowered Gifted Poet Award (2020), and the Jury Prize at Friendswood Library's Ekphrastic Poetry Reading and Contest (2021).

On Listening to the 108 Names of Sri Krishna

I knew some of them, not all.

I let Madhav Keshav Govinda bloom like roses

in the drought-garden of the soul.

I become Radha, Lalita, Vishakha, 

I stand proud and tall. My heart starts to race 

in rhythm to the couplets of the song.

I am high on the love's intoxication, I let the names roll.

I turn a gopi waiting to bloom all along.

(My father tells me that when he was four,

his body hungered for food, yet he wanted more.

Every evening he sang the 108 names at his neighbors' door,

and listened to his mother's stories of every myth and lore.)

My body turns fire and air..

I become Lalita and wistfully stare

at Krishna and Radha dance: 

I merge with them at every chance.

I let Madhav Keshav Govinda bloom

in the spring-garden of the soul.

I taste his names till the last refrain.

Let me be stained blue again and again.

Haribol.

***

Earth to Sun

I am the ballerina called Earth

spinning on my axis as you, the Sun

hold me in a trance.

I dance when you touch me

with your light, and also,

when the birds take flight

and you leave me for the night.

You change every time you create

a new season; in summers

I burn in your heat.

In winters, you hide

like a lover who will not

listen to reason.

Then, Monsoons come…

you cover yourself in dark modesty

with the blanket of clouds

as thunder and rain upon me

stake their claims.

And in autumn, swirling leaves

adorn my hair as I spin

on the axis-altar of your worship.

They say, without you,

there would be no life in me.

You have the might, the right

To extinguish my name.

This galaxy is my dance floor.

Our bond is cosmic folklore.

I spin so that you can take me whole.

I am the missing piece 

of your body;

You are the lucent flame of my soul.

***

Afterwards

I wake up in the maternity ward

after a procedure.

I was dreaming of dancing with you,

except that you had left me like

the infected IUD removed from 

my body.

There are new mothers

with babies all around

and the same old odd me

bleeding after two surgeries.

The Sun in my eyes refuses to die.

Somebody has stabbed the mermaid's

fishtail, and I feel the dislodged

pink flesh and the gouged out

silver scales, lying about like giant snowdrops.

My uterine wall spills out

like a flood of rubies.

The nurse puts a cotton pad

to absorb the blood, as

empathetic babies scream out

my sapphire blues.

I am too sick to cry, even when

there is no sign of you.

***

---

Setu, February 2022