My Poetry: A Metapoem
written by: Lopa Banerjee
@rooafza
My poetry was born as mistaken scraps in your notebook
Your ferociously guarded mansion, the unfamiliar swirling
In your oceanful of wants. My poetry was the closely wrapped secret
Of my night sky, dense, luscious like my Kolkata nights
Descending like the gushing cascade from the mountains of my desires
Melting like the river of melancholy in the vortex of your unwritten words.
My love, my verses blossomed in the volatile unrest as the alphabet
Of my feminine language of romance, the alphabet of unbridled screams,
The alphabet of salty tears of oppression gushed out of your lush chambers
Like unknown smells, like the half-cooked broth of a nameless, turbid sea.
My words of anguish and wayward darkness filled your manicured landscape
Your carefully crafted, sacrosanct space, but then, today, I will set them free.
My poetry, my love, will break free from the limiting scriptures in your notebook
And explode into million shards, in thunderous, ravishing rain.
Like the hurricane that bursts forth coast to coast, like a quintessential flood
That usher as the dam of maze, of prejudice, shatters, my poetry surpasses
My flesh, my womb, my sex, my birth—and recreates itself, outside my wet, dark body,
I speak poetry, the flustered language, outside your celebrated confines of binaries.
'Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant's Wayward Journey', her memoir has received Honorable Mention at Los Angeles Book Festival 2017, and has also been First Place Category Winner at the Journey Awards 2014 hosted by Chanticleer Reviews and Media. Her recently released books, 'Let The Night Sing', a poetry collection and 'The Broken Home and Other Stories' have already received critical acclaim. She has received the International Reuel Award 2016 for her English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s novella Nastanirhand she is also the recipient of the International Reuel Award for poetry 2017.
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