Beyond the Scent of Sorrow

by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

Overview

Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an award-winning writer, poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, blogger, and educator whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, and an upcoming nonfiction book of prose and poems. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and online publications across six countries in three continents. A graduate of Columbia University, Sweta reads her work across the United States, Europe, and Asia. She also teaches creative writing workshops. Sweta lives in New York City with her husband. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

About this chapbook

Beyond the Scent of Sorrow delves into the challenges faced by women on a global level. The eucalyptus trees in southwest Portugal are used as an archetype to symbolically elicit the challenges women face in today's world. Boldly, the poems which are lyrical, literal, short, and succinct, profess the unkind capabilities of mankind.

Poets and Critics praise Beyond the Scent of Sorrow

"Sweta's poetic voice flows like water smoothing and shaping stones. With great skill she uncovers, sometimes tenderly and other times more forcefully, the shroud of fog surrounding the feminine archetype... she has created and nurtured a garden, a wordscape, in which trust and healing can flourish." --Nick Purdon, author of The Road-shaped Heart

"Sweta Srivastava Vikram holds her work close. Fold it one way, a poem of loss appears. Fold it yet again for a poem of longing. Her work is as structurally sound as the elements. It soars with anticipation. Vikram reveals lovely and powerful poems that will long linger." --Doug Mathewson, Editor Blink-Ink

Learn more at www.SwetaVikram.comFrom the World Voices Series at Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com

POE005060 Poetry: American - Asian American

SOC028000 Social Science: Women's Studies - GeneralSOC010000 Social Science: Feminism & Feminist Theory

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615990979
Publisher:	Modern History Press
Publication date:	09/05/2011
Series:	World Voices
Pages:	38
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.08(d)

About the Author

Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an award-winning writer, poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, blogger, and educator whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, and an upcoming nonfiction book of prose and poems. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and online publications across six countries in three continents. A graduate of Columbia University, Sweta reads her work across the United States, Europe, and Asia. She also teaches creative writing workshops. Sweta lives in New York City with her husband. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

PART I

"In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful."

— Alice Walker

Eucalyptus Trees

Homeless will be the birds,
The nurturer for years,
the same eucalyptus trees that bled rivers until oil grew wings and flowed with fragrance.
The shade from its leaves weeps for tomorrow.
Never expecting an obrigada in return,
It's a Man's World

It was all going well until wells started flooding —
of approvals and bonuses.
The slender, charming migrant with his swallow-like demeanor, hunting

for the hidden treasures twice a year.
in colonies of Armani,
to give their friends honey, then walk on burning coals.
of resentment and sucks dry the droplets of air leaving jellyfish and poisonous turtles

for every feminine jaw and lip flying towards success with a ring on her finger.

Unholy Men

Like the cork oak selectively stripped of their bark every ten years of their lives to quench a lover's thirst for wine in Evoramonte, Portugal,
Poverty is a Woman

Autumn doesn't wear as many hats of green and amber as I do.

Clearing the fog every morning,
Like a sailor cutting through oceans of boats,
Ladles of wind spare a moment so seagulls can spit on my hands,

a sign for the barrenness of my pocket.
I look like a starving ghost living inside the house of humiliation with no lamps or fire.

Something Burns a River

White shirts dressing spirits,
A cliché it may be, but I work like a dog with panting breath and drowsy brows —
But something burns a river — my silence and your abandoned conversations with honesty because I am a person with gentle feet and no cigar to perk up your ego.

Skeletons of Women

My feet were ticklish from the acorns sneaking inside the pockets of large rocks,
But I was wrong.
Too late, the fire moaned.
Immortal Olive Tree

In the hills of Evoramonte,
Have You Seen What Happiness Looks Like?

Wearing a bell around its neck,
I am told these tales as I dream of sweet breath rocking a cradle, thinking of a grave.
The world is no present.
CHAPTER 2

PART II

"Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths."

— Lois Wyse

Suspicion

Our homes had a common room —
Mothers, with dupattas over fruitless faces,
The halo of suspicion corroded walls,
Dust sat on the wings of trust whispering tales of bleeding bricks to deceased chili plants near temples and mosques.

Birds sang hymns to the past.
The fruits grew over summer,
Train tracks crossed friendships and grew fences —
Years of memories,
Silence

Like the arrow that makes a new home when the bow decides, I feel displaced

answering to a name, faithfully,
Wearing a veil over my dilemma,
What was mine? Some could argue.
Ask the bird that lost its nest resting in the eucalyptus tree,
crying pigs chewing on the root,
The grass wilts and dies,
The starless sky offers no help as I walk through sobs and shocks.

An anonymous poet,
Scent of Sorrow

I crawl under the meadow,
Like pieces of oak in corked wine,
I survive a stranger crazier than a rabid raccoon only to deal with a beast at home who debauches me like meat and cheap liquor.
Ritual of the Sexes

It stands upon me,
One morning, the liars wake up.
Misery

As I walk down the path alone with tractor marks of blood,
I want a son,
Like the cows on the farm,
Desolation

In a dream, she sees dead olive trees float through the night.

Her fingers running through thin hair,
playing the tune of desolation,
Anxious, she awaits the mist to awaken her,
Loss

I touch my breasts,
I walk to his bedroom —
I sniff his clothes — scented like a head stone on a grave. Tears flow from my eyes;
I speak of the things you snatched, to no one.
What can I say to a man who eats pleas for dinner and calls me the fungus destroying the root of our family's tree!

Dark are letters that sit on the tip of my tongue.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Beyond the Scent of Sorrow"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Sweta Srivastava Vikram.
Excerpted by permission of Loving Healing Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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