Barked Breath

 

Picture a brown girl

trying to fade

to disappear

to reverse engineer

her perverse haunting

by three flags.

 

She’s inside

a school of swastikas

where decoupling

from her stinking

jungle-clad roots

is the primary lesson.

 

Here is hot barked breath

well versed in a

rusting history

of stereotype. There

is a cauldron

from which she clutched

disallowed dreams

of being and belonging.

 

Here are her reveries

where she took shelter.

Sickles of safety.

​

​

 

Dream Sutra

 

In the atlas

of my dreams

I wear a necklace

of African and Indian stars.

Jewel bright

in the late light

of my longing.

 

I skate along

the treetops of the tropics.

Their moon gleams

and the sun beams

blended into my

silky scented sari.

 

I weave through

curated courtyards

verdant verandas

the bougainvillea

and the jacaranda

nestled deep in

the greenest gardens

dripping hot wet heat.

 

In the splendour

of my sutra

I sit and savour.

 

My roots

ache to anchor.

​

​

 

Parlour Prana

 

Picture a brown woman running

back to her roots

having inhaled

limit and liberation.

The taste and state

of a high voltage

western world. Which

offers a great deal

on a soured down

happily ever after

stuck in her epiglottis.

 

She’s bamboozled by

her Billy bookcases

strewn with starchy smiles

borrowed from bowls

of eastern breath.

 

Her blinded odyssey

is pleated

with complexity

finding her striding

over hooded philosophy

playing parlour prana.

All the while bound by

lynched laughter.

 

Here are her reveries

in which she

cleans cliches

reimagining

muscular veracity.

​

​

Navraj Matharu, an educational psychologist in the UK, enjoys travelling through poetry to explore themes pertaining to fixed and fluid identities. Other preoccupations are childhood, the psyche of parents and its influence, grief, and the natural and political worlds. Her poems are well considered by Bobbi-Mustard, an orange cat.