One Poem by Sultana Raza

Mourning the High Priestess of Poetry

 

Mysteries of existence who would explicate,

Would blank remain leaves of women’s book?

Enlightened examples fly over man’s slate.

She’d never know which lyrics had forsook.

 

Budding stories sobbed they’d never be born,

They’d never be sheathed on earth’s vibrant sheet,

Their pre-nascent demise, they tended to mourn.

Men’s condensed spirits, they’d never meet.

 

More of own lineage, would men manage to trace,

When their own verité they’d learn to face?

Crinkling, creasing, crumpling regrets,

Consuming, corrupting, collapsing vignettes.

 

Pulsed through her spirit, lighted up her soul,

Her body couldn’t bear it, too great their goal.

 

-Inspired by Emily Dickinson

(Death anniversary on 15-5-2022)

 

Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza’s poems have appeared in 100+ journals/anthologies, including Columbia Journal, The New Verse News, Vita Brevis, Entropy, London Grip, Classical Poetry Society, Dissident Voice, and Poetry24. Her fiction received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train Review, and has been published in Knot Magazine, Coldnoon Journal, Setu, and Entropy. She has read her fiction/poems in India, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, England, World Con Dublin, the PCA/ACA conf. (USA), and at CoNZealand.

Her creative non-fiction has appeared/will appear in numerous journals including Literary Yard, Literary Ladies Guide, Litro, Vector (BSFA), Focus (BSFA), and File770. Her 100+ articles (on art, theatre, film, and humanitarian issues) have appeared in English and French. An independent scholar, Sultana Raza has presented many papers related to Romanticism (Keats) and Fantasy (Tolkien) in international conferences.