Featured Poet - Vaishnavi Pusapati

IN A FIT OF SADNESS

there is no time for tears, there never is;

no time for breathing deep.

A fit of sadness is like pulling a door that says push,

again and again, into eternity;

Trapped like cattle on this side of the kissing gate.

I too know sadness, know well indeed,

our mutual friend, the fog that walks with us.

It is a gangrene, the sadness that grows, like long black hair,

like vines upon gates: A tree that hides

the sun, the rain, from us.

“Will the sadness stop?”, I ask, knowing there are no

wrong questions, only wrong answers.

Someone reading this is sad too, perhaps more than I am

and our collective sighs are the sound, the music,

the noise of the world.

THE FLORIST’S SHOP

Every time I pass by the Florist’s shop,

there is nobody, just flowers of the season

and the florist making wreaths.

So I see it as a front

for something shady. A cover

for something criminal.

It is a crime that every day

the old flowers are binned,

unwanted, unsold, unnoticed.

My plants do not flower like this,

so alive the flowers in the shop are,

they just might start speaking.

Today I bought some, just to see the place,

almost abandoned but for its keeper.

The flowers are for myself,

to show my house plants, this, 

is how we're supposed to look.

A SERIES OF BAD DAYS

I grow deaf to my own screaming,

and the sounds of complaints my body makes,

trying to sleep and in that sleep forget,

what shall be my rising thought.

Immune to my own advice

and the familiar recital

of oscillating, between

the pristine black and the familiar gray;

Undertaking the task

of registering wrongs,

while shutting out

with considerable force, thoughts

into the suffocating vacuum 

of thoughtlessness,

that harbors the dialect of dying languages.

Will this sadness grow

wide like a tree that

conquers abandoned buildings 

in the post apocalyptically, vacant terrain?

Relief is quickly perishable,

like paper umbrellas,

under my personal rain cloud.

THE UNITS OF GRIEF

Diamonds are measured in carats,

length in meters, weight in kilos.

What are the units of grief?

On what scale should I place it?

What alter? What sanctum? What amount? What currency?

How do we convert it into the metric system, into words,

as if they were Celsius and Fahrenheit.

I put grief aside like it were broccoli, or medicine that

tastes so horrid that the tongue tries to escape the mouth.

Grief is that spoon of water, innocuous, transparent,

unassuming upon which bodies slip, fall.

The water asks for victims, for vengeance, for that second

Of weakness. I learn to make time, make space for grief,

and I see it everywhere, among us,

dispersed, reaching through the length

in intricate patterns on the cloth of running time.

HOW TO COOK GRIEF AND OTHER THINGS (PROPERLY): OLD FAMILY RECIPES

It should be so hard, like a ripple arrested in concrete,

So heavy that you waddle to take it to the fridge,

So pungent that every time you open the fridge door,

You know it is there, and no insect comes close,

No sane animal begs for a piece.

It should look like an upside down cake.

It doesn’t taste like it.

To begin, wash your hands,

if you can, if you care.

Add blood, sweat and tears,

as per taste, a few long strands of memories,

A few crushed cloves of

regrets and powdered longings. 

Stir till it is fine

Like whipped cream. Put it in the oven,

not too high, for a long time,

Till the smell of something baking

invades every corner in every room,

Like an ominous December fog. Then remove carefully,

with gloved hands.

If it is bitter, wash it down with benzodiazepines,

or old fashioned wine, lots of it.

Save the crumbs for other recipes. When there is nothing left,

You can reheat this, add water to dilute and let it brew.

Best consumed before it swallows you whole.

Pass it on

BREATHE

A Haiku

Must pause to breathe deep

and after the pause must keep

playing the music.

ABOUT THE POEMS: "Grief is a flavor in my poems that comes unconsciously, in spite of trying for the kind of poems that spark joy. It comes so naturally that I hesitate to stop it, unnaturally. From haikus to free verse, I am trying to find that ritual of grieving properly, to ease the thought away. In each poem, the grief haunts, lurks and acts in different forms till I give up like a stiff puppet and let it take over as puppet master. Like the 'Rashomon Effect', my poems are different pieces of feeling down, and I try to put together a picture, that makes sense."