It Wasn’t Time to Go

Now, two years after spending 5 days in the ICU, and a tough recovery period, I finally had the courage to submit my work to literary journals. Knowing I didn’t have the emotional strength to handle rejections, I had to wait. This month three poems found homes—thanks to Loch Raven Journal, Beltway Poetry Journal and Passager. And thank you to my writer groups who kept me going with their love and encouragement. Happy belated Thanksgiving to all my friends everywhere!

Here’s the poem accepted by Beltway Poetry Journal.

Lalita Noronha

Bound

As I lie on a gurney in the emergency room,
my mind slips into another sphere,
a quiet place with no air, no need to breathe.

The planets swirl about me ─
Jupiter and her four moons,
but it is Europa’s voice I hear first,
a spinning shell of ice
sunlight bouncing off cracks.

Around me voices fade,
leaf-green gowns pale under my eyes,
and bands of dark birds,
geese or song birds,
fly in V formations.

I hear their call.
The air off their wing tips will lift me.
I don’t have to fly.

Dusk deepens, the sky cobalt-blue,
threads of daylight weave through.
Last chance, the last flock calls,

but my last inhale
is trapped within a space
where rain drops aren’t yet snow,
water’s not yet steam,
love’s not yet eternal.

Someone asks me something,
I answer binding.
I hear someone shouting, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.

I open my eyes,
see my child at my side,
holding me down.

http://www.beltwaypoetry.com/bound/.

Aren’t we ALL Immigrants or Descendants of Immigrants in America?

Among the many issues plaguing our country today, Immigration is firmly rooted in the American milieu.

I often think of how I came to the U.S as a young girl of 23, who had never seen the inside of an airplane, and had no place to live in (the dorms were full) and no money to live on. I found a place to live with a family close to my university— doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen each evening after lab work, and on weekends I took care of four children aged 2 to 8, in addition to a few other chores in exchange for room and board. Within that first semester, I could send money home. I had come on a Fulbright Travel Grant which was my ticket to America — the only possible way to get here. At JFK airport, where I had to change planes, I stood in awe watching a “moving stair case” and thought, “My God, what a country!” Then I rode the escalator a few times 🙂

And now, while I dearly love India, the country I was born in, I love America just as much. There are no limits to Love and Gratitude.

The poem below is from my poetry book, “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems”

IMMIGRANT DANDELION

Deep within the mud-brown ground
of muscle and bone,
pith of water and cell,
a tap root and a million fibrous hairs
run deep
into the belly of the earth,
find room to grow
anywhere,
between cracks in pavements,
sidewalks, walls,
among blades of pristine grass
in purest lawns.
With sunflower yellow blooms
and feathery seeds,
it dares to live and succeed
undaunted by perennial labels,
damned nuisance,
common weed.

If you’d like a signed copy addressed to you, please go to “Books” on this website and click on Mustard Seed. Amazon also sells it but I won’t be able to sign and write in it for you.

Why was I born

A year and a half ago, I fell seriously ill. After a 6 day stay in the ICU, I came home unable to unscramble a simple five alphabet word like “poems.” It took me 4 days to go through the final proof of my own book “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems ─ and sad beyond words. Much, much better now, I have learned to accept a new “normal” with humility and patience without yearning for the woman I was.

Some 25 years ago, I attended a conference in Rome and returned with a statue of the Pieta which has been on my mantelpiece above the fireplace ever since then.
The poem below (included in Mustard Seed) comes from gazing at that statue endlessly.

THE PIETA
After Michelangelo Buonarroti, Vatican City, Rome

O lady, you part your legs,
not to birth the one you grew within your womb,
but to cradle a man—
his buttocks in the hammock of your gown
your elbow an arc for his shoulders,
stilled temples on your breast.

You gaze at purpled gashes, blood reds, pinks
his body still warm,
your boy crowned king.

For this alone were you born,
For this alone he born.
O Mary,
Look up from his face.
Tell me,
For what was I born?

(for a signed copy of Mustard Seed, click on books)

Why was I born

A year and a half ago, I fell seriously ill. After a 6 day stay in the ICU, I came home unable to unscramble a simple five alphabet word like “poems.” It took me 4 days to go through the final proof of my own book “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems ─ and sad beyond words. Much, much better now, I have learned to accept a new “normal” with humility and patience without yearning for the woman I was.

Some 25 years ago, I attended a conference in Rome and returned with a statue of the Pieta which has been on my mantelpiece above the fireplace ever since then. The poem below (included in Mustard Seed) comes from gazing at that statue endlessly.

THE PIETA
(After Michelangelo Buonarroti, Vatican City, Rome)

O lady, you part your legs,
not to birth the one you grew within your womb,
but to cradle a man–
his buttocks in the hammock of your gown,
your elbow an arc for his shoulders,
stilled temples on your breast.

You gaze at purpled gashes, blood reds, pinks
his body still warm,
your boy crowned king.

For this alone were you born,
For this alone was he born.
O Mary,
Look up from his face.
Tell me,
For what was I born?

Faith, Hope, Love

2016 was a difficult year for me with respect to my health.   And while I am better in 2017,  I continue to struggle with new problems.  Rather than delve into details, I want instead to offer you poems that I’d written some years ago.  I hope they will offer you a small measure of comfort, as it does me.

Faith

Give me faith
the measure of one thimble,
and my soul will sprout,
this cracked and arid land
will bloom green and gold
rich with coconut grove,
and paddy fields, and tea plantations.
Give me faith,
the measure of one thimble,
and I will rise like the Himalaya at dawn.

Hope

Bring me hope
in bright brass urns
of monsoon rain,
between the claps of thunder
under thoughts that fill ponds
and swell the river
Bring me hope
and I will bloom
like a lotus in sun.

(published in Get Well Wishes, Harper San Francisco)

 

Charity

Take me back
to the beginning.
Wrap a peace which falls
like sheer rain
between folds of petals
under blades of grass,
between unanswered questions,
the pain, ripe and raw
pungent as forgiveness.

(published in Serenity Prayers, Andrew McMeel Publishing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very happy to tell you that I won my second Maryland Individual Artist Award, this time in poetry (the last one was fiction some years ago.) I submitted fifteen poems (the max allowed) that ended up in “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems.” Also, Beltway Poetry Journal named it one of ten best poetry book in 2016.

In honor of Mother’s Day, here is a poem from my book that I wrote for my grand daughter when my daughter-in-law was in labor.

UNWRITTEN POEM (for Emerson)

That day I wanted to write you a poem,
a villanelle, ghazal, pantoum,
even just a haiku.

I wanted rippled syllables,
rhyming words to squeeze into lines
and spill over when they ought to.

But that day—
there was no language, not even alphabets
for the journey you were taking.

So, I offered you my memory
of your father’s birth,
his twenty-hour journey into a world

soon to be yours.
I offered you what I couldn’t
offer him that day—

my quiet aching heart yearning to take
all the sorrow you would ever face
now –now while you were still safe

before you turned the first page.

And here she is now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems by Lalita Noronha

I am thrilled to introduce you to my new poetry book  entitled “The Mustard Seed:  A Collage  of Science, Art and Love Poems” published by Apprentice House Press, Loyola University. The book is dedicated to  my not-quite- three year old grand daughter, Emerson Barlow Blob and my baby grandson Andrew Noronha Blob.

 

“Mustard Seed” is the name of a poem I wrote for my little sister, Maria, who died of cancer, when she was 5 years old, and I was 11 years old.  I brought her black and white picture in a little silver frame to America forty-some years ago. She lives on my dresser, where I can see her everyday, smiling, and never growing old.

 

Here are two blurbs which appear on the back cover of my book:

“Lalita  Noronha is a rare creature, someone who feels comfortable among the conflicting demands of art and science. In the Mustard Seed she fulfills the promise of her earlier poems on scientific themes, ekphrastic poems on art and artists, and the post-colonial background of her family in India. In her new work, the biological sciences remain powerful sources of metaphors, especially in poems like “Specimen Child,”  “Apoptosis,” “Passive Diffusion,” and the astonishing “Beyond the Cenozoic Era.” “The Python,” one of the most amazing poems in this collection, beautifully demonstrates the power of biological description and begs to be compared to animalistic poems by Ted Hughes and Rainer Maria Rilke. It contains the extraordinary line “sorrow swallowed me like a python takes a rat, head first” and the section in which it’s found culminates in a powerful political poem, “Bird of Paradise.”  Finally, something should be said about the tender love poems like “The Shirt” and the ekphrastic poem “The Widow.” I have many other favorites but then this note would turn into an essay. In this sophisticated collection, enlightenment is but a page away.”

–Michael Salcman, M.D., editor of Poetry in Medicine, An Anthology of Poems About Doctors, Patients, Illness, and Healing, and author of A Prague Spring, Before & After.

 Whether discussing the process of passive diffusion (“moving from high to low concentration,/down its gradient,/the way honey swirls, thick in the center”) or the pleasure of going to museums (“your oval gold frame,/a pendant on my heart”), Lalita Noronha writes with the precision of a trained scientist. Mustard Seed travels, from Goa to Baltimore, from Bethlehem to Rome, from past to present—always with a finely attended hand to guide the reader. It is a delight.”

 —Kim Roberts, Editor, Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

 

 

 

My thoughts on Immigration

I’ve decided to post what I call my immigrant poem here. It was first published in the Cortland Review and subsequently in my poetry chapbook, Her Skin, Phyllothin.  Given the political climate of our country, I thought my readers might enjoy it.

Poetry is meant to be heard, so please listen to me read it here: http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/59/noronha.php

Here is the text.

Forty Years Later: What I know

Let me say this about immigrants

who burrow through the earth

to swim in rivers whose names they lisp,

Mississippi, Missouri—so many esses, hisses, misses,

the Grand Canyon they fly over with paper wings.

I love the way they step off a plane or boat into a silky twilight

towing belongings—prayer beads, bamboo flutes, jute bags—

scraps of this and that, passports and photographs,

leaving behind scorched chimneys, banana leaves,

monkeys hanging by their feet from trees.

But here is what they do not say—

We will never be whole again.

We cannot, in truth, uproot.

We will grow fins, wings, scales, tails, water-colored third eyes.

We will use our arms as legs, heels as fists, bellies and backs as floats.

We will fill our mouths with ash.

We will chill our teeth

drink the acrid wine of separation

and sleep through occasions—birth, death, days between—

for this one chance to awaken

grateful, still surprised.

 

This is a test.

Shopping for a Name — Raising Our Voices: Womyn Out Loud.

Shopping for a Name — Raising Our Voices: Womyn Out Loud.

I’m not senile—at least, not yet— so let me say I know how Women is spelled  🙂

This is the name of a new group of diverse women who want to —yes— draw attention to ourselves—by hosting literary and musical celebrations of women artists. We want to “bridge the cultural and racial divide” and celebrate diversity through Words and Song.

Here is what I wrote on our group’s website http://ow.ly/4nh1Yf  when we went shopping for a name for ourselves.

“We, women with roots in Palestine, Africa, Italy and India, decided to band together and host a literary reading. Wondering what to call ourselves, we went shopping for a name.

We tried on a lot of outfits. We considered adding pleats, lace, taking the hem up, lowering it. Nothing seemed perfect. When this six word outfit was chosen, I stared at it. Wasn’t the front and back the same? Why repeat the pattern? We voted; I lost.

At last, after years of being silenced, women are rising up against poverty, abuse, injustice and inequality at every level. As a result we are, at best, 5000 miles up Mt. Everest with 14,000 more to go.

And in many countries women are sitting at the base of the mountain, their mouths stuffed with words they are choking on, words they are not allowed to speak.

And then it hit me! Raising our voices isn’t enough! We must get loud. Louder. And still be lady-women lest we be dismissed as unprofessional, lest we taste like sour grapes, lest the respect we worked so hard to earn be swallowed like “a python takes a rat, head first.” (a line from my poem, The Python, Apprentice House, in press.)

There are always reasons for gender inequality. Very good reasons, some would say. Ultimately women must create, carry and birth human kind. How can they be equally productive in the marketplace? This, to me, is the mother of all ironies. And now that the market place is global, such issues have escalated.

Legal or illegal, there’s always a bruhaha about immigrants. Without Senator Fulbright’s vision of establishing travel grants, I would not and could not ever be here. My hair would have turned gray before I could save airfare to the land of milk and honey.

Not a day goes by without gratitude for my home, the one I chose. And yet my bones ache for the one I left behind.
Here’s an excerpt from my poem in Her Skin Phyllo-thin, Finishing Line Press.

Forty Years Later: What I know.

 Let me say this about immigrants
who burrow through the earth,
to swim in rivers whose names they lisp,
Mississippi, Missouri—so many esses, hisses, misses,
the Grand Canyon they fly over with paper wings….
I love the way they step off a plane or boat into a silky twilight
towing belongings—prayer beads, bamboo flutes, jute bags….

Come listen to the rest of this poem and others that I’ll  read on May 15th, 2016 at The Impact Hub, 10 East North Ave, Baltimore, at 2 p.m. Come listen to an amazing group of writers. Come raise your voices with us.

I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of our group, so the pics are all about me and me, and my books.