Three Poems by Megha Sood

Ostracized

First Published in Ariel Chart (Jan 2020)

This moment—

this surreal blip in time

this inauspicious hiccup,

an undulation in the cosmic wave

this very moment

weaves a purgatory where my soul resides

It dangles between

the love and the hapless state of being forgotten

like the anxious child in a maze

or the one left on the

steps of the dilapidated church

I am easy to be forgotten

you look for the faded memories in the

obsidian lines of your palm

but you are ready to scratch me

out of the cobwebs of your

pitiful desires.

My love is a mouthful of scorn to you.

untouchable,

Scarred and ostracized by your love

I live like a cobweb

a purgatory of life.

This life weaves a thousand

memories in your soft yarn

neatly picking out mine like a fluff

lodged in your belly button

I exist and sometimes I disappear

born out-of-wedlock.

A moment  meant to be forgotten

A memory meant to disappear.

The Uprising

Self Portrait of an Hourglass

This world that constantly insists on us

pressing it on us firmly

through these constant pings

phone rings, doorbells, noise in the street, strangers

or known faces I chose to ignore at times

This world which is sometimes cruel, forgetful

something asking us more than we can offer

more than the void in our being

Eating from the proffered hands of time

as it carves another breath through the gilded cage of my existence

A life that wants nothing

but just to sit in a constant yet still movement

staring at something till it’s changed its intent

almost completely-

A face till it brings back nothing

a stare that can pass through the sepia-tinged thick walls of my room

I look at my empty hands devoid of  lines carrying

the fleeting sense of the future it holds in its barren womb

When has ever the mindless stare at the void

has brought any meaningful reason for our existence?

And yet here I’m,

Looking at the gentle sliding of the sand from one glass to another,

stripping its own existence by every slipping grain of sand

That slips gently from one molded hourglass to another

Till its birth another freckle of time.

Megha Sood is an Award-winning Asian American Poet, Editor, and Literary Activist from New Jersey, USA. She is a Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Member of National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW), Women’s National Book Association, and United Nations Association-US Chapter. She is an Associate Editor for the literary journals Mookychick(UK) and Brownstone Poets (USA). Author of Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress,2022). Co-Edited anthologies ( “The Medusa Project”, Mookychick, UK) and (“The Kali Project, Indie Blu(e) Press, USA). Her co-edited anthology “The Medusa Project” has been selected as a digital payload to be sent to the moon in 2024 as part of the historical LunarCodex Project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. Find her at https://linktr.ee/meghasood