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Silver Branch series

Saraswati Nagpal

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Saraswati Nagpal is an Indian poet, writer of myth & fantasy, and a classical dancer. Her graphic novels are feminist retellings of epic Indian myths. She is published in The Atlantic, Atlanta Review, Acropolis, Dust, SAND & various international anthologies. Saraswati has a forthcoming chapbook with Black Bough Poetry. She has been nominated twice for Best of the Net for her poems. As a performing artist, Saraswati has choregraphed and performed for stage and films and done voice work for stage productions and music albums. As an educator, she has taught a variety of arts to global audiences. For two decades, she has been a teacher of creative writing and literature to teenagers, and is currently editing her YA fantasy manuscript.

Instagram/ Threads: @saraswatinagpal

Twitter/ X: @SaraswatiNagpal

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saraswati.nagpal/

Link tree: saraswatinagpal https://linktr.ee/saraswatinagpal?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=75978c69-02df-4274-84dd-2acbfd1192f3

​​Daybreak

Cardamom colours early light.

Hot, sweet chai, a prayer on my tongue

to the wintered women on whose boughs

I stand, their leaves silver and falling

like a thousand blessings in my life.

 

​​

Lakshmi

Cerise spills from sari

over petals of lotus.

Sweetness of rose

in hands blossoming,

rubies glinting in raven hair.

 

Hers is the temple of beauty,

dew-laden with dreams of evening stars.

Whisper of ankle-bells, vermillion footprints,

moon-splendour of Her gaze.

She arrives. Silver grace rains upon us.

Chai

She no longer thinks about it. Hot water

and milk, 2:1. Steel pot, lighter, stove-top,

flame.

Then the blood-saffron, just a strand.
Seeds of fennel in wrinkled hand, cardamom

crushed, fragrant. A bay leaf that smells
of home. Not this one.

Yellow fingers sift tea leaves,

fine and shrivelled
like dried up dreams.

The sugar pot’s lid is chipped.

Like her husband’s spirit: sliced

by a line on the map.

 

Truth is a homeland stolen by ink
a border you will not cross twice.
A woman is born to endure, her mother said-

little did she know.

Steam swirls: Lahore’s rose-pink dawn,

ghosts of sisters killed and lost.
She pours and sieves
a blood potion for those who survive.

‘Chai!’ he booms from the living room

she adds sugar and stirs-
remembers her sisters and lets them go.

New and Exclusive for the Silver Branch Feature:

Love’s Absurdity

 

As if loving him isn’t enough.

My heart must tumble like breakers

off a reef, beating their foam-flecked

braids, moaning frothed verses of

salt-stung loss unforeseen.

 

Each moment is dusk, light leaving the sky

in purple splendour, ash tendrils of night

creeping across an obscure future.

 

Each night this heart weighs its worth

in pebbled regret, yet wakes wondrous,

in warm hands, shadows dispelled

in the balm of his sun-gaze.

Rush Hour in Monsoon

Bangalore, India

Bumper to bumper to fender

to motorbike rider, slick with

sky silt, one wheel on pavement,

the other on tar, city of infinite

possibilities.

 

Bottle green rickshaw

hugging soot streaked

storm grey bus nuzzling

growling Tata truck in

tentative ménage-à-trois.

Slow crawl through metal embrace

belch of diesel, grazed body paint,

jostled side-mirrors, pothole pools.

  

Rain dances staccato on the car roof.

A mongrel slinks past steel and stupor.

It’s a long, long way home.

Persephone’s Lament

Six rubied seeds, one for each hour of dreaming.

Over sleep’s lambent threshold, I wander, past galis

of childhood to Ereshkigal’s midnight realm.

Here, your wedding ring, there, a snatch of song

you loved, gleam of Nani’s gold kada snagged on

tulsi bush.

Words pour out of me, Mother, recounting rugged years

I’ve lived without you. A line of silk flags fluttering in sacred

winds between worlds.

We are the myth reversed. Here is a silver trail to Elysium, fallen

ice-feathers of eagle you rode away from me. And all my nights,

I beg the gods for wings.

Ereshkigal: Queen of the Underworld (Sumerian)

Translated from Hindi: Gali – (guh-lee) alleyway | Tulsi – holy basil plant |

Kada – bracelet | Nani – maternal grandmother

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How to Wear a Sari

 

Six yards of chiffon

could fold a woman’s form in lust

or smother dreams sketched in

girlhood’s pasture.

 

Six yards of cotton

would hinder a vaulting Amazon

or swaddle an infant, populate a home

with dishcloths and bandages.

 

Six yards of silk

will pitch a tent in exile’s wilderness,

sieve a woman’s spirit

till all the roots know her name,

the trees call her, sister.

Season of Hot

Delhi

Sautéed in desert wind, we trudge

criss-crossed ribbons of melted tar.

 

Dust sears civility, grates sentience,

the city is burnt toast, chilli-glazed

beneath amber sky.

 

Restless nights simmer spectres:

pea-flower lakes lingering luscious

in desiccated dreams.

 

 

Last Daughter

 

Wild song of first foremother,

a secret, bled in pearls, strung in red

thread of mātri-line.

 

Singing women spill through Time’s

ivory knuckles, turn my blood to lucent

honey.

 

From this last mouth,

a spring of rose-gold voices leaps.

 

mātri: (Sanskrit) mother

 

Blueprint of the Feathered

 

To scry North from bone-marrow,

divine Winter’s sigils before its becoming.

 

To enchant wind, surrender in flock-spell,

scatter sky with skein of wing.

 

To charm pine and banyan, soothe solitude

of bark and root.

 

To summon dusk in wild rapture,

sing a river of diamonds to dawn.

 

"I grew up in the concrete and glass of Dubai. My imagination filled the gaps of desert and heat with birdsong, rivers, rain. I was raised on a nourishing diet of mythology, fantasy, meditation and the Indian classical arts of music and dance. Archetypes were familiar friends. Gods populated my childhood narratives alongside the girls of Malory Towers. Something strange was bound to come of that."

 

"For me, writing is like choreographing a dance piece. A lot of wriggling and waving about in exasperation. Repeat. Change. Abandon. Some lucky moments where gravity, limbs and rhythm align. I aspire to become the music and the elemental thing behind the music that has a heartbeat of its own. That’s when the ink shines."

 

"From the vortex where all poems exist, I tend to attract the ones about ancestry, time, loss and beauty."

 

"All this is to say, I don’t know how poetry or writing happens to me. It just does, and I’m grateful, and I would very much like to continue to be blessed by the goddess of words, Saraswati."

Saraswati Nagpal

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