The Kali Project: An Anthology

Last year, three of my poems were selected fr a very special anthology "The Kali Project". where esteemed writers from the Indian diaspora world over gave their voices. Published by the Indie Blu(e) Publishing House, USA and edited by famous poet Megha Sood and Candice Louisa, it has turned out to be one of its kind. Here are my three poems:

Chaitali Sengupta Red light Yesterday’s silence spread luxuriously on the sofa. Living words rustle on muted pages. Precious moments hook in the folds of the cushion. Pleasures of night brim over from the hands of the clock. Whispering breaths trace the fall of stars. Shadows lengthen and shrink while we wait... to restore the fault lines of our lives... we, the modern Madonna’s of the 'oldest profession' like the ghosts in red light stitch our barbed skins through our torn souls.

The blood-red of birth You’re inside me. Floating, in amniotic fluid, a dream, attached umbilically.. to the fathomless fortress within. A radiant heart, A sparkling dawn A miracle nourished and cared upon. Womb-warm, sequestered, you grew, like the pulse of God; Forging a bond, unknown that very soon your life will come undone. For you, little one, you're a girl and you needed to stay unborn. Oh, the blessed spark of the Goddess force- flushed under my thighs... you were just a memory then, a tear pooling in my eyes... Emptiness comes crashing on my blackened earth, the womb remembers forever, the blood red of birth. In the womb of past

Would you allow me to pen your tales? A tribute, maybe With the ink of reason echoing your thoughts... in whispered words through the mists of time?

A history of your trials, since time immemorial... of you, Draupadi, your flowing mane, Untamed, your hair, blood-red, twisted in the hands of tyranny the cause of a thousand pains?

Of you Sita, your tears a pitter- patter on the arid desert of customs; pedestalized, docile proving your chastity, walking through fire, divinely ordained.

Of you Ahilya, your swirling curse, Your stoned image... voiceless a victim of patriarchy Abandoned, mute, waiting to be redeemed, by the brush of a man-god’s feet... Or, of you Ganga, the thundering river of rebirth, your mighty torrents waltzing upon the breast of earth; You, an extension of the Divine, a captive in Shiva’s hair, how your arrogance and speed, trapped between heaven and earth.

I flip through your minds, Caressing your unspoken words That bends time, like the spine. Your follies and flaws, Your rebellion and surrender. Braid into our psyche, Course through our veins. In the womb of our past, the present lives on.

https://www.amazon.com/Kali-Project-Invoking-Goddess-Within/dp/1951724062/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kali+Project&qid=1617371172&sr=8-1