3 Poems by Sheikha A.

Van Gogh’s starry

night should have been at least twenty
shades of black, so inspiration stayed
thick

and insomniacs strained
for the silver

without a lining, each shade
spoiling away an hour

while ravens fluttered like flies
afore a distant moon.


Strife

There is nothing philosophical about the sky
for its hunger has been mindless, but then
everything about the sky is a thing of faith;
the stars have sundered from a timid earth
and returned to aluminium foils from which
they were made, the sand has splintered from
mountains promising structure, leaves fallen
from ranks, limbs broken off trunks, roots
withered in wombs; the letters fall off
their charts, images vacate canvases,
man unlearns to speak,
evolution rewinds.



Solstice

Summer’s here in full bloom,
the sky carries a ball of yellow,
as does the earth, frayed
buds of uprooted floral, once
a thing of grandeur in recent past,
now wilted of hydration;

was it the callous heat?

Or, a self-absorbed nobility
gloating over an acquisition?

The soil stands its ground,
with nowhere to go, lays strewn
obediently, waiting for the next
turn of season; a coronation
of advocacy – liberty,
banishing the need to survive
(if) to exist, breathing nothing
but a flawless truth.


Bionote

Sheikha A. hails from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates and is the author of a short poetry collection titled Spaced [Hammer and Anvil Books, 2013] available on kindle. Her work appears in over 40 literary zines/journals/magazines such as Red Fez, The Muse, Ygdrasil, A New Ulster, Pyrokinection, Mad Swirl, Carcinogenic Poetry, ken*again, American Diversity Report to name a few, and several anthologies by Silver Birch Press. Her recent publications have been in Switch [the Difference] anthology by Kind of a Hurricane Press and Twenty Seven Signs – Poetry Anthology by Lady Chaos Press.