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.

Subscribe to our newsletter To Recieve Updates

    The Latest
    • The Usawa Newsletter March ‘24

      Much like the title itself, Smitha Sehgal’s maiden poetry collection How Women

    • An interview with the Editors of Poetry at Sangam

      Taking down Poetry at Sangam must have generated a plethora of flashbacks of

    • The Usawa Newsletter February ‘24

      How JLF helped me with my undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD In the bustling city of

    • Artists’ representation of the human body by Ruchika Juneja

      the years of growing up were spent in finding ways to belong and belonging in

    You May Also Like
    • In Lieu of a Manifesto by Ranjit Hoskote

      We have known, at least since the late 1960s, of the hazardous effects

    • The Broken Rainbow By Ruth Vanita

      She says she cannot sleep, smiles as if she’d rather weep My hands are empty as

    • Two poems by Kashiana Singh

      Scars I let them be, as reminders of your futility, how you often hurl