Poems by Prerna Bakshi

Illustration by Arpan Roy

Haiku

Visiting my ancestral home

across the border –

only the peepal  tree stands

Exile

They tell me it’s my country,

yet nothing about this place

reminds me of my own.

Even the country I thought

was my own,

is not the same anymore.

My now lost country

remains housed in

my memories

and much like me,

it too,

is forced to

live in exile.

About the Poet

Prerna Bakshi is a writer, poet and activist. Her work has been published widely, most recently in The Ofi Press, Off the Coast, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism and Peril magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture, as well as anthologized in several collections. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the recently released full-length poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, which was long-listed for the 2015 Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in the UK. More here – http://prernabakshi.strikingly.com/