Three poems from Romi Jain, a published poet, novelist, and vice president of the Indian Journal of Asian Affairs: “To the Immigrants to America,” “From a Woman to Men Whose Silence Sucks” and “Words.”
To the Immigrants to America
Dear Immigrants:
To the gateway to freedom from fear,
where the stale tears – wiped not for years-
dissipate,
where the lip edges depressed with sorrow
stretch gaily into inverted rainbows,
where fantasies progress merrily from
mind to existence
where non-native birds escaped from the cage
to the vast firmament,
Would you utter a word of “thanks?”
From a Woman to Men Whose Silence Sucks
You are a silent light
with a minuscule domain of a candle:
they who pass by are heading toward
the black hole of perversion;
but the flame burns indifferently upward.
Your existence lends credence to assertion
that all men are not alike.
But your goodness is a diamond in a casket
and your courage a sword in a sheath.
Words
Orderly, disciplined in preordained seats in lexicon,
words bewilder by leading distinct lives.
Sometimes a witness to a confounded writer
when a frayed sentence exposes their wounds,
as if poured in a dim trail by a famished pen;
shabbily tucked, stuck, or suffering in the brain.
Sometimes overpowering, visiting in a gang,
suggesting the flash of creativity
that transports material in its belly
for release at the divine-ordained moment,
and like a hennaed imprint with graceful strength,
blesses the words with permanency of the crown
when no substitutes exist.
And how subordinate to the force that delivers
when the meaning plays a second fiddle to passions,
like shooting determining the fate of an arrow.
Romi Jain is a published poet, novelist, and Vice President of the Indian Journal of Asian Affairs. She did her MBA from San Francisco, California, and has worked as a marketing professional with a Silicon Valley-based company. Her creative works include: The Storm Within (2008; 2011), Poetry! You Resurrect Me (2011) and Voices of Rocks in the Dusk (2012). Her poems have appeared in international anthologies and in literary journals such as Off the Coast; Touch: The Journal of Healing; The Journal of Poetry Society; Aquill Relle Magazine; Munyori Literary Journal; and The Tower Journal. Read other articles by Romi.
