Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books
Earthen Wares
Nondescript, earthen wares of our bones,
red letterbox, a fakir’s tombstone.
Pilgrim’s chakras swirl red to white grindstone.
Faint footsteps, the echoes of lived homes.
Faint scents of cloves, saffron, unpack new home.
Gods of time march in hallways, stroke our skins.
Will passage of time bare wounded skin?
The fakir singing at the chowk all day long,
loudspeakers in chowks blare fakir’s song:
Do not gush at the eloquence of the moon,
Inside the body is sun and moon,
When the fruit comes, interrogates the fakir.
The flower withers, reminds the fakir.
Nondescript, earthen wares of our bones.
Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is a former computer professional turned bilingual poet and writer from Singapore, and author of two poetry collections Between Sips of Masala Chai ( Kitaab International) and Chimes of the Soul (Self-published). Shilpa is also a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. She was awarded second place in The Letter Review Prize for Poetry (2022). Her poems can be found in PR&TA Journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, to let the light in, Trivium(Kyoto Writers Residency), The Letter Review, The Best Asian Poetry-2021, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English (2020,2021,2022), OF ZOOS, Usawa Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, Shot Glass Journal (USA) and elsewhere. She was also a part of the Homeward project (Revolution of Tenderness, USA) and was invited to write a poem in response to the Grammy award winner Mr Richard Danielpour’s original composition. Shilpa has also read poetry in the USA, India, Malaysia, Australia and Singapore. Some of her poems have been translated into Japanese, Chinese art, and Spanish. Shilpa serves on the steering committee of the ‘Poetry Festival Singapore’ as a writer and literary organizer. She has just submitted this thesis as part of her M.A.(Creative Writing-Poetry) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.