Amrita Valan (Towards Visibility)

Amrita Valan

THE GHOST WHO WALKS

 

Brandish mop, broomstick
Wash vessels, countertop,
Make floors brand new
Varnish door knobs.

 

Paint Ma Laxmi’s feet outside

Worship God’s immaculate bride,

Do daily Pranayama, Surya Namaskar,

Sit with your children watch Avatar,

Discuss with them the daily news,

Watch a stand-up comic rant and vent

Your secret pent up pressured views.

Cook and clean, make the beds,

Be sure the chicken or lamb marinates.

Do this until you are done to death.

 

After two score years or more, hey woman,
Running on empty since you hit the floor
Neither pity not pittance paid, in the name of
Love and duty, your labours never monetised.
A ghost in your mansion, queen of your hive,
Invisible, busy churning out honey for your tribe.

 ***

WOMAN

 

You are a valuable commodity. Man is like gold, fallen into a ditch,
His muck can be washed off, emerging good as new, good as gold.
But alas! You frail fabulous silk, forever spoilt by a trace of dirt.
Unsullied, a girl child is precious, untouched.
Like a car, first ownership is all.
 
Woman you are owned. You claim freedom,
A voice, a choice. Hush your noise. Look upwards,  
Your liberty granted under the aegis of permission,
Glass ceilings make you fantasise about infinite scope.
 
Woman, you walk a thin high wire, tight rope artist of dangerous heights
As perfect work of art, plundered, caged, collected, displayed, framed,
Showcased luxury good. Cossetted, Beloved. Pampered, praised.
As audacity, stifled, shaved, paraded naked like punishment,
Stoned, burnt, by fire or acid, berated, warned, cautioned
To be aware. Beware woman, you are on thin, slippery ground,
Once fallen. It is downhill all the way; only prodigal males return.
 
Woman you have been told; your grace lies in soft submission.
My face hardens, I curse like a man, spread broad shoulders
Protecting my family because I can. Do it all. A learnt élan.
But I am still, your appendage rib, only an accessory, woman.

 

Amrita Valan is a writer from India with two published works, Arrivederci Fifty Poems, (Gloomy Seahorse Press, 2021) and a collection of 17 short stories, In Between Pauses, (Imp Spired Press, 2021). Her poems, essays and short stories have been published online, in national and international journals and anthologies, such as Outlook Weekender, Piker’s Press, Shot glass Journal, among others. Her short story A Normal Day was featured in the 2021 Best of the Best anthology by Potato Soup Journal. In 2021 she won a jury award for an ekphrastic on Van Gogh’s Café Terrace from the Friendswood Ekphrastic Poetry contest and was shortlisted again in 2022. She has narrated her short stories for Alan Johnson’s Storyboard. Amrita podcasts her stories on Spotify at:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/6dk3S7FOUh72OE9wByoRGt...

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

Amita Ray (Towards Visibility)

Amita Ray

THE MATRIARCH

age sculpts a framed face animating

an unobtrusive corner of haveli

in the hollow of her venerable womb

posterity sketches its roots,

branches wrinkle in flawless mesh

capturing the indecisive count of her age,

the sunken sockets of the matriarch

epitome of empowerment

hold pedigree in spine entitled

its fluidity diverge in veins a continuum,

years arrested in furrows of her hallowed gaze

immortality palpates unblinking,

her mystic gaze registers cryptic dialogues

coupling the mortal with immortal.

* Haveli: old private mansion

***

THE RAG DOLL

she looks at herself lacklustre,

staring at the red dot between her brow

the fateful sun bridging flights of darkness

in a life less than a decade and half years old

days trundle dos and don’ts pieced together

she pines for her child, a rag doll left behind

in penniless sundry joys of childhood

she now festers in a squalid den

of a knotted city slum

daily chores pile up

as does her body needs

pangs of hunger coalesce

with a seedling in her womb

the burgeoning life terminates

in spasms of unpardonable abuse

the miscarriage bleeds, bleeds, merges

in embers red of a doll forsaken, her child

between the vermillion parting of her hair.

***

Amita Ray, a former associate professor in English and Vice- Principal of a college based in Kolkata. She is a translator, short story writer, reviewer and poet. She has four volumes of translations to her credit. The titles of her translations are Khirer Putul (The Doll of Condensed Milk), Treats in Translation, Legends Speak (Co-authored) and Dwipantarer Katha (The Story of Transportation). She is a widely published short story writer. Her collection of short stories TRAIL OF LOVE AND LONGINGS published in 2020 has received rave reviews. She is a published poet and has brought out a collection of poems Until Birds Sing. She is an executive council member of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata. She is also an Advisory Board Member of Kavya Kumbh, Kolkata Chapter. Her translation of Abanindranath Tagore’s Khirer Putul (The Doll of Condensed Milk) was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademy award for English translation 2022.

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

Achingliu Kamei (Towards Visibility)

Achingliu Kamei

NO NAME WOMAN

Story, memory,

The periphery realm is a part of the whole

The very air no-name woman breathe

You breathe, threads lost in the wind

Came blowing by, searching for the lost fabric

Search for meaning, for validation

Rising under the same sun, and moon

No-name woman in that realm
Famously known for what she was not
A malleable sheep on all the dark realms’ altar
Sacrificed. Yet the no-name woman
Realised all her dark realms
Her discordant attributes, a tapestry of the concordant weaves
On all her curves and contours
Weaving new visions of what is possible.
No-name woman’s threads continue to flow and weave
Resonating, profound shift in perspective
No-name woman weaves what was
Silenced, objectified, and oppressed
Breaking barriers and breaking hierarchical models.

 

A short story writer, poet, and ultra-runner, Achingliu Kamei teaches literature at Delhi University, New Delhi. She has a Ph.D. from Jawaharlal University. She has published a collection of folktales, titled Naga Tales, Dawn (2017), Songs of Raengdailu, a book of poems (2021), Liangtuang Pu, Illustrated Novella for Children (2021), Headspace, The Mind’s Realm (2022), and Naga Tales Morning Blush (2023). Several of her poems have also been published in anthologies and journals from the USA, Canada, Singapore, and India, such as in the Setu Journal, Poetry Pea Journal of Haiku, and Senryu etc.

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

SPECIAL ISSUE: Towards Visibility

Poetry by BIPOC, Women, Individuals with Disabilities and Non-binary Voices

 

Guest Editorial by

Anita Nahal, Sangeeta Sharma & Candice Louisa Daquin

 

Candice Louisa Daquin

This special issue of Setu showcases poetry by individuals who identify themselves either as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), as women, as individuals with disabilities or as non-binary voices. Current world demographics reveal that women are 49.58%, Black people are 7.8 billion, Indigenous people are 6%, 1.3 billion individuals with disability and about 2% of the population in 27 countries identified themselves as non-binary in a 2023 survey. [1]

Obviously, statistics never paint a whole picture, and likely there are many more than these numbers who identify as such. Ultimately these groups are not a minority but a flourishing major part of society but despite this their voices have historically been marginalized. Hence our enduring efforts toward visibility.

Human nature prevents some of us from recognizing and accepting the distinctive diversity of others. As a species we have the potential of generating bias and fear in our brain synapses, consequently shifting to a “fight-or-flight”[2] mode rather quickly when encountering ‘difference’. Princeton university researchers, Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov have concluded that it takes only 1/10 of a second for us to make a judgement about someone based on optic perceptions.[3]

Sangeeta Sharma

            Keeping that in mind, in this curated issue, we present an assortment of themes that BIPOC, women, individuals with disabilities and non-binary poets across the globe are writing about. We have a wide geographical coverage as our poets are from the US, India, Bangladesh, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and Mauritius. 

The questions this issue wishes to address include: what attracts the interest of our poets and provides an impetus for them to express themselves? Are they addressing bias, injustice, violence, abuse or seeking the lost bonds of camaraderie, or lamenting over the digressing environmental richness? Do they yearn for spatial connections with cherished or disliked places or people, or are they engrossed in imaginary fascinations with non-human species or beyond in space? Or is magic their main poetic stay?

Anita Nahal

Or are they articulating their personal lives and beauties or challenges therein, prejudices, and world views towards them or others? Or are they writing poetry about love, loss, survival, family, parenthood, various “isms”, music, dance, sports, food, travel, etc.? 

Also, are these poets expressing in realism or surreal terms? What kind of semantics do they employ? In what forms do they create poetry—free verse, prose, haiku, ekphrastic, etc.?

Perhaps none of these themes or styles can be expressed in a vacuum and poetry outpourings are simply an amalgam of related or unrelated thoughts, feelings, and expressions.

This extraordinary issue of Setu is, therefore, exclusive as it’s rare to have a collection of so many minority voices in one issue…thirty in all! We have retained the variances of American, British, and other forms of English be it, to offer a smidgeon of linguistic variety and flavor. We have also preserved the different grammatical usages because we believe that poetry is a genre that allows us to experiment more with language than any other writing medium.

“Although poetry should abide by most traditional language rules, how a poet chooses to use them is critical. Whether they decide to follow them or break them, they’re making a statement and conveying a message with this choice.”[4] It’s that message, loud and clear, of poetry by BIPOC, women, individuals with disabilities and non-binary voices that you will find on the pages of this issue. We humans have layered identities within us, lapping and overlapping just like in British mathematician John Venn’s Diagram, though unlike his equal circles, our circles can change shapes and sizes depending upon what is dear to us at a particular moment in time.[5] 

We thank all the contributors for their time and effort in submitting their precious creativity. Without writers, we wouldn’t have any journals or books!  

We also thank Setu, Sunil Sharma, and Anurag Sharma for their support to the theme and hope they don’t find any editorial gaffs! We did our best! It’s certainly hats off to us three, as we worked from different global time zones, effectively employing Zoom and emails to get our work done quickly and harmoniously. As three women editors for this distinctive Setu issue, each one of us is unique, and we also represent a multitude of divergences in our personal and professional styles which gelled extremely well! In the end, another deep gratitude to our contributors and to Setu!

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[1] Published by Statista Research Department and 9, J. (2023) Gender Identity Worldwide by country 2021, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1269778/gender-identity-worldwide-country/

[2] In the 1920s American psychologist, Walter Cannon was the first to write describe the fight-or-flight concept.

[3] Wargo, E. (2006) How many seconds to a first impression? Association for Psychological Science - APS. Available at: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/how-many-seconds-to-a-first-impression

[4] writingjournal_xdluy8. (2023, July 30). Do poems need to follow grammatical rules? - letter review. Letter Review -. https://letterreview.com/do-poems-need-to-follow-grammatical-rules/#:~:text=Poems%20don’t%20need%20to,a%20message%20with%20this%20choice.

[5] Nahal, A. (2016) Diversity & Inclusion applied in layers (DIAL) model by dr. Anita Nahal, CDP, Society for Diversity. Available at: https://societyfordiversity.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/diversity-inclusion-applied-in-layers-dial-model-by-dr-anita-nahal-cdp/ 

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Authors

Achingliu Kamei Amita Ray Amrita Valan Barbara Chepaitis Basudhara Roy Cyril Dabydeen Danielle Wong Deepa Agarwal Dustin Pickering Hema Ravi Kamayani Bisht Kayla Pica Williams Laksmisree Banerjee Maria do Sameiro Barroso Meenakshi Mohan

Milan Mondal Neelam Saxena Chandra Neera Kashyap Parameshwaree Munisamy-Odoye Pramila Venkateswaran Rachael Ikins Robert Maddox-Harle Roopali Sircar Gaur Snigdha Agarwal Sonali Pattnaik Stasha Powell Suchita Parikh-Mundul Suzette Bishop Tasneem Hossain Vandana Kumar

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Setu, September 2023

Vandana Kumar (Towards Visibility)

Vandana Kumar

MOTHER LANGUAGE DAY

 

 It’s mother language day

 A day so far away

From where I currently reside

 

My little one sucks my lactating breasts

I doubt if he has ever found

My mother tongue resting there 

Neither has my husband discovered it

On the taste of my lips

 

I visit the grave of my ancestors

Hoping to find a language

They left behind

In some waylaid leaves

 

Only specters signal me

In Morse code

 

The desire to dig digger

Comes now and then

In phases

 

Meanwhile I faithfully hold

Annual remembrances for all of them

In English

 

 

WELL-FED CHILDREN

 

We first fed our children the classic lie

That they came from the lands of angels

And fairies

That they were made in some cirrus clouds

Sprinkled with stardust

 

We hid it all

Creation

Procreation

Sex between the sheets

Sex served with a dry martini

Sex in the bloating cities

Sex in the starving villages

 

We hid it all

Leaving them to find the holes in our theories

As they struggled to find themselves

In their own abysses

Left bewildered

For all of the love making

A world in constant war

Adults, who couldn’t be trusted at all

 

Vandana Kumar is a French teacher, translator, recruitment consultant, Indie Film Producer, cinephile and poet in New Delhi, India. Her poems have been published in national and international websites of repute like Mad Swirl, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Piker Press, Dissident Voice, Borderless journal, Madras Courier, Outlook, etc. She has featured in literary journals like Fine Lines and anthologies like Harbinger Asylum, Kali Project, But You Don't Look Sick, etc. Her cinema articles appear regularly in Just-cinema and Daily Eye. She was among 40 participating poets in the ‘The Indija Pro Poet 2023’ festival held in June23 in Serbia. Her poem was translated into Serbian in the Pro Poet anthology published there. Her debut collection of poems Mannequin Of Our Times was published in February 2023.The book has been awarded ‘The Panorama International Book Award 2023.’

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

Tasneem Hossain (Towards Visibility)

Tasneem Hossain

DEPARTURE OF THE DEAD

Travelling through the darkness of night;

Journeying across plains and mountains,

Oceans and the sky in daylight;

I cross the realms of reality, illusions and dreams.

 

Corrupt cells burning through veins circling in blaze;

Fever and frenzy, distaste and bone jerking pain;

Arrows and needles prick with insurmountable aches.

 

Hollow eyes, spotted blue skin;

Medicines pile, injections increase;

Hungry yet nothing I can eat.

 

Days and nights crawl like a snail in distress.

Frequent visits to hospital beds;

Medication, injection oxygen fail;

There is a knock at the door.

 

Nothingness surrounds, Darkness engulfs.

Mother cries, father sighs,

Weariness of the declining cells

Give way to the profound light from the skies.

 

ETERNAL LIFE

 

Sun may shine today or tomorrow decline,

light of sun it holds inside;

shinning brighter, it will forever rise.

 

Thunderstorms darken the blue sky above,

clouds and lightening covers, blanket of gloom;

the blue sky forever shines anew.

 

The moon eclipses, covered with darkness soon;

sun’s love lightens, glows fully bright the new moon

dazzling the dark sky in silvery bloom.

 

The never ending water of oceans flow,

wombs of the oceans forever with water grow;

 

Tsunami’s tidal waves drown the earth below,

Earth with nature’s abundance, surfaces meadows.

 

Small gestures of friendship, love and blessings

meaningful moments of happiness remain;

small miracles happen in different forms.

Dreams come true, we transform.

 

Time may fly, one may die.

The soul forever in heaven flies.

 

 

I AM A PROSTITUE

 

Dazzling a smile, through cheap lipstick I wink,

Making the onlookers drool and blink;

Adorned in tight skirts with slits,

Low necked blouse and tight fitted jeans,

Painted nails with matching high heels.

Let the lechers know what I mean.

Don’t care what others may think,

I am a ‘leper’ or a ‘dirty chick’.

 

Drenched in strong perfume I let the beggars beg.

Drown in oblivion, I take too many pegs.

Crying in the rain, filled with filth

Washing away my so called sins and silt;

 

O you great passersby!

Don’t you dare judge me or even try,

For little do you know how I came here and why.

I was for them just a costly good to supply.  

 

However much I shriek or cry,

Here my freedom is denied.

These are not the choices I have made,

I am a slave of human trade.

 

Tasneem Hossain is a multi-lingual poet (English, Bangla, and Urdu) from Bangladesh. Her wanderings in other areas of literature include fiction, translation, academic pieces and op-eds. Her writings appear in anthologies, different dailies, and annual publications of different countries. E.g. International Human Rights Art Festival, Southern Arizona Press (USA), Borderless Journal (Singapore), Polis Magazino (Greece), Migosepta Global (Indonesia), Discover Mississauga and More-eBook (Canada), Krishnochura (UK), EDAS Chronicle, The Dhaka Literature, An Ekushey Anthology, bdnews24.com, The Daily Star, The Business Standard and Asian Age Online (Bangladesh). Her published poetry books are The Pearl Necklace, Floating Feathers, and Grass in Green (published in USA); and a book of articles Split and Splice. She majored in English Language and Literature from Dhaka University. She is the Director of Continuing Education Centre, a human capacity development organisation. She worked as faculty in Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET). She also worked as newscaster, commentary reader, interviewer, and radio presenter in radio Bangladesh for 10 years and participated in many national sports championships. She resides both in Canada and Bangladesh.

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

Suzette Bishop (Towards Visibility)

Suzette Bishop

SUMMONING THE PAINTER, HILMA AT KLINT

 

Based on Hilma af Klint: A Biography by Julia Voss and “Polar Distress” by Daniel Glick

 

But one has to learn to see them,   27 polar bears drowning as ice melts, swimming too long, not making it to the next ice shelf.    I tell a lover’s ghost, As we made the plan together, you said nothing.   Once Mother is asleep, I run down the dim hallway following my compass, find Sigrid’s door.   It is my view of the work that it must be preserved as a whole and not mixed with others where waters become too deep and cold to support much life, a last-chance sanctuary.    You have service to the mysteries before you and will soon understand what is required of you.       

 

What is an angel? You can call angels manwomen.   Bowhead whales, oil deposits along the edges of ice, I don’t see them soaring over the heaving ocean.   My early portrait subjects ask if we know what it’s like staying in frame.    Those spirits like matchmakers can be indecipherable, send me to new lovers, tell me to envision abstract painting, predict our future.  I transcribe it all,       Medium.

 

The form is the waves, behind the form is life itself.     Ice breaks up, fewer ringed seal pups survive.    Pulled beneath the ocean, we’re shaped into delicate swirled shells, sent in different directions.   Womanman Manwoman.    Paint the spirit, dimensions of outer space,   resulting ecological ripples.  Create astral paintings.         

 

Ice platforms for rest, shrinking, causing flooding and drowning in a soundless planet. A spirit tells me I’m not satisfied. Particles of air stood between us. Seances help you find them.  My ancestors charted the seas. I chart the microscopic world, the galaxies, the spirits’ travels, beyond frame. This is where we navigate to, now.

 

 

SHE REPEATED HER STORY OVER AGAIN

 

He tells me to shut-up about my office,

An office I never asked for,

Now, being taken away

Because his wife needs an office,

 

And because he could have given

Me a full-time job, if only I’d asked,

And because he understands about pain,

Too, and grant rejections, and was there for me,

 

And snuck up behind me in the hall,

And yelled at my husband at a meeting,

And gave out my phone number,

And assumes the previous chair

 

Gave me the office for sex.

I was welcome to visit his office anytime

To give flowers for flowers like the others,

Or invite him to my windowless office,

 

But I didn’t.

So he’s heading for me from behind his desk

To kick me out of his office and my quiet room

Where I’d written two books.

 

 

MENTOR’S WORKSHOP

 

I write the poem I think you want, but it’s all wrong,

And you throw it back at me, You can do better,

It’s sentimental, there are no ideas, it’s just a fucking pretty image.

 

A friend of yours is a visiting writer,

And my simple imagistic, feminine poem describing a manta ray

Embarrasses you in front of your friend,

And now the mood is grim while you tear down my poem.

 

Years later in this dream, I try again,

The language is thick, layered, the poem expands, opens like a landscape.

It’s conveyed to you in the back room by three of your women poets.

 

You send them back to me carrying heavy jewels,

One of emeralds and small broken mirrors, snapped into half-moons,

Something part necklace, part sculpture, a necklace of hammered metal,

The clasp like a miniature gate, an invitation.

Your women gather around the jewels in awe, fear,

How did you meet the teacher? What did you write about? It must be a mistake.

 

I glide away from you like the manta ray in that earlier poem,

Sea creatures giving off effervescence in the deep, sunless ocean canyon,

Lanterns that poem, the dream tell me to follow.

 

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks, She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes, Horse-Minded, Hive-Mind, Cold Knife Surgery, and most recently, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies and received an Honorable Mention in the Pen 2 Paper Contest sponsored by the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities and first place in the Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize. She has the invisible disabilities of ME/CFS and fibromyalgia and lives in Laredo, Texas, with her partner and two cats.

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

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

Stasha Powell (Towards Visibility)

Stasha Powell

NOT A SUICIDE NOTE

 

I'm in a place that no one wants to speak of

A place where no one wishes to visit

Riding this spiral down the drain

 

If they ask how I am, I feel them tense

before I utter the lie, "I'm doing just fine."

 

Visits - rare as they may be - are seemingly short

filled with misery as I try to hide behind all the "I'm fine" lies,

the uncomfortable truth pouring out of my eyes.

 

Sure, there is a pity - which I hate and despise

Sympathy meant to be soft feels like binding ties.

Words like do things, buck up, and smile, confuse me

since we all know I've never been a Mary fucking sunshine.

 

Pull more, push less, silly advice at best

In case you haven't noticed, my body is a mess

Poked, prodded, and prescribed

No doctor can figure out these damn genes of mine

 

Forget about my mental illness or the thoughts of suicide;

my immune system has declared war.

It tries to kill me time after time after time.

 

My body is a cage that can only be felt by me

it keeps me from life, DON'T YOU SEE?

 

Remember me dancing, laughing & carefree.

The true Bohemian I was always meant to be.

Not this... not this broke woman waiting for her

cats to die so she can finally be free.

 

 

THE UNWILLING RACE

 

It's a race I will never win

This one of my body versus my sins

Every late night catching up with me

All the vices I use to try reach

their dead fingers for my feet

to trip me up again

Choking on everything I never said

I look younger than I am

My brain is still 12 though

And my body is at least 110

The balance of self-care

And helping others is a wave

I ride well until wipeout

Taking care of me is no fucking joke

There are all the pills I must force down

Physical therapy and Pilates daily

To keep my joints moving around

A long list of fun things

I'm advised not to do

It's one big boot camp

To keep me upright

So I can keep moving through

It's more than a full-time job

And beyond a pain in the ass

If you asked anyone I've helped

They'd say I was accountable for all tasks

It's so much easier to help someone

That isn't me

I wasn't born a fighter

But life has made a warrior out of me

A title I didn't get to choose

I'll either push my way through the day

Or fall so helplessly behind

I'll lose my way

One little sickness has undone months

of hard work

Two steps forward and five back

Doesn't work with the patience I have left

Which is practically none

If I was able-bodied, I would have

Taken over the world

I want to love this body of mine

With all its anomalies and curiosities

But when I lay my head down at night

The throbbing pain of having been upright

Takes me down a darkened path

Where odds are weighed

And healing is undone

Having to think before every step

Leaves no room for spontaneity or fun

I'm trying so hard to find that

unconditional love

That I have for so many

But lately, it feels like my body

Isn't worthy of love

It's mastered treachery

And finding new ways to

Bring me to my knees.

I just want to live in

Harmony and peace

We're supposed to operate as one

Not separate entities

This decades-long fight

Between us

It isn't healing anyone.

 

 

JUDAS

 

I'm tired of pulling poisoned arrows out of my body

and only attending to the wounds

while ignoring those firing the shots.

 

I've spent this year learning to build walls

where once I only had windows.

I'm not afraid of the wolves at my door.

 

They thought that huffing and puffing

would get rid of me,

but I'm one of those rare beasts

that heals alone

Before coming back stronger than I ever

was.

 

Now that I've put it to paper

They can no longer hurt me.

I'm the magician, the goddess, the

scarlet woman -

drunk on your release. I wish you all

the best

(as far away from me as you can get)

Consider yourself dismissed

 

There is no exquisite beauty without some Stasha Powell - raised by the wild books of San Francisco Bay, only to move away to Ohio, where she passes her days with her partner, Andrew, and plays with her cat Jax along with Noods, the snake. Helping those in need, while making hearts bleed with her poetry, as unique as she, and me, and you. She’s been published in books and magazines. You can find her at www.stashastrange.com

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility