Salaam

I haven’t touched a nose in so long
the sunlight doesn’t land on human cliffs anymore
The planarity of my being and that of my face — is a fast moving language
A tongue that rolls — in quick directions
— the heart of my feet follow when I dance, slipping
I look like an idiot — but I know — I know I am dancing

My slippers are snow — my feet fall with no force I carry moistness that translates only on landing — the sun evades Through and through — the bold stroke of existence —…

One enters the noise of an art market to find artists trying, refusing or failing to translate their language of art to an edible concept. Some artists embroiled and twisted in the spirit and economy of their work; and others drawing fine lines of distinction between the two. In this bazaar — abruptly — the mountains, rivers, people, kohl, concepts, stories, dots which were all one under the pencil take independent forms. Built stories crash as they are translated over and over to empty transmitters. …

The below texted is pasted from Leafe Press website — https://www.littermagazine.com/2021/01/review-saree-shop-by-shringi-kumari.html

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Review of ‘The Saree Shop’ by Shringi Kumari, pub. Speculative Books. 86pp. £7.99 — by Alan Baker

Shringi Kumari is an Indian poet currently resident in the UK. This collection is dedicated to the poet’s mother, and celebrates the women of South Asia, investigates their place in a patriarchal society and addresses the relationship between different generations of women. The focus is on gender politics as well as post-colonialism and the experience of a young Indian woman in a westernised society. But the poems are in no…

I looked outside and the skyscrapers gave me as much hope as the trees. As I felt the rising hope in my otherwise fetid body, I also felt an urge to supress such an unnatural thing — it is all wrong to look at cold buildings and feel anything but unfortunate. It is wrong I muttered to compare bricks with no roots to a green growing thing.

In my mind artists sit under trees but in reality they probably work in walled spaces that they desperately want to feel like a rock by the tree — any tree — the…

I can hear you fidget against that window from across the street. Your movements fill the clothes hung to dry — although they hope to stay postponed on the rope. I too am half-dangling from the window — reaching the tremors of your exits.

Dear M,

Your circle thickens around my principal aspect as you eternally transform to kohl-smoke. While we met at and as an abstraction — I have since hoped to examine your weave and pigmentation. …

She bloodied her shirt
She had no business being on that crime scene
Her nails were fuchsia — still
Her killer loved bell-bottoms and rock-n-roll
In other circumstances they could have been friends — lovers even
She returned my nose ring two hours before she died
now I have it — I don’t have to worry about asking

My aunt was a window, this is how I was born to be one too I do not know if my parents were windows or not. I know nothing of them Except they did not ever see my aunt and my aunt…

The ‘could be anything’ trial

She could be a jar — collecting cotton balls. Each a reminder to wipe her face until — ironically — it resembled all the dust she had been accumulating. She could be the room that had everyone’s favourite corner — one that they had to eventually grow past. The corner was for kids to store clues and make plans— now for adults to throw dirty clothes at.

She could be anything. In that — she took the role of everything — one by one. She wasn’t — the grave of their dead dog — she…