Sreshtha Sen
Half-Elegy
The Sonneteer sometimes dreams her own death
maybe by hate sharp as steel curved bullet buried maybe
sudden as herself one moment on the street next nowhere
she hopes it’ll be swift like the coming of an airplane exhaust
to life: blades to bone & then red-iron air
doesn’t really know doesn’t dream much of the before
or even the pitiful facebook posts after only the dark
only her mother only her mother’s face how she would rage
at the death documentary deal but sulkily release a picture
for the local paper how she would clutch a favorite scarf against
herself to hold once more sob: she was just learning
to be a daughter she was the greatest poet to ever live how
her voice rusted lock & latch would catch at the word live
No, she never loved a woman except me
The Sonneteer Tackles Too Much Tequila & Resolves To Write You A Confessional, Epistolary Sonnet That Tries Too Hard With The Volta
U up?
Sreshtha Sen is a poet from Delhi, India and one of the founding editors of The Shoreline Review, an online journal for & by south asian poets. She studied Literatures in English from Delhi University and completed her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work can be found published in bitch media, BOAAT, Breakwater Review, Glass Poetry, Hyperallergic, Hyphen, The Margins and elsewhere. She was the 2017-18 Readings/Workshops fellow at Poets & Writers and currently lives & teaches in Las Vegas where she's completing her PhD. You can find more here.