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Poem

Living in a Body

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Abstract tangle of glowing red and blue light filaments against a black background

I’ve made a journey of days
er, months
no, years in fact
in this body of mine.
And it has led me
on an odyssey
to the far-off bowels of my oceanic mind,
to the tenuous, outermost tips of branches of my rigid tree
that could snap at the pound of a stiff wind,
to the niches of ability and fragility within my fort.

My body has told me tales
of when it couldn’t take it—
the cold, the hunger, the pulls of stress,
of other osseous vulnerabilities,
has vouchsafed that
it’s not invincible as the tyrants have foolishly thought,
it can burn and it can sink,
it can founder and decay and rot.

Post this (years of) extensive travel
in my body and its yarns
I have come to a halt.
Wait, what are we so proud of then?
Of a speck-like existence?
I mean, how can we carry the cargo of conceit
on breakable shoulders?

Anam Tariq is a poet, writer, and editor from India. She is the author of the poetry collection, A Leaf upon a Book (Leadstart, 2022). Her poems nestle in The Punch Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, Last Leaves, SeaGlass Literary, Full House Literary, and elsewhere. Anam is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. She won the Verse of Silence Poetry Contest 2023, was a finalist in Lucky Jefferson's Poetry and Prose Contest 2023, and was longlisted for the Glass House Poetry Award 2024. Anam loves nature, cats, poetry, and reading books. Find her at www.anamtariq.in or @anam.tariq_ (IG).

2 Comments

  1. Ameerah Brown Reply

    Anam, your poetry always inspires me to push my creative limits on how to express the subject matter. The shape of the poem and content holds so much in the weight of the poem. The build-up to the final 3 questions in relation to description of the body that you gave us in the beginning. Amazing!

    • Anam Tariq Reply

      Thank you for your beautiful comments Ameerah! Glad you like my poetry :)

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