Ars Poetica
From the source of the fertile river, verses swam, finding their rightful place
The fingers, incantations of vivid wings and haunting wails.
Scraped, lynched in the water bodies of dissent, the fishes swam
Deeper and deeper into the translucence, the mermaid found her voice too.
In the shallow edges of the land, the mermaid ended up sometimes,
Shaking off the water and the wilderness of the river, immersing in moist love
Nestled in the corrosive border of prose and poetry, and the frozen sea sighed.
With this strange, ashen communion, came the newfound freedom, the mermaid found her voice.
Whom would she fall back upon, the fingers of the pallid water bodies,
Strumming till the edge of the river as their bubbles shout their heart out,
Or the warm, torrid hands of the land, which caress her voluptuous body.
Gliding down the slopes between the want of the land and the fertile river,
The mermaid found her voice.
The touch of the land, strewn with blood drops, the burnt, roasted smell of the anthill of poetry.
The sky threw darts, the earth melted into the cloudburst of uncalled revolution.
In the blasphemy of surrendering, the eyes of the land and the eyes of the river met,
Living in the threat of a wildfire, spreading headlong, the clouds disperse.
And the mermaid found her voice.
From the source of the blue waters of the fertile river, the verses swam,
Bloodbath in their freedom songs.
The ebb and flow of pain between the land and the river grew manifold, into a waking dream,
And the mermaid found her voice.
BIO: Lopa Banerjee is an author, poet, translator, editor with six books and four anthologies in fiction and poetry. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her family, but is originally from Kolkata, India. She has been a recipient of the Journey Awards (First Place category winner) for her memoir ‘Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant’s Wayward Journey’, and also a recipient of the Woman Achiever Award (IWSFF, 2018), the International Reuel Prize for Poetry (2017) and International Reuel Prize for her English translation of Nobel Laureate Tagore’s selected works of fiction (2016). Her nonfiction essays, fiction and other writings have been published in various journals, e-zines and anthologies in India, UK and USA. She has been a featured poet at Rice University, Houston and her poems have also been featured at Stanford University’s ‘Life in Quarantine’ project (2020). She has co-produced the poetry film ‘Kolkata Cocktail’ directed by Shuvayu Bhattacharjee, where she has also featured as one of also featured as one of the lead actors (official selection at Silent River Film Festival 2020).
