Silver Branch series
Saraswati Nagpal
Saraswati Nagpal is an Indian poet, writer of myth & fantasy, and a classical dancer. Her graphic novels are feminist retellings of epic Indian myths. She is published in The Atlantic, Atlanta Review, Acropolis, Dust, SAND & various international anthologies. Saraswati has a forthcoming chapbook with Black Bough Poetry. She has been nominated twice for Best of the Net for her poems. As a performing artist, Saraswati has choregraphed and performed for stage and films and done voice work for stage productions and music albums. As an educator, she has taught a variety of arts to global audiences. For two decades, she has been a teacher of creative writing and literature to teenagers, and is currently editing her YA fantasy manuscript.
Instagram/ Threads: @saraswatinagpal
Twitter/ X: @SaraswatiNagpal
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saraswati.nagpal/
Link tree: saraswatinagpal https://linktr.ee/saraswatinagpal?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=75978c69-02df-4274-84dd-2acbfd1192f3
Daybreak
Cardamom colours early light.
Hot, sweet chai, a prayer on my tongue
to the wintered women on whose boughs
I stand, their leaves silver and falling
like a thousand blessings in my life.
Lakshmi
Cerise spills from sari
over petals of lotus.
Sweetness of rose
in hands blossoming,
rubies glinting in raven hair.
Hers is the temple of beauty,
dew-laden with dreams of evening stars.
Whisper of ankle-bells, vermillion footprints,
moon-splendour of Her gaze.
She arrives. Silver grace rains upon us.
Chai
She no longer thinks about it. Hot water
and milk, 2:1. Steel pot, lighter, stove-top,
flame.
Then the blood-saffron, just a strand.
Seeds of fennel in wrinkled hand, cardamom
crushed, fragrant. A bay leaf that smells
of home. Not this one.
Yellow fingers sift tea leaves,
fine and shrivelled
like dried up dreams.
The sugar pot’s lid is chipped.
Like her husband’s spirit: sliced
by a line on the map.
Truth is a homeland stolen by ink
a border you will not cross twice.
A woman is born to endure, her mother said-
little did she know.
Steam swirls: Lahore’s rose-pink dawn,
ghosts of sisters killed and lost.
She pours and sieves
a blood potion for those who survive.
‘Chai!’ he booms from the living room
she adds sugar and stirs-
remembers her sisters and lets them go.
New and Exclusive for the Silver Branch Feature:
Love’s Absurdity
As if loving him isn’t enough.
My heart must tumble like breakers
off a reef, beating their foam-flecked
braids, moaning frothed verses of
salt-stung loss unforeseen.
Each moment is dusk, light leaving the sky
in purple splendour, ash tendrils of night
creeping across an obscure future.
Each night this heart weighs its worth
in pebbled regret, yet wakes wondrous,
in warm hands, shadows dispelled
in the balm of his sun-gaze.
Rush Hour in Monsoon
Bangalore, India
Bumper to bumper to fender
to motorbike rider, slick with
sky silt, one wheel on pavement,
the other on tar, city of infinite
possibilities.
Bottle green rickshaw
hugging soot streaked
storm grey bus nuzzling
growling Tata truck in
tentative ménage-à-trois.
Slow crawl through metal embrace
belch of diesel, grazed body paint,
jostled side-mirrors, pothole pools.
Rain dances staccato on the car roof.
A mongrel slinks past steel and stupor.
It’s a long, long way home.
Persephone’s Lament
Six rubied seeds, one for each hour of dreaming.
Over sleep’s lambent threshold, I wander, past galis
of childhood to Ereshkigal’s midnight realm.
Here, your wedding ring, there, a snatch of song
you loved, gleam of Nani’s gold kada snagged on
tulsi bush.
Words pour out of me, Mother, recounting rugged years
I’ve lived without you. A line of silk flags fluttering in sacred
winds between worlds.
We are the myth reversed. Here is a silver trail to Elysium, fallen
ice-feathers of eagle you rode away from me. And all my nights,
I beg the gods for wings.
Ereshkigal: Queen of the Underworld (Sumerian)
Translated from Hindi: Gali – (guh-lee) alleyway | Tulsi – holy basil plant |
Kada – bracelet | Nani – maternal grandmother
How to Wear a Sari
Six yards of chiffon
could fold a woman’s form in lust
or smother dreams sketched in
girlhood’s pasture.
Six yards of cotton
would hinder a vaulting Amazon
or swaddle an infant, populate a home
with dishcloths and bandages.
Six yards of silk
will pitch a tent in exile’s wilderness,
sieve a woman’s spirit
till all the roots know her name,
the trees call her, sister.
Season of Hot
Delhi
Sautéed in desert wind, we trudge
criss-crossed ribbons of melted tar.
Dust sears civility, grates sentience,
the city is burnt toast, chilli-glazed
beneath amber sky.
Restless nights simmer spectres:
pea-flower lakes lingering luscious
in desiccated dreams.
Last Daughter
Wild song of first foremother,
a secret, bled in pearls, strung in red
thread of mātri-line.
Singing women spill through Time’s
ivory knuckles, turn my blood to lucent
honey.
From this last mouth,
a spring of rose-gold voices leaps.
mātri: (Sanskrit) mother
Blueprint of the Feathered
To scry North from bone-marrow,
divine Winter’s sigils before its becoming.
To enchant wind, surrender in flock-spell,
scatter sky with skein of wing.
To charm pine and banyan, soothe solitude
of bark and root.
To summon dusk in wild rapture,
sing a river of diamonds to dawn.
"I grew up in the concrete and glass of Dubai. My imagination filled the gaps of desert and heat with birdsong, rivers, rain. I was raised on a nourishing diet of mythology, fantasy, meditation and the Indian classical arts of music and dance. Archetypes were familiar friends. Gods populated my childhood narratives alongside the girls of Malory Towers. Something strange was bound to come of that."
"For me, writing is like choreographing a dance piece. A lot of wriggling and waving about in exasperation. Repeat. Change. Abandon. Some lucky moments where gravity, limbs and rhythm align. I aspire to become the music and the elemental thing behind the music that has a heartbeat of its own. That’s when the ink shines."
"From the vortex where all poems exist, I tend to attract the ones about ancestry, time, loss and beauty."
"All this is to say, I don’t know how poetry or writing happens to me. It just does, and I’m grateful, and I would very much like to continue to be blessed by the goddess of words, Saraswati."
Saraswati Nagpal
Videos
Links to video of Saraswati reading her poem “Dusk by Ganga”:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9ChTP3yFcN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
