Flesh & fables | Indrani Sengupta

Published 25 days ago • 1 min read

Dear friends,

A short note today to let you know that we're currently open for our free Poem of the Month contest & we're looking for the best GHAZAL!

Some of my favorite ghazals in English are written by the master Agha Shahid Ali, but there are so many more wonderful ghazals out there now since he paved the way.

I heartily encourage y'all to send us one ghazal, even if you've never written one before, try it out and submit here before August 7! For now, enjoy our first finalist for the Poet of the Year award.

All best wises,
Shannan

Indrani Sengupta

INDRANI SENGUPTA is an Indian American poet and Kundiman fellow. She is the winner of a Copper Nickel Editors’ Prize and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, Black Warrior Review, The Offing, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere.

from a bite or to be bitten

call an apple by its right name and it unslips its petticoats for you.
there is a space in it, core-deep, seed-bare, where eating is the only knowing.
when the wolf says he wants to eat you, he means he wants to know you.
all up and down the up-and-down of you.

Read 7 new poems →

Make Me Anew

On transformation, consent, & the grammar of the body

"She's been conditioned for so long to think of herself as a done-to rather than a doing, as Absolute Sex or even Absolute Victim. As I once was, growing up in a sex-conservative culture. And only when she feels that there is more flesh in her than archetype does she start to rationalize desire and argue for it, in the one language she has: that of fables."

Read the full interview →

Submit to the $2000 Bob Hicok Fellowship for All Poets, Everywhere

Send us a portfolio of poems that'll make us lose our minds. Submit now to the $2000 Bob Hicok Fellowship. Open to all poets writing in English, living anywhere in the world. All submissions are considered for publication. Final judge is Bob Hicok himself. Winner receives funding + year-long support for their writing & career. Full guidelines details here

Submit now →

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