Embodiments by Nina Sudhakar

Nina Sudhakar’s Embodiments presents a chorus of female voices from folklore and myth, personae that conjure a retelling of the stories told about them, that refuse efforts to quiet and quell their sensations. At times joyful, at others melancholic, these poems shatter patriarchal narratives and embody an enduring desire to be truly known, for one’s experience of the world to be understood.

“These Nine Days”

& what can we coax out

of this earth’s rotation but

knowledge of such magnitude,

as in: how many rivers are needed

to holy the body & at what point does

a fissure birth a break & when will

we learn it is in our nature to scorch

the earth & then weep over

the conflagration —

& even sightless I knew to be careful

with my potential for damage,

every illuminated ribbon behind

my eyelids denoting continued

vigilance; though the sound

of a pattering (steadily repeated)

can lull one easily into

loyal complacency —

& bottomless depths, let me tell

you, are constructed only from

sourceless drops & from here

I can smell the petrichor,

I can see every scar on

the earth, I have never been

blinded by the deluge —

I could not fall asleep

amidst my watchful keening.

Nina Sudhakar is a writer, poet and lawyer based in Chicago. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Matriarchetypes (Bird’s Thumb, 2018) and her poems have appeared in Ecotone, Breakwater Review and The Indianapolis Review. For more, please visit www.ninasudhakar.com.