Sophia Naz’s lush and imagistic poems describe the fallen splendour of a wilting sunflower, the passing of a season and a desolate landscape of leafless redwood trees.
Elegy for a Sunflower
Thousand-eyed-one
yellow with longing, you tilt
your head, gazing on the Beloved
her mouth of alms
Slow ripening kisses
set you aflame
the master’s mirror, golden constellation
light’s mandala spinning
sacred geometry
Sunflower, supplicant, who earned
a name, as Rumi, inseparable from Shams
Bride of Seeds, the world
wedded you
Made hollow, you sway
in the slightest breeze
emptiness the shell that holds
everything else
I gaze on your zen carcass
silent skeleton stalk
out of the frame
Parrots talk and talk.
Turncoats
She stands at the edge
Solitary Japanese plum
scarlet plumage rustling
worn out sleeves, a geisha
from April to Autumn
When the season takes its leaves
passion cooling
umeshu sours to vinegar
rumors ripen on
Grapevines, grow ruby throats
once lonely, soliloquies
burnish their tenor, turncoats
crescendo in symphony.
Taproot
Torn limb from limb
by glutton firing
the redwoods stand
row after row, denuded
as prisoners executed yet
still bound to posts
the silent sentients herd
a naked cathedral, arms
crucifix on nothing, nail it
dark coats unbuttoning
all talk of seasons falls
by the wayside, spring’s
a greening scab, across
picket lines, striking
at the heart, memory
leafs from a taproot, unbidden
pages your life, turning looks back
as a red rimmed Odin would
eye the sun and recall
his plucked skull-flower
floating away
on horizon’s ocean, parting
wisdom, the sum
of uncountable loss
About Sophia Naz
Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, essayist, author, editor and translator. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry. Her work features in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Naz is a regular contributor to Dawn, poetry editor and columnist at The Sunflower Collective, as well as the founder of rekhti.org, a site dedicated to contemporary Urdu poetry by women. Her poetry collections are Peripheries (2015), Pointillism (2017) and Date Palms (2017). Her latest book, a biography of her mother, titled Shehnaz; A Tragic True Tale of Royalty, Glamour and Heartbreak was published in November 2019 by Penguin. Her site is SophiaNaz.com
About Sara Rivers
Sara Rivers is an artist who works in different media. She completed her foundation diploma at Brighton School of Art and her BA in Fine Art at Canterbury School of Art. She has also studied Art Therapy at St Albans School of Art, Hertfordshire. Sara founded the Creativity Centre, a space for outsider artists and those recovering from mental ill health, at Isledon Road (formerly Corsica Street), London. She is a founder member of the Otherside Gallery, and has created three short films, all of which were funded by the NHS. Sara is passionate about improving the services available to people experiencing mental ill health, and has led many campaigns against the continued cuts to day services in the borough of Islington. Sara is the current artist for Lucy Writers, and has designed all the artwork for the website to date. To view more of Sara’s work follow her new Instagram account @pixbysararivers and see her profile on Outside In.
‘Elegy for a Sunflower’ and other poems were written for the series Flora & Fauna of Foreign Places, which was conceived and edited by Usha Akella for Lucy Writers.
Flora and fauna define our cultural sensibility; what trees and flowers we grew up with signifies ‘home.’ Transplant an individual to a foreign environment with strange trees and flowers, he or she is likely to feel ‘foreign’. Flowers are culturally specific in symbolism expressed in social events like weddings and funerals.
As a recent graduate of a Creative Writing MSt living in America, Usha noticed that in addition to the gift of knowledge and friendships, her journeys to the UK sparked an interest in flora. For the first time, she noticed a passion to want to know the names of flowers and trees. Somewhere along the way between the limes of Trinity College and the walnut maple of Madingley Hall; between the splendid gardens of Rydal Mount and rolling vales of Cumbria, she had been infected with a green-eye. When she walks in her Austin neighbourhood, she is now incited to know the names of the wildflowers and trees that she took for granted visually. And she notices, how this new world seeps into her writing gradually.
Right now, the early bloom of summer is upon most countries. So, it seems perfect to celebrate flowers, plants and trees as a theme for the poetry issue. In the next few weeks, Usha will be publishing poems by writers from around the world that explore, reflect on and appreciate the flora and fauna of foreign places, and what they mean to them.