Suchita Parikh-Mundul (Towards Visibility)

Suchita Parikh-Mundul

LEAVES

 

We are quiet until a breeze

rustles us.

 

Passers-by hear the static,

put false twos together  

and believe our nature is noise.

 

We explain that we are victims

of circumstance,

that we are essentially leaves, 

hanging on. 

 

 

STARS AT A SYMPOSIUM

 

I once lost my bearings at a symposium

and began to crawl on my knees

 

as if the sky was about to crash overhead.

The constellation of minds onstage

 

continued to shimmer like holograms,

radiating the brilliance of the sun.

 

It must have been this that blinded

me as I hit the floor on all fours

 

and slunk out of the theatre,

wishing I was a star too.

 

 

LIFE OF A FREELANCER

 

On some days I’m a bovine

soil-trampler belting out songs 

 

into an empty day. On others,

I gulp death on quick pavements.

 

Only the wink of the moon

tells me which I’ll be,

 

and that is the gift

of twilight.

 

Suchita Parikh-Mundul worked as a writer and copy editor with magazines and

websites for several years, and currently freelances. Some of her work on gender issues can be read online at The Swaddle. Her poetry can be read in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, Outlook India, Muse India, and other literary spaces, as well as anthologies like Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022, Amity: peace poems, The Well-Earned, and On Hunger: A Poetrygram Anthology.

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility