Zelda by Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.”

― Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda, unbeknownst sister of Ozymandias
accompany me to where the sun rises
east of Bhagdad, west of Byzantium

let us make our spot for pilgrimage there.
Rub fertile mud on our skin whilst
the approving sun shines –

I, your brown sister, will bring you tales
from the other side of the Mississippi
you tell me about the Americas

you have seen in one country.
To speak of roots and corkscrews,
bottles and potions, we will read

Rumi to find out how much the heart
can hold. Beyond the yellowing
sand dunes, let us recall the last bird

who sang in the middle of a desert.
What shall we plant here, in the middle
of a heatstroke land – cacti, seeds of

wild blueflowers, or do we bury
carols for Christmas?

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is often seen tracing manufacturing of sensibility from the eighteenth century to present day notions of psychology, She pays close attention to concentrated molecules in a jar. Her poetry is forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Across the Margin, and fiction in Indiana Voice Reviewand elsewhere. She is general advisor and poetry editor for her university journal, INK. An awardee of the prestigious GREAT scholarship, she has a second postgraduate degree in literature from England. She is the cofounder of Parentheses Journal, a literary initiative that straddles hybrid identities across coasts and climes.