Sophia Naz is a bilingual
poet, author, editor and translator and artist. She has been nominated twice
for the Pushcart Prize; in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry
and her work has featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies over
the last two decades. She has authored the poetry collections; Peripheries ,
Pointillism Date Palms Open Zero , and Shehnaz, a biography (Penguin Random
House 2019). Bark Archipelago, her fifth poetry collection published in March
2023.
Unstoppered
In
late December
rain
became a jilted lover
her
heart poured out - a deluge of letters
seed
syllables hit the ground running
jumping
in the mouths of frogs
Even
the gutters began to sound
like
the “click” songs of Miriam Makeba.
By
January, no metaphor
can
encompass our misery
Wetter
and wetter this weather
Unstoppered,
her tears - now ours
Ash Land
Ash
floats on the sky, a scattered paper
blotting
out news of the sun.
Ash
falls to the ground, forecasts
ill
stars all around.
After
apocalyptic orange-red
ash
alights, tiny, white
butterflies as far as eyes can see
snow
of ash, seeping in bones.
Winter
in autumn
Earth
before death.
Sea Change
I
am the murdered granddaughter of Tethys
the
lost kiss, of marine phosphorescence
a
ghost swarm of eels swaying on abyssal seamounts
Baleen
of gray whales whose prayers were teeth
of endless rosaries whispering “tamtu tamtu”
into
the deep indigo
that
neither day nor night could catch
I
am the murdered granddaughter of Tethys
My
limbs of every hue of blue turned
bitter
milk, peppered black
Pandora’s
nipple oozing sewage,
I
am the murdered granddaughter of Tethys
Look
upon me, encased in a glass cage
See
in my sea
page
after page
your
future obituary
Bird of Memory
Here
was feather,
truth
against which,
a
heart was weighed
and
found wanting.
As
earth is
anagram
of heart,
and
rose of eros, you
arose
- it was morning
Each
evening you
stitched
up the wounds of sky
that
thread, hypnotic
invisible
string on which
your
vanished songs
play,
on mind-vinyl
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