October 2023

Eve Speaks to Humanity I didn’t raise you like this. What is that on your fist? Mud? It’s not mud. Where have you been? Where did you get all that gold? You smell like someone else’s daughter. You know what they say

Smell of heat coming off the road It’s not a fire smell Just the heat from the sun Thongs sticky as the heat climbs into them Day lillies bloom Orchids open Merry golds flower Cuttings spread roots My skin red from

tell me about your whiteness I don't want to hear travels in Asia the study of reiki how you laboured with a doula the souvenirs of plunder mine it for me the caucasian in your veins apply this like a poultice onto

When truth wears the emperor’s new clothes, and nakedness becomes a parade, If civilization began with dressing, we are in retrograde. She is auctioned everyday to corporates, parts of her renamed, only given a parrot voice, You allow anybody to touch

You thought I would cry? My smile has the oppressed reprisal of generations that can burn ash I take tiny steps to the end of the world that you have ruled with your death traps Nothing escapes the gravity of

  He rode into Madrid on a white horse, flanked by a military guard that ran the length of Calle de Toledo. Every Spaniard, whichever side they were on, had heard the promise spread by those dour women in their dull dresses

“Ahalya,you will live here for many thousands of years, eating wind, without any food, lying on ashes and generating inner heat. Invisible to all creatures, you will live in this hermitage. And when Ram, who is unassailable, comes to this terrible

‘It’s way past midnight’. “Who remains awake at this ‘happy hour’, signing a pact with the mind’s secret chambers?” “Neither a ghost, nor a she-demon, nor a witch, but a dark, sombre truth of a female body in her prime, screaming

Sighing softly I collapse on my favourite chair after a crazy long day. In and out, slowly, deeply let the muscles relax I tell myself. It is blessedly quiet the night silence fills the air. A hot cup of tea, a book

It was that golden hour one wild evening in the chaste spring When the sun melted in a pool of warm pink and down it sent a wanton gleam To brush against her soft cheeks and give her curls a fiery tinge

night is alive with stars watching moonflowers’ unfurling petals I sit among their shadows my feet trammels dust waiting for your return long ago moonbeams touched my face or was it you whispering, setting my blood roaring my head spinning.

Fossilised resin crystals from forgotten forests encircle collar bones toffee-like & organic amber conjures a timeless world before flowers insects immortalised inside sweet sunlit orbs beyond history Now so-called amber notes lay the basis for modern perfumes product of our imagination

Panoptes:  Mother with her gilded champagne hair, seemingly infinite blue eyeballs, needed no cameras, not when she had a real time feed from her many plucked out eyes discreetly hidden in immaculate room top corners, in any book that had o’s  and

Drenched Thoughts, A Novel by Anita Nahal. (Authors Press, New Delhi, 2023) ISBN: 978935529637 Price: Rs 495 Pages: 214 This book had to be written. Every intelligent, professionally qualified, smart woman who goes through an abusive marriage owes it in a