Suggestions

April 2023

After Love

Now that you have lost another version of you, walk out through the new moon in the spruces and lie down in the deep of the clearing. Listen: they are still here, the wild things, migrations moving on again from
by

Spring Musings

Bird love  As I write these pieces, Spring is not quite fully in the air, but close enough. It arrives later in my city, here in Canada. The freezing nights and warm days are turning the sidewalks and back alleys into skating
by

A Good Friday Beach Visit

A perfect seaside filter coffee leaves a caramel bitterness on the tongue Even in company, the crashing waves of the sea only remind of the disconsolate need for love. A passing fortune teller offers to read my palm. It is not
by

A Solo Trip to The Hills

The first time I decided to go on a solo trip (to Gokarna) a few years back, I remember feeling excited, nervous and happy. The same feelings in varying intensities enveloped me this time also, as I decided to go
by
·

Kite Running Days

Kite running days An ambery summer Lay on harvested crops. Our salad days flapped like Dragonflies. We piled up pebbles under Shade of the giant Albizia. Tween us in loosen plaits And frocks with un-tied knots. Shrieks and squeals about the
by
·

The Mask

A soft whiff of air knocking at my window, table of good thoughts turned over. An effort to sew the wound of past, the mask fell off, eyes betraying heartache. Gloom blocking the view of silence, mind forgot to think
by
·

Tactile 

“The longing to touch…I feel gratitude when I touch someone  — as well as affection etc. The person has allowed me proof  that I have a body — and that there are bodies in the world.  — Susan Sontag,  from As
by
·

Gulmohur

On the way back from the hospital I ask in the rickshaw — Why this life-long marination in nature and language? Why go desperately Sensing the too-named Naming the too-sensed? Where do I go gutfully as seasons blaze through me?
by
·

Mt. Luna

Sister, look at the moon fret with you above Mt. Luna. He knows the fiefdom of dissenting clans is upon you, somewhere in a countryside where poetry never had a chance. The fire in the mountains is a torrid metaphor you have to
by

The Impelling Power of Powerlessness

Once, while returning from a conference by the metro bus in the bustling city of Istanbul, I witnessed a fair-statured woman with an autistic girl getting in and taking their seats in the rear. The woman appeared in a perfectly calm disposition;
by

The Birthing

A wrinkled fleshly fruit plucked out of my womb They asked me if I want to look and feel and hold Angry, I turned my head away, an emphatic no For the pain the wriggling brat had given me so
by

The Dawning

The world shifts on its axis when it dawns on you that your parents are not the font of knowledge and wisdom the epitome of perfection not gods, but imperfect, fallible human beings with dreams and desires a life beyond parenthood.
by

My Poems Speak of a Scene or a Thing

Nishi Pulugurtha In Conversation with Jhilam Chattaraj ‘the brown leaf between barbed wires that draw borders stuck held up and hanging’ — Nishi Pulugurtha Raindrops on the Periwinkle (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2022) is a volume of form poems – haiku,
by

Love not Lost

I sit and stare off into the void. Wrapped in inky blackness, the sky’s many twinkling stars keep a wary eye on me, I can feel it. My thoughts play a song; notes of an old song, from a
by
·

My Last Link

I ran hysterically and had no idea what was happening! The village was haunted and dark; only the stars gave me courage. Ghostly silence of humanity, and only a bat flapped its wings, and an owl hooted far away in
by