Poems by Pramila Venkateswaran

Feeding

She held the sapling
while he fixed the soil and watered it
the pail tilted
the water pouring out silver
the children’s joined breath
fanning the tiny plant.

This, even in this red soil
acrid air from gunfire
sleep gone like everything soft.

See the sapling listening to the soil
tears connecting each to each.
This is how to quieten
hunger gnawing us.
This is how we connect
one to one,
plant, soil, water, air
our glue.

---

Myth of Scarcity

Driving down Pond Path to deliver vegetable rice
to the soup kitchen, I feel light, awake, spurred by service.
My plate is always full of to-do’s, my feet
keeping up with wants and needs.

I can’t sleep, aware of terror wreaked by governments
on helpless people. The desert does not offer much,
but it does deliver the glory of olives.
When tanks bulldoze the trees, salt in the air and water
dries up life. The sun blazes down, birds vanish.

Workers persist, cooking rice in huge vats,
stirring thin broth, scooping meager portions
into bowls held through gaps in a fence,
filling a manufactured lack.

An ocean away, my plate is full. But hearts filled with scarcity
thrive on the deadly. Only wilderness where hearts
leave their habitat. The mind only knows what the heart tells it.
Can you teach the heart to walk the path of care,
so it teaches the mind to send its sparks to the world?

---

Mouthing God

I love the word seed
in Sanskrit—beej.

I roll it in my mouth:
It travels from my pursed

lips to stop short
of the roof.

My tongue barely holds
it before it vanishes.

Seeds are magical;
created from

an original
how they sprout

an entire pantry
to feed a world.

This sound I
pronounce

is the first sound

that holds millions

of facsimiles,
multiverses, theories.

It feeds its singular syllable
to this frivolous verse.

First published in Long Island Sound Anthology, 2009.

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of many poetry volumes, the most recent being We Are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022), winner of New York Book Festival award.

---