For Exceptional Contribution to WE Literary Community and WE Awards
Three Poems
We are made of losses
The urgency to speak The desire not to be heard The loss of a space, and The loss of a voice In our parts of the world Winters are frigid tales of loss Of sunshine, youth, clarity Of vigour, agility, suppleness We recede into our own selves With uninhibited shamelessness Claiming lost parts of our being Yet forgoing them With a fair knowledge of that loss In a breath’s timespan We will mark the calendar With winter solstice, while the grief Of the loss of another year shakes us The sunbirds and the sparrows lost In an apocalyptic haze The cedar doors tremble With familiarity Of corn and sesame roasting over warm fires Wooden beams from another era Smile away their discomfiture I slip through cracks to alight anew on the other side of a shriveled time. Last evening I was in a roadside café Drinking overpriced latte My mask dangling at an odd angle Just in case someone sneezed Conversations went on nevertheless, Like an overstretched symphony I had lost the story firming up In my mind, I drank The last dregs Leaving an outrageous tip For the girl with sad, soft eyes Sunset marks the horizon With a slow fire The sky is laid hostage by grey clouds My ascetic body does not touch My flesh of longing My eyes waiting to find And look at everything They had ever lost
These poems appeared in the Outlook magazine’s February 2022 Issue
No country for the poor
We are born free We live for free The air and water are free The rain inundating our lands is free The social spaces are free The lighted foyers of malls are free Bread and salt is another matter, though One has to walk a hundred miles To excavate a field For a kilo of golden wheat And fragrant red rice Freedom is free, Poverty costs you a lot In this free land
These poems appeared in the Outlook magazine’s February 2022 Issue
Embroideries
It’s twelve o’clock I watch rain falling through the mirror A small absence threads time's needle Embroidering loss of minutes, hours, days Loss blooming all over my body Hanging in a ringed frame
These poems appeared in the Outlook magazine’s February 2022 Issue
Taseer Gujral is a poet, editor, columnist and a translator. She has been a recipient of a grant for the American Civilization Course (ACC) in the ASRC Hyderabad, and has worked on the feminist poems of Adrienne Rich for her doctoral thesis. Her published works appear in The Punch magazine, Outlook Magazine, The Sunflower Collective, Coldnoon Diaries, Muse India, Kashmir Lit, Life and Legends, Open Road Review, E3W Literature,Yugen Quest Review and several important anthologies. Her columns on Literature and Cinema have appeared in the DNA. She is on the panel of judges for the Kamala Das and other WE Poetry Awards.
Yugen Quest Review 