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the poet
Mona Dash is the author of the memoir A Roll of the Dice: a story of loss, love and genetics, the novel Untamed Heart, and poetry collections A Certain Way and Dawn-drops. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (with distinction), and her work has been both long and shortlisted in leading competitions such as Novel London 2020, SI Leeds Literary Award, Leicester Writes Short Story Prize and The Asian Writer Short Story Prize. Her short story collection, Let us look elsewhere, is due out in 2021 from Dahlia Publishing. Mona has an MBA and an engineering degree, works for a global tech firm, and lives in London.
the poems
Implications
Born and raised an Indian; not living in India implied: not Indian
now British, not born in Britain implied: not British
a mother, working full time implied: not a mother
a sales manager, a mother implied: not a sales manager
a woman, a mother implied: not a woman
a writer, a technocrat implied: not a writer
an engineer, an artist implied: not an engineer
a businessperson, a poet implied: not a businessperson
becoming more than I was meant to implied: a sense of erosion
Venn-diagram like I seek implied: commonalities
finding intersectionality implied: a pinpoint
Unsaid, Unwritten
Unseeing, unthinking
piece words unrelated
like flowers in a vase
on the kitchen table
lark, larkspur, lavender
When the night calls
answer
in words swallowed
in a past forgotten
eels, egalitarian, eccentric
then it is morning
slicing sun through clouds
unopened eyes, sleepy sex
a day to use, misuse
harvest, hyacinth, harbour
a month is over
the thought still shattered
ravaged and unformed
the words meant
to disappear in bloodstreams
vapid, victory, vilify
like Rodin’s Thinker
count words on fingers
the tongue struggling still
to form the unformed
the pen curling, curling
to write the unwritten
For Plath, for Love
Let us then recite Plath
Let us wear white bikinis and smile
up at the sky, blue in our hearts as in the heavens
Let us sing mad-girl love songs and in its rhymes
search for a thunderbird, hold the bird close
dip into its heart, tasting its blood, mine, yours
Let us find these Hughes-like men who love
deeply, amorously, thick-honey words
that choke so well, filling us, filling us
with still, deep water, cleansing and drowning
who twist deep into us, severing
every self-belief, every little hope we have
burning away the mind-body-soul chain
Let us write, write crazily into the night
and let our words howl in the still dawn
and let us then open the oven door
and lay ourselves in, breathing in purist like
a single strain of air, lying still, lying
while our children lie in their beds, dreaming, dreaming
Publishing credits
Implications: May We Borrow Your Country (Linen Press UK)
Unsaid, Unwritten: Sarasvati 057 (Indigo Dreams Publishing)
For Plath, for Love: exclusive first publication by iamb