Poems from NaPoWriMo'23: Set One

I am one of Plath’s protagonists sitting under a green fig tree, manuevering master plans to love like a man, to love without falling...

It's a wrap from National Poetry Writing Month 2023, a month-long celebration of poetic creativity and expression. Throughout the event, we were fortunate to receive an overwhelming number of poetry submissions, each one a unique attempt that left us in awe. The level of talent and passion showcased by participants was truly inspiring. We will be sharing some of the featured poems with you via this newsletter, delivering them in sets to fully appreciate the diversity and richness of voices. Here is the first set of poems:

To be a woman and to be in love is exhausting - Antara Vashistha

To be a woman
and to be in love
is exhausting
So imagine
when the two elements combine,
You become a coalescence
Of dreams and disappointments
perusing through dictionaries
and the World Wide Web 
to craft a language in
which you will love- 
It cannot be like your mother- 
A presence not so discerning, 
You would not settle for
Mere remarks or grunts of annoyance
Or cut fruits in form of apologies,
No,
You will not be your father,
Who at sixty still barely communicates,
You will not be a teacher
Sweeping up fetishes or fantasies,
It is not your job to educate
On the verses of kindness and support,
You would not be a child,
Nor parent or a colleague,
Rather a friend
Forever wondering
How should I presume.

As a Woman in love,
I often 
Become the old lady 
Who lives round the neighborhood, 
Bold in her stance and voice
Yet forever desolate
Unbeknownst
To the apparition of her own existence.
Often,
I am one of Plath’s protagonists
Sitting under a green fig tree,
Manuevering master plans
To love like a man,
To love without falling
Or surrendering my potential
Scheming ways to 
Love as I am, 
While being what I can

Often
I surrender my senses
Picking up lessons on love
From those who sustain me,

As a woman in love,
I love like my city, 
Tracing histories and geographies,
I love like a bookmark
Marking memories to come back to,
I love like the air,
Encompassing in my presence,
I love like the color lavender,
I love like a sunflower,
A storyteller,
And a stalker,
My language becomes fraught
With 
Self-built metaphors and somewhat cliched ideas,
I borrow and steal phrases
From those who loved me before
And those who will
Love me someday,

As a woman in love,
I love like a warrior
And I love like a worrier,
I love in gratitude and cognizance,
Demanding nothing less, 
Perhaps a little bit more.


Prayers that remain unanswered - Disha Mod

the prayers that remain unheard often go and bitch about god to the prayers that remain unanswered,
while the prayers that find their ultimate destiny brag about their victory. only to find that the people who made them don't even remember them anymore.

god is up there making a pros and cons list of all the prayers that reach his ears. all your red flags are accounted for in the court of faith and they say, the goodness of heart is the tie-breaker to most of them.

an 8-year-old in some part of the world is currently praying for an earthquake to avoid a math test.
will his prayers be heard sooner compared to a man solely praying out of greed? you see, the child doesn't want anyone to get hurt. he is just bad at math. and how we just silently thanked god for being able to differentiate between a good heart and stupidity.

god isn't deaf to our prayers, you know?
but sometimes the wishes we surrender to are often the nightmares we would pay to get out of.

your wish to reconnect with your inner child is a nightmare for a girl living in America who hasn't aged a day since she was four years old. puberty is a nosy neighbor who peeks in through the balcony opposite to hers but never dares to walk in.

while you sit on your couch complaining about pain being your biggest teacher, a girl out there is incapable of feeling it. a while ago, she scratched her right eye out in an attempt to feel something. just anything. pain is a group of cool kids and the nerd in her keeps staring from a distance. And while you pray to skip a few years of your life in an attempt to make it all easy, a man woke up from a coma, 19 years later only to find him closer to the verge of committing suicide.

but god works in mysterious ways you see, in some parts of Minnesota, there's a church that cured the cancer of a man whose doctors advised his family to plan his funeral.
while you make a wish for your life to end faster, god listens to the hunger of those craving for one more second.

after all, the prayers that remain unanswered
are often the ones walking in high heels in an attempt to reach god faster.


Oranges / Almost unholy to touch by Medha Arora

something about oranges lately 
nestled tight in crates 
sun-bright from a distance 
almost unholy to touch
to peel, to pluck wedges,
the act of 
stripping white threads, 
an infraction 
coaxing me with its
subtle supple sweet scent 
gracefully incensed by the 
colour it gave to fire
even with its winter light
my hands give in
singed with sourness 
scraped rind under my fingernails 
making a bad habit out of an aftertaste 
soothing a thirst 
seeded in my mind 
squeezed slices
soundlessly 
dripping down my elbows
my tongue a citrus mesh 
of not holding back sin 
lately something about oranges 
makes me savor the pulp 
I used to strain from its juice 
sun-bright even from up close.


Until the mo(u)ring flickers in an oil lamp again - Shailja Bahety

The red silk light escapes the oil lamp and settles in the sky while the night shatters inside its glass and the dawn flies away with colours for yet another mo(u)ring. 

The world is what it doesn't seem to be.

It is a pool ball on God's billiard table, who wears a linen maxi dress and is never drunk on prayers because she prefers her mid-morning slumber while the words die punctually till dusk. 

Quietly, the universe bathes in melancholy.

A dead thing is not always excused from breaths
it sometimes becomes a numb, solitary and looking-away affair.

Like the pale eyes of a child, who realises at an early age,
that doorknobs tell reality more than doorways can.
That at the dining table, the world seems happy, while in the bedroom, it becomes a bruise.
It seems like grief tiptoed outside the graveyard only to settle in his eyes.

A dead thing is like
the borrowed hope of an old parent, who stands by the window alone,
with the sun falling on his sunken cheeks and coconut-like heart.
In the daylight, his world calmly reduces to one of the beads of his rosary 
while at midnight, it cradles with impatience and rains coconut water. 
His loneliness doesn't reflect on his face, it just grows into his wrinkles-
an obvious, usual and prosaic thing 
of an old age 
to others.

A dead thing resembles
the saintly love of a widow,
that seared itself by leaping into the burning woods and ending its holy existence,
and what remains at the end-
the smoke, the ashes and an identical twin of sorrow.
One hand of her world cups the face of misery 
and the other smothers its hollow mouth that yearns deeply for its lover's breath.

Every dead thing needs more mourning so that people realise it was once alive
because the world tends to forget quickly.

People walk by,
leaves dry away,
the brittle sun gets smudged in the near sky 
and the air that blow becomes nothing 
but a wave of memory.

And the world keeps its memories like sandcastles on the shore,
for the ocean to gently eat them away.

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If you've reached this point and still have an appetite for reading, we have a delightful treat in store for you: a captivating essay written by Srilekha. This essay delves into the brilliance of Martin McDonagh's masterpiece, "The Banshees of Inisherin." With thought-provoking analysis, it explores how the film metaphorically reflects the turbulent times in Irish history, skillfully conveyed through the lens of a fractured friendship.

The Metaphor of The Banshees of Inisherin: Exploring the Irish History Through Fractured Friendship by Srilekha Mitra

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