Otherllo's Path
Butterflies dropped dead from branches
Where they never grew
Dewdrops of nights that stifled dawns
Lay on your path
Or were they tiny handkerchiefs
Outlining a long sorrowful track?
White of course
Black with guile
Wordsmiths called
It green, envy
But when the foliage died
No one was left to pry
So, don’t walk that path dear Othello
Don’t wipe your eyes with
Those thunderstruck fingers, they’ll teach
You rage and us a loss forever to linger.
(This poem was first published in LIT UP MAGAZINE, USA)
Nabina lives two lives, shuttling between USA and India. Her first novel “Footprints in the Bajra” is available from Cedar Books, India, while her poetry and short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies in North America, India and Australia. Selected as an Associate Fellow for the prestigious Sarai-CSDS Fellowship 2010 (New Delhi India), Nabina has won prizes in the poetry contests organized by Prakriti Foundation (Chennai, India) in 2009, and by HarperCollins-India and Open Space in 2008 (India). Nabina is also a 2007 Joan Jakobson fiction scholar from Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, and a 2007 Julio Lobo fiction scholar from Lesley Writers’ Conference. A journalist and media person in India and the US for about 10 years in all, Nabina blogs at http://fleuve-souterrain.blogspot.com/ when not writing. Formally trained in Indian classical music, she has performed in radio and TV programs and acted in street theater productions in India. A bilingual with a Linguistics Masters, Nabina writes in three languages and is an editor with the literary journal Danse Macabre (USA).
Butterflies dropped dead from branches
Where they never grew
Dewdrops of nights that stifled dawns
Lay on your path
Or were they tiny handkerchiefs
Outlining a long sorrowful track?
White of course
Black with guile
Wordsmiths called
It green, envy
But when the foliage died
No one was left to pry
So, don’t walk that path dear Othello
Don’t wipe your eyes with
Those thunderstruck fingers, they’ll teach
You rage and us a loss forever to linger.
(This poem was first published in LIT UP MAGAZINE, USA)
Nabina lives two lives, shuttling between USA and India. Her first novel “Footprints in the Bajra” is available from Cedar Books, India, while her poetry and short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies in North America, India and Australia. Selected as an Associate Fellow for the prestigious Sarai-CSDS Fellowship 2010 (New Delhi India), Nabina has won prizes in the poetry contests organized by Prakriti Foundation (Chennai, India) in 2009, and by HarperCollins-India and Open Space in 2008 (India). Nabina is also a 2007 Joan Jakobson fiction scholar from Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, and a 2007 Julio Lobo fiction scholar from Lesley Writers’ Conference. A journalist and media person in India and the US for about 10 years in all, Nabina blogs at http://fleuve-souterrain.blogspot.com/ when not writing. Formally trained in Indian classical music, she has performed in radio and TV programs and acted in street theater productions in India. A bilingual with a Linguistics Masters, Nabina writes in three languages and is an editor with the literary journal Danse Macabre (USA).
