I Had a Voice, Now I Have a Better One by Neha Varadharajan

They say the pink, dangling manifesto at the back

of the throat speaking words that often cry,

is called the uvula. Now, I shall rest upon that

very grave, my uvula is baking fish in the sea. 

Of emotions. Of hatred. Of love.

My poetry is ringing through generations, or 

those unheard secrets we were too scared

to walk upon, so we were buried. 

The lock picking through the key,

the key picking through the lock. A symbiotic

relationship, a danger call. Red is only a 

metaphor.

My uvula rotted behind all these years where 

numbers overtook words, left them behind.

in the race that was never run. So hear,

hear the black banana being the best, and

trail behind souvenirs of the journey everyone

is a little too scared to leave with.

---

Neha Varadharajan (she/her) is a high school poet, proser and songwriter from Pune, India. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ice Lolly Review, The WEIGHT Journal, Dreich Mag, Cathartic Lit, Hearth Mag and elsewhere. A poetry apprentice at Breakbread Magazine, she is a 2021 Incandescent Summer Studio mentee in poetry.