A LIE: Poem by Dr. Sreekanth Kopuri
For CHARP
woven with the void of
years in the African sands,
borrowed from the
life’s incomplete pages
sits in secure flat seated chair
bought from the supermarket
as a highest bidder at a secret
safe government auction
the natural defensive uproar adorned
in showy kinesics, entreats for scraps
of learning from another that
proclaims the biography of its own
blunder written with the stolen letters
from the pages of a ruined history
it picks up the leaves and windfalls
spilled under growing trees in the
government orchard with more lies
that socialize a life whose belly
bulges with the voracity for wealth
(First published in A New Ulster Ulster, Northern Ireland, November 2019)
Poem by Dr. Sreekanth Kopuri
© Dr. Sreekanth Kopuri 2019
About the Author
Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian poet, current poetry editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine, Alumni Writer in Residence, Athens and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry in University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, University of Florida, Heinrich Heine University, University of Gdanski and many others. His poems appeared in Arkansas Review, Christian Century, A Honest Ulsterman, Chicago Memory House, Heartland Review, Lannang Archives, Tulsa Review, Expanded Field, A New Ulster, The Rational Creature, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry Centre San Jose, Underground Writers Association, Athereon Review, Word Fountain, Synaeresis, Wend Poetry, Vayavya, Ann Arbor Review to mention a few and are forthcoming in many. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of Golden Book of the year 2022 & finalist for the Eyelands Books Award Greece, 2019. He is the recipient of Immanuel Kant Award for his collection of poems on Silence 2020. An independent research scholar in Contemporary Poetry, Silence, and Holocaust poetry, he is presently working on his research work “Silence in Contemporary Ecopoetics of Transcendence”. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.