Two Poems

    By Sudeshna Rana

    I

    Ancestry. Animism. Artistry.

    Lush green fields –
    Where my father grew up.
    Harvest season –
    From boyhood to the working man.
    Farmers under the winter sun,
    Bringing sheaths of golden rice home.
    Light the hearth,
    Cook on fire with spoonfuls of love.
    A meal from the All-Mother.
    Sleep to the sounds
    Of Nature’s lullaby.

    II

    Ambition. Awareness. Affection.

    The heart still longs to reach distant lands
    To reminisce about moments
    In sepia-tinted photographs –
    Dappled in sunlight.
    To write again and again
    About my days of being wild.
    A savage daughter of the East.
    I will not be a woman owned
    By a man.
    Thy kingdom comes. Thy kingdom goes.
    I remain in the lap of my land.
    I am the patriarch’s worst dream.
    I am the homecoming queen
    I am the woman you raised
    On a diet of silence.

    Sudeshna Rana is a writer, poet, and editor with an MA in English Literature from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. Her work appears in the Narrow Road Journal, Feminism in India, Cocoa & Jasmine Magazine, and Red River Publishing. Her piece on female friendship will appear in an anthology published by Yoda Press. A recipient of the South Asia Speaks 2022 fellowship, she is currently writing an ecofeminist account of Dhanbad, the coal capital of India.

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