Dear folks,
So here's some good news. :-)
Read Leaf Poetry had opened its India Office only this year, and Linda L. Ashok has been pretty much the main person co-ordinating it. This was a national all-India poetry competition where one had to submit five poems each. The award ceremony was recently held in Hyderabad. So, there are 2 winners, some 6-7 people in the shortlist including biggies such as Sumana Roy and Sudeep Sen, and some 17-18 people in the longlist including the likes of Abha Iyengar, Sivakami Velliangiri, even my peer and room-mate, Anjumon Sahin, and well yes, yours truly. :-)
So, happy to be longlisted! I still get to be somewhere in the top 27, so perhaps my poems aren't bullshit after all! :D
errrrm, and there was another publication in eFiction India last month. I am putting up the poem 'Pain' here.
Pain
It is wrenched out of one, moment
by slow torturous moment, hanging
heavy as dread, as one day
becomes the next and flows into the stream
of months and years. Tear by tear, drop
of blood by drop of sweat, it oozes out
Pain makes you yearn. Pain
Then proceeds to teach you the supreme arts
of patience and control. This suffering
is extraordinary. It is the lowest and
it is the highest too. This exquisite hurt
that howls, shrieks, torments and ravages
and ultimately becomes the two syllables
of your name. But it never goes away.
It never quite lets you forget.
It makes you learn to submit. There is no other way.
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