SHEIKHA A - POEMS

Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. With her poetry published in over 60 literary venues so far, along with several anthologies, she continues to seek more venues to reach out to wider audiences. Mostly disinclined to talking about herself, she prefers her poetry fill all the gaps instead. In her free time, she's either reading or writing poetry, musing over myths and watching cartoons. Her poetry has been recited at two separate poetry reading events held in Greece. She edits poetry for eFiction India. ​

​Red on Pluto

She was born from the womb of
a hair: atom brown spheres floating

in pallor. Swirls of crown in her hand,
these she plucked from one of the many

incubating moons. Her empire set cleft goals;
plastic fingers joint to pulping hands.

Cold green veins like lone bone tails.
He followed her cord like an earthly weight,

wafts of blue prisms: universal cadence
swinging from her throat. But it all began

with hair; loose and thick, shiny and black
shrinking like roots as its shaft descended

wispy and spiny, lifeless but alert. His eyes
couldn't leave her neck: a forest of white

moonstones, milky starlight throbbing
as an ancient melodic river. She tore

like a ruby blade, brows muffling in his scent,
teeth flickering through at first, erupting

like a cage of wild berries; all the while
his eyes never leaving her throat - moon

wrenching its neck to cast the light,  plastic
fingers clumping her waist, his smile churning -

sweet promise of a sip.

​I, Phaedra

A cry of a monkey is in the art of agitation.
Somewhere these lines wrote themselves
out like a wooden tapestry, carve-rich
leaden with smouldering coal
and velveteen ash.

I dreamt of an old fort, my dress draped
like a forest widowed and summoned
to a river of white rubble, poplars fallen
hanging in loose sheets around my waist,
silken weeds tying my bones.

I see burnt matchsticks next to where
candles' wicks have foregone fertility
laying by a liquid reflection, silver form
mass, the edges held in a metal frame:
vicarious sheen of moon-skin.

Your body is the power of seas on horses,
the hooves of which are amputated by a boy
of orange faith carrying a scythe; wheat-husk
fresh removed from fields of fire
clinging to its curved neck.

And your eyes are the eager glow of plums
swelling like an inhaling chest afore beauty,
I am the dark resolute of the night winds:
subtle silver on thunder's wings,
indigo mourns of weeping djinns.

I am a temple-bride erected on strings
tied to my arms like unrequited wishes.
If you walk up close to the lobe of my desires,
virginal as a stone under the light of dusk,
you will know the stories I tell are not true.