by: Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Sneha Subramanian Kanta poems struggle to say the unsayable, to illuminate the duality of all things: the ocean gives life; the ocean provides the means of conveyance for the tools of war and destruction. Her work teaches us that “All language is political/ There are no bones left in this world of mist.”
Parallels
She no longer trusts first person narratives. Life has stretched too far
for such comforts. The puppet with big eyes looks at the world with
a serious glare. There are more analyses done outside classrooms
than inside. We are all wooden puppets, made out of a bastard place.
We seek to return somewhere but the wilderness is burnt down by
reeking landlords. I must wake up, the place smells of capitalism.
The winter air congeals with the thickness of language. You cannot
get opinion publicized without propaganda. All language is political.
There are no bones left in this world of mist. We must learn to recognize
the lines ahead, through the skeletal remains of a heavy landscape.
lineage
spring smoked trees
and now there is a
line of trees, bare.
their ancestors once
voyaged through seas
(chestnut skin remnants
and seaweeds floating
underneath) to battle
the mindless wars.
it is an irony in itself
— the water mixed
with sea, and sweat,
salty, amorphous,
taking the
shape of a formless
modeling from a
wooden fence of
the ship. the bolts
are rusted, though
the flame-light at
night sustains as
an updraft. thirty
years ago things were
different, and now have
a lengthier form. we
romanticize no reality
— the statistical birth
of life is blurred in
the blackening smudge
of oceans at night.
Sneha Subramanian Kanta believes that all writing is a form of dissent. Her work is forthcoming in Quiddity, 7X20 mag, Dying Dahlia Review, AMP Hofstra’s digilit magazine, Serendipity, Poppy Road Review and the print anthology of Peacock Journal. Her work has been published in poetry anthologies such as Dance of the Peacock (Hidden Brook Press, Canada), Suvarnarekha (The Poetry Society of India, India) and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the prestigious GREAT scholarship and is pursuing her second postgraduate degree in literature in the United Kingdom. Contact her at s.sneha01@yahoo.in.
