Megha Sood

 

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Megha Sood is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet writer and editor. She lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. She is a contributing author at GoDogGO Cafe, Candles Online, Free Verse Revolution, Whisper and the Roar, Poets Corner and contributing editor at Ariel Chart. Her 290+ works have been featured in 521 Magazine #Sideshow, Oddball, Pangolin review, Fourth and Sycamore, Visitant Lit, Quail Bell, Modern Literature, Visual Verse, Dime show review, Nightingale and Sparrow, Piker Press and many more. Her poetry has recently been published in the anthology “We will not be silenced” by Indie Blu(e) Publishing, (“All the Lonely people”, Blank Paper Press) and upcoming in eight other anthologies by US, Australian and Canadian Press. Her poem “Survivor” was selected for the “Survival is Insufficient” series by the Jersey City Writers as part of the event sponsored by the National Endowment of Arts. She recently won the 1st prize in NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Mental Health Poetry contest. She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/.

 

Solidarity in Grief

This day is pregnant with the thought
of you packing your belongings
and going far away
Love doesn’t need borders
and can’t be confined, I always say

and yet here I am
laughing at the atrocity of life
where we nurture this ethereal feeling
deep in our crevices
the wedges between our heart
glued by love

and we rip it open
again and again
pulling the scabs to feel the life
to see the one we love, go

and like the cardinal sitting on
the frail branches of the tree
pickled with snow
its languid arms
soaked in the separation
of its last leaf

the bird’s heart crimson with pain
of the sun dying at dusk
its head lowered
bowed down
almost in genuflection
as I see you go
far far away.

*****
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Like a Solemn Promise

What is it about the silence in the eyes of my mother?
It speaks to me in a thousand words and yet remains
unspoken and unheard

Like the ocean, silent in the night
but carrying the turmoil between its tides
It rises to the moon but falls back sheepishly
in the embraces of the gelid waves

Lapping the death of a thousand suns in her lap
she sits still,
braided in the salt and sediment
her chapped lips carrying the salty truths of the ocean
and the pain of the thousand islands
buried under the wrath of the ocean

The waves come and goes
a fleeting touch between her toes,
like the warmth and shade of the passing cloud
on a scorching summer day
Promises are barely fulfilled these days.
Love is transient, it never stays.
She always used to say

Something remains hidden in her tantalizing tears
dangling between surreal dreams and the reality
like a solemn promise
keeping her eyes moist
for those awfully long summer days.

*****
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