FIVE POEMS BY 'THE' JAGARI MUKHERJEE - PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE SERIES 1

Jagari Mukherjee holds an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Pune, and was awarded a gold medal and several prizes by the University for excelling in her discipline. Her poems and other creative pieces have been published in different venues both in India and abroad. She is a Best of the Net 2018 nominee, a DAAD scholar from Technical University, Dresden, Germany, a Bear River alumna, and the winner of the Poeisis Award for Excellence in Poetry 2019, among other awards. She recently won the Reuel International Prize For Poetry 2019. Her chapbook Between Pages was published by Cherry-House Press, Illinois, USA, in June 2019. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. from Seacom Skills University, Bolpur, India.

CORALS

Of his bones are coral made…
William Shakespeare (The Tempest)


My fishing net full of corals
floats on the waves of the sky.
I know I don't belong
to the earth or the fire
but to the Arabian Sea from the
shores of Land's End*.
When you reach there,
take a deep breath, stand by.

You know what to do..
go down the steps
climb on the rock
wait for the sun to set
in the salty waters and
the clouds to draw their curtains
back from the moon and the stars.

Then you cast my ashes whole
or in part --
my limbs are silver powder.
I won't care as long as
the corals of my mortality
meet the jade of my years…
(till that date)…

You will know that
you are done
when the sky
finally casts down
an empty fishing net

*Last point of Marine Drive

TASBIH

I never used the janamaz
nor finished the bottle
of deep green jannat-al-firdaus.
The purple velvet bag
from Kabul Shopping Center with
colorful pastel leaves was a tad
too gorgeous for my classes.
You were the fantasy of every girl
who was plain and wore glasses.

If I hear the azaan nowadays,
it is by accident:
I try not to make out the words
that I once knew by heart.
I try not to think of Surah Kausar
and the ambrosia denied to me
when I lost my paradise.
I never tell people I learned
to love strong liquor tea from you,
sometimes sucking on
candy or a sugar cube.
I have kept your blue tasbih
in my jewelry box:
my mother thinks
it is a necklace.


GLOSSARY

Janamaz - Muslim prayer rug
Jannat-al-firdaus - a popular perfume
Azaan - call to prayer
Surah Kausar - The 108th and shortest chapter of the Quran
Tasbih - prayer beads

 CHULBULI*

" A chulbuli kabiyetri ( poetess) always likes to write her chulbuli feelings that gives the mind more chulbuli."

-- courtesy a comment on my Facebook post, dated 5/10/19.


The chulbuli poetess
dozes on her bed
dreaming of her former lover.
She remembers lining her eyes
with sparkling black kohl
and staining her lips
with a berry-pink gloss.
She remembers how easily the pink
transferred onto his dark skin,
leaving her lips bare again, and the kohl
slightly smudged from the tears shed
while hiding in his chest.

The chulbuli poetess longs to forget
and to rest. She tries to escape to
far-off lands as it rains and the thunder
scares her less than her dreams.
She sweeps over oceans and continents
and night skies suspended in-between.
The chulbuli poetess still weeps
for her lost lover, unheard. Unseen.

*Vivacious (Hindi)

 ASSIGNATION

You wanted an assignation
and kept messaging me for place and time.
I was making myself a cup of tea
to relieve a sore body.
You were inquiring about a hotel room
with a bathtub where you could
scratch poems on my skin.
I was busy pouring hot water
from the hissing electric kettle.
You thought I wasn't paying attention:
it was not true.
I was trying to, but my body ache was killing me
and the scent of lemon-ginger tea
in a Red Rose tea bag was maddening.
The black cat asked me for food in the
language of her tribe.
I took a warm sip from my cup
and thought it was the perfect time to
reply to you.
Then I saw the cat eating the yellow dahlias
from the precious white vase.
I hastened to scold her and give her treats.
I managed to save the dahlias,
but by then, it was too late for you.

MOTHER’S SOUP

The panacea for all ills
was my mother’s soup.
When I was besieged by a troop of fevers raging
with a running nose and sore throat,
she made me a bowl
of spicy and sour soup with noodles
that I savored hot…and when
I lay weak with oodles of body ache,
she gave me a concoction
of chicken and corn in a mug.
Stomach bugs were fought with
thick creamy mushroom delight
in a steel glass meant for my fix.
With Asterix comics, I sat on the bed
enjoying my broth in my private hub.
Mother would rub mustard oil
to ease the pain and I had soup to gain.
Chinese, Thai, Indian — all styles
Mother specialized in.
I loved the story of Stone Soup
and Mother, to her glory, 
had her own ingredient --
red fairy shrimp in a
hot orange concoction
that convinced me of heaven.
Our staple food was fish and rice
but I loved falling ill because of soup;
and no doctor has ever tried
to convince me otherwise.

FIVE POEMS BY JAMIE DEDES OF BEZINE

Jamie Dedes is a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. She also manages The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Jamie's work has been published widely in digital and print publications. Her primary professional affiliation is Second Light Network of Women Poets (U.K.)

Jamie Dedes,

The Poet by Day

The BeZine, Founding & Managing Editor

* The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others Short linK: http://wp.me/pne74-etc

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY JAMIE DEDES 

Another Kind of Beauty

they’re paralyzed on the Atlantic seaboard under
the weight of snow drifts, the detritus of blizzards;
stark bare branches of oak, elm and maple
etch dark veins into an icy-gray cast-over sky

on the West Coast we’re breaking out magnolias
and blades of tender young grass are unfurling;
the near-spring temps us to wrap ourselves
in its perfumed and congenial blessing

along the stretch of Big Sur the sea strikes stone
and the air explodes, bright and wet with spume,
the green patinated-brine salts our mouths;
above us cloud turrets mimic white-capped waves

standing here, consumed by this seeming infinity,
our hands and eyes and mind conspire
to imitate nature in the most apt way, using
our sketch pad, pen and colored pencils

a quick wingless flight into that dancing sea and
we surface with visions grasped tight in our fists,
our eyes are blinded by a palette of colors, our
pencils bear witness to the gift of another morning,
another kind of beauty; undulating, animated
and so unlike the silent white majesty of snow

The Softness of the Moon

See the softness of the moon on my block,
Visiting on this street’s end, smiling at that woman
She collects tossed cigarette butts, a homeless man
Raising arms, large hands waving blessing, at the
Bench by the bus stop, food magically there where
He habitually sits, food left by a stranger, no stranger
To hunger, lights beam from open windows, fortunate
Housed, dinner and television, maybe heart wonder
Maybe heart break, there are some who want to
Die and haven’t, some who want to live but died
Some who take to joy, some pained, stewing in
Despair, the varied elements of the human spirit,
The softness of grandmother moon, gracious
Company for an old poet in reverie watching

Mourning Brooch

the memories have little substance
they flit and fly, pollen on the wind,
like the quick passing of a joyful birth,
the school years, the sweet trysts ~
a waving bridal veil . . .

             the way your love drained you of your dreams
             just to fill yourself with him

. . . . . the epitaph of tears

only when yesterday becomes a story,
once upon a time, do memories
become memorial, a mourning brooch
forever warm upon your breast

 the grandmother stone

at the medical center you put your ear
to the trunk of a birch and listened to my heart
while i roasted potatoes in a snowed-under parking lot
and managed the effects of a shrinking brain

when i heard the door to the crematorium slam shut,
i found myself floating on waves of heat that flayed my skin,
mom held me in mourning and sang Salve Regina
(she was slightly off-key)
but i found the grandmother stone you left in my hand
it pulled me back to the earth and the snow

i heard you say you savored the taste of my blood
in the kalamata olives you ate the day i died
i listened to doves cooing and watched the wind
wrap silver filigree around tree branches

the morning was crisp and fresh
the others came to say goodbye, arms full of flowers
but your arms were empty and heavy with love
i decided to live

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Night makes way for morning
The clouds tumbling in like
Cotton bolls blown across a
Field of promise, sun ablaze
Tinged with crimson and saffron
Grooving to the rattle and the click
And caw of our city corvids, and
Hear too the blue jay’s whispered
Song, the mourning dove’s coo
In my kitchen, five stories up, is a
Breakfast reminiscent of my father
Broiled trout, roasted potatoes, and I
Pull cartilage from the fish, evocative
Of a trachea, and salt the potatoes
To the humming of O2 concentrators
I drag on a nasal cannula, life support
In this, my Valley of the Shadow of Death