ANNAPURNA SHARMA

Annapurna Sharma

SOUNDS

The paddy cutter was loud and swift

thrashing grains and banter

drift of the teeny bugs unheard

the blades swallowing invisible blood

It was a windy day, yet all was quiet

a sudden articulation of rage –

the sleepy dove not given time

nascent chicks flustering in my palms

Squatting on a dead leaf

like a yogini clad in paean

I hoped to capture serenity in my locks

transcending mortal sounds

Two flies, must have met just then

my forehead – their playfield

one behind the other

zooming in and out of my ears

The paddy cutter, the wind, the flies

trying hard

to harvest the echo of a poet

my soul weeping

for the unborn child –

so-ham…so-ham…so-ham…

NEEM HAS SWEETNESS

Neem has sweetness

Sweetness of truth, half-truth

Crafting a deceptive language

The one that I swallowed

From your pots of poetry

Before the candles you lighted

On the tomb, on the footprints of time

Was I not able to read –

The musky scent of the purple fruit

Ever so obsessive, like unyielding love

The humming bird drumming its fins

In the gaps in the unresponsive limbs

It was hard to breathe

The breach

The intoxication

Perhaps one day, it would turn around

And compose lyrics of yellow flowers

My heart would leap over the wet rocks

Like the birth of an evolution

A seamless versification…

SHADOWS

Under the veil,

I noticed

the split and the snap

The gloom of delphinium

dived in the broken waters

of the blue lake

I embraced your faults,

sculpting verses of pain

on uprooted streams

Yet, there were pulses,

hidden,

in the faraway images, I imagined

a punctuation erased

a verse scratched

a poem burnt. Period.

ANNAPURNA SHARMA

ANNAPURNA SHARMA is Editor of Your Space/ Muse India, a literary e-journal. Her maiden book of poems ‘Melodic Melange’ was presented Prime Poetry award for excellence, 2019 (Pulitzer Books). A recipient of Savitribai Phule National Women Achiever Award – 2018, she is adjudged a Distinguished Writer - International in the 4th Bharat Award for Literature (short story contest 2018) by Xpress Publications and her poem shortlisted for All India Poetry Competition – 2017 conducted by The Poetry Society (India). Her short stories, articles, poems have appeared in print and online publications.