This poem is broken
This p em
Is br ken
L ke me
Dr p it
Ple se
Ca ’t y u se
The m re
Y u re d
T e m re
Abs rd
It s ems
Utt r n ns nse
L t it nd
Some poems
Some poems
Are trained chimps
Downing fruit punch
With hors d’oeuvres
In drawing rooms
Some poems roam about
With zebra stripes
White on black,
Or black on white?
Too confused to take sides
Often found in zoos
Make-believe forests
Or stuffed and locked in
The taxidermist’s closet
Some come worming
Into your head
From the pages
You’d read years ago
From a book
Gifted by someone
On your bed
The lines you swore
You’d forgotten
But came back from dead
To be with you
When you find yourself
Defeated, utterly alone.
I found a lost poem
I found a lost poem
Cracked at the sides
Yellowed, moth-eaten
From a carton in the attic
Filled with old cards
Papercuts
A mini piano
With missing keys
A packet of red bindis
A pair of pink bangles
Dried flowers, some pebbles
I put on my glasses to read
As the words trailed
I failed to fathom
This poem is about a feather
Addressing the weather
By a girl mortally afraid
Of turning into a woman
Who wouldn’t be awed
By bugs, birds and twigs
All things tiny and insignificant
I shook my head
As I emptied the contents
In the garbage bin
I crushed the verse
And blew the dust
Till all the words dispersed
Out of the window
Then I lost the found poem
The day we went to the beach
The day we went to the beach
The sky turned into
A giant fish
Those who noticed the sky
Saw and rubbed their eyes
And moved on quietly
Hoping the sky would
Resume normalcy
The scales were waves
Of white and blue
Fins full of light
Eyes golden hue
Mistaken for the sun
Icy water drizzled
Whenever the fish jumped
From Ocean City
Till home it followed
Everywhere we drove
It swelled by evening
By night it faded away
And the sky has been
An empty aquarium since
The fish never returned
But I know how the sky tastes
Every time I have fish sticks
Shweta Rao Garg is a poet, visual artist, and academic based in Baltimore, US. Her poetry collection, Of Goddesses and Women, was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2021. Her poems have been published in Indian Literature, Coldnoon, Everyday Poems, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, Muse India etc. She is the author of the graphic novel The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College, to be published by Crossed Arrows, India. Her collaborative poetry collection Shakespeare Walis: Verses on the Bard will be published by Flower Song Press in 2023. Her work deals with her lived experiences as a woman. Mythology, popular culture, and love are recurring themes in her work. Her artwork can be found at www.shwetaraogarg.com