Smitha Sehgal

Sea appears calm when it harbours
the most treacherous of intentions. 
It was midnight when I sailed into the deep 
waters with mates, the boat full of fuel 
and hunger pawing at our bellies. 
Immortal, immortal, screeched the seagulls, 
circling above in frenzy.

We ate rice and fish, our debts and angst, 
even the pebbles hurled by those who guarded 
the fortress of ghazals. Snarling and growling, 
they licked the poems clean to the last bone. 
Their ring leader, Fenrir, the wolf, 
had a melodious voice, though.

I was the underdog who carried Ezra’s verses 
like brown bread. On a full moon 
night, the silver fish rise to the surface 
and it is this mirror where Madam Sosotris 
the famous clairvoyante secretly disappears into.
It was indeed a wicked pack of cards
that she picked for me the evening we spent 
drinking toddy and pickled oysters. 

A hundred and one years, she had declared.
Tides were high and an orange moon hung 
low as I dove into the current 
after a whale shark  (quite a beauty she was
with three thousand pearly teeth)
and was sucked in by the whirlpool.
If you didn’t know, whirlpools are like 
ghazals, pulling at each strain and repeating 
spin after spin, turning your arms and legs 
into long strands of light and emptiness.
They couldn’t find my body 
even after a fortnight. 

I, Phlebas the Phoenician, feared ghazals
and death by water so much that the sea turned me
into an Octopus. That’s a manifestation of fear. 
Thus, I am the lord of undersea- lurking 
in dark spaces of kelp and coral, 
mostly meditating, reaching out
tentacles to strangle prey, the metaphor 
unlocking each human who fished with words
and you feared stepping inside 
water bodies, for a slick tentacle 
may curl around your ankles.

And here, in the bustling market 
amidst the cackle of chickens, goat thighs 
hung upside down on an iron hook and 
large basins of fish and square boxes 
where crabs climbed over each other,
in the hustle of bargains and ice runnels, 
and the freshly picked mushrooms lay  
alongside lettuce and ice cabbage, 
where the butcher slices pig fat,
here in a blue basin, you touch the tender film
of my skin and buttoned-up tentacles.
Bleary-eyed and sad, in temporal seasons
I am lost in deep meditation, 
my dead mountain mouth chanting 
Om Shantih.

Smitha Sehgal is a poet and legal professional. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net Awards thrice and her collection ‘ How Women Become Poems in Malabar’  (Red River) was conferred Runner-Up, The Wise Owl Literary Awards 2025. She was chosen as a Featured Poet, Erbacce Poetry Prize- UK, 2025. Her second collection, ‘Brown God’s Child’ is forthcoming. Most recently her poem was long listed by The Passionfruit Review Contest. She can be looked up at https://www.facebook.com/smitha.sehgal