Guilty She is anchored with him on the precipice, in unhappy matrimony. Her beauty destroyed, her lust laid to waste, she is a poet with no reader. Her ungrown leaves cannot glide to the wind in reunion with the earth. The compost cycle broken, there will be no re-giving her self as food for thought. Her parched skin rakes the air, barking mad with thirst, but his treacherous hands have left her with no mouth to drink no cheeks to hold water or teeth to bite sun. Around her, the air stings with silence, underscored by the rasping remains of her dry twig tongues. Tongues unable to speak on the cold metal taste of his tool. Her past has no future. And yet she stands with him, still, his ghostly wife exactly where he planted her. One final red root, her first radicle burning ever alive from the core of his abuse, dangles down and writes her question on the soilless on the soulless on the empty air Standing on the tip of God’s pointed finger, how will any of us fall into his hand? On her precipice, we all stand. Accused. Sheila Shrivastava Born in Scotland to a German mother and Indian father, Sheila Shrivastava was raised in Massachusetts, educated in New York City and Philadelphia and lived, worked and mothered in Berlin for 20 years. She currently does the same while living, once again, in NYC. Her poetry is influenced by her wandering lifestyle and attention to the outside of the story. That is the region of the world where she has been issued her most frequently used, if imaginary, passport.
1 Comment
Helene Gill
6/16/2024 12:29:54 pm
Wow! Absolutely amazing work. I keep coming back to it and it gets better every time.
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February 2025
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