VANDANA KUMAR

 

VANDANA KUMAR

 

Residual Love

 

From a sieve we drew out the residue

Of a once lilting romance

The damage done

The snail mail returned

The postage unpaid

 

From a picture perfect

We discarded the wrought –iron

We cropped each other

Readied for individual exhibit

 

Rats chewed on poignant memory weaves

In the apocryphal land of ‘death do us part’..

We scripted ‘I am over you’ manuals’

 

Love shrunk like the linen lining

Of her virginal wedding gown

Prosaic onlookers watched

As the ‘we’ bled

To a disfigured I

And a love went

Completely awry

 

 

 

My Claustrophobic Love

 

You reside in me

In a claustrophobic alley

Where you cannot move

 

It is not that you don’t love me

But you say you cannot breathe

In the room I created for us

 

In the dingy corridors

My love blinds

You wait to exhale

In a chamber

Where I left no scope for windows

 

I frighten you

You look for escape

And I tell you to exit

From the back lane in the dark

For I have clung and consumed

And stifled

And left no space between the rooms

 

It is not that you don’t love me

But I terrify you

In the sheer manner of my want

For If I cannot love this intensely

Then I cannot love at all

 

 

 

Sans Syllable

 

We were actors in pre-talkie films

Silent and passionate

We assumed nebulous forms in Dali’s works

Melting like his clocks into each other

 

We made our way into Freudian dreams

Repetitive yet symbolic

We thrived in wordless song

Saying who needed lyrics anyway.

 

Were we a writer’s block?

Or were we deliberate in our wordlessness?

So that nothing was ever said-

And nothing ‘lost in translation’.

 

VANDANA KUMAR

 

VANDANA KUMAR is a bon vivant who loves travelling, working with young minds and exploring possibilities beyond the ordinary. She is a high School French teacher in New Delhi. Her passions include playing the piano and quizzing. Further she is a French translator for various reputed companies and publishers. An educator with over 20 years of experience she is also currently a recruitment consultant. She contributes poems regularly to online publications like ‘GloMag’ and ‘Narrow roads’. She has also been published in international journals like Toronto based ‘Scarlet Leaf Review’ and Philadelphia based ‘North of Oxford’. In addition, she has been published in poetry websites like UK based ‘Destiny Poets’ and more recently in the Asian based ‘Borderless Journal’. One of her poems was shortlisted and published by the ‘All India Poetry Society’ in their ‘2017 Annual Poetry Competition’. One of her poems was recently published in the Winter 2020 edition of the Houston, Texas based – ‘Harbinger Asylum’. One of her poems on Women was shortlisted in a competition organized by the ‘Woman Inc. – TWIBB Sakhi Annual Poetry Awards 2019 (results of which were declared in March 11, 2020). More recently a poem of hers featured in the prestigious ‘Madras Courier’. Some of her recent poems featured in an anthology on ‘Mystical Voices’ where she explored the mysteries of the Universe. Poetry for her is her stress buster, her flight of fancy and strangely, what keeps her rooted too.