Poems by ​Vinita Agarwal

At The End Of It All,
 
I shall be painting with smoke
the fires with which I spent my life.
Love shall sit at the edge of tombstones.
 
My legs have buried names
and silt still glimmers on my knees
I have always been part sparrow, part woman.
 
Often in my sleep, I ignore the barking telephone
And snuggle deeper into the straw faces of dreams,
my thoughts moaning through the traffic of a long night.
 
But come morning, I wear the sky like a glove,
my messages wear the oceans
a love song dovetails into my bones.
 
The end of the world shall be like the end of the night;
dismantling the scribbles of years from my face
peeling away flags from my eyes, showing me noon at midnight.
 
Silence shall come from the North
Every bird shall bear it
I shall speak volumes when I turn the other cheek.
 
Foliage will look happy, like a summer brother.
pushing aside murmuring winds
and making way for the East
 
But a pain-bearing mother,
shall stand between the end and the beginning. Always.
And the sun shall send messages that we will never fathom.

 
 
Raw Silk
 
When at last we meet
do not say hello
 
That greeting for strangers...
We've shared too many moons on the palettes of our nights
 
When we meet
Leave the race behind. Face me
 
Become scent
Stretch my lungs
 
Become jaggery
Color my tongue
 
When we meet
Come undone like a knot in the wind
 
Me the shuddering threads
You the hunger for silk
 
When we meet
Make sure I die of love
*********

About the poet

Author of Words Not Spoken and The Longest Pleasure, Vinita is a Mumbai based, award winning poet and writer. Her second manuscript was selected for publication by the Finishing Line Press, Kentucky, USA. Her poems have appeared in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Open Road Review, Stockholm Literary Review, Poetry Pacific and over a 100 other national and international journals.  She was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011, awarded first prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2014, commendation prize in the All India Poetry Competition 2014 and won the 2014 Hour of Writes Contest thrice. Her poems have found a place significant national anthologies like Suvarnarekha and Dance with the Peacocks in several international anthologies compiled in Australia.  Recently, she was co judge for the Asian Cha Poetry Contest 2015. She has given readings at two SAARC events in Delhi and Agra. She also read her poetry at Hyderabad at an event organized by the U.S. Consulate to celebrate the Women Poets Of India. She also read for Delhi Poetree at the launch of WordWine - an anthology of eclectic poets of India. She was also invited as a Panelist for the DesiLit Festival organized at Chicago in 2014.