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the poet
Forward Prize-nominated Indian poet Saraswati Nagpal is the author of debut poetry collection Drench Me in Silver. A co-editor of the Substack edition of The Winged Moon, she's been published in The Atlantic, Atlanta Review, Usawa Literary Review, SAND and The Hooghly Review, as well as in international anthologies. Saraswati's poetry has been nominated four times for Best of the Net, and once for The Pushcart Prize. A performing artist and choreographer, she's taught literature and creative writing for more than two decades.
the poems
If You Look For Me
You will know me by these strange eyes
lit by a hundred ancestors’ fire-sight—
this left iris locked on the underworld.
I bleed from three wounds—
empty mother-shrine,
duty’s iron mantle,
and of course,
a woman’s ache for wings.
I once feared the river of me,
dammed it for the favour of cowards.
Now my wildness spills
beyond and deep—
flowers flourishing in gashes,
roots tethered in my vast acres,
the Sun’s grace feeding me
in her molten language of verse.
At First Light
After Marcelle Newbold
Bring incense, smoke of sandalwood,
jasmine of longing in sweet braids.
Bring petals of rose, red with hope
to the bodhi tree sprouting sacred figs.
Bring your feet, bare. Place your fated
forehead on these roots, thick with sweat
of sleeping ancestors.
At first light, the tree is dreaming us
awake in its hundred leaves of memory.
Can you see the forest in your fingertips?
Can you hear the rust and gold of the
red earth’s song? Will you become
a blessing and offer it your full
and fragrant heart?
Magdalene by Caravaggio
That face could be mine, could be yours.
Chin tilted to a blazing world behind
your eyelids, eros emerging as verse
from the open mouth—
And the belly, a maelstrom
of flame-flecked yearning.
You know, as she does—
not even that which you seek
will silence the ache,
no salve for this ochre agony.
For it is not in crossing the threshold
but in existing on its liminal embers—
this is where divinity floods the body,
this is where the soul turns gold.
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb