QUEEN SARKAR

QUEEN SARKAR

Patient

Towards the fag end of her life,

inside her room with pale lime rugged wall of lights,

helplessness was sitting with her like a bodyguard.

Grey eyelashes, etched wrinkles and fissures,

parched lips whispering lines from different scriptures.

Blazing like an angry pyre, she cried inside the isolation ward.

She was holding the family album with her trembling hands,

outside the glass door, her family stands.

Those captured incredible memories of the past, now act like her lifeguard.

In the midst of fugitive and infinite signs,

amid the ebb and the flow of the ECG lines,

the presence of her family made her journey unscarred.

Circus

Wearing the polka dot overalls,

they walk into a tent with empty stalls.

Face painted with cheap colors, lips strained,

doing antics to relieve stress,

for those in pain and distress.

Stark loneliness, pain and tragedy,

hidden behind there magical trapeze.

Singing tunelessly from old movies,

the clowns were standing for hours on their bruised knees.

The 136 years of traditional art,

neither recognised nor respected,

today stranded at roads,

starving and striving for recognition and success.

Flora And Fauna

The first rays of sun piercing the cooped body,

The sense of uncertainty running around the abbey.

Under the blue sky, undulating, traffic free roads,

flocks of herons creating there new abodes.

Conservation compromised, while zoos and aquariums are capsized,

Jasmine wilt, roses stink,

lilies, gerberas, marigolds, gultak and gladiolus are crushed under wheels.

Stray animals die, neelakurinji wither, rhinos’ horn at risk,

as the zoos and floriculture shrink.

QUEEN SARKAR

Dr QUEEN SARKAR has done her Ph.D. in Contemporary Indian English Poetry from IIT Kharagpur. She has also presented and published her papers in reputed international journals, and poems in international anthologies, including Amaravati Poetic Prism 2019, Efflorescence 2019, and Global Poetry International Anthology of English Poems. She has worked on New Zealand literature and the precarious existence of women in the sex industry and its subculture during her M.Phil. She is also the member of World Nations Writer's Union.