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Leeches
by Sheikha A.

She levels in notions of power –
her hair has turned white as fur
of snow-deprived mount-peaks;

the old sage told her she would
lose the fecundity of her mind
(devil-leaden levels of her power),

she would be debunked to mate
with the corridors of her notions
(she resides between prophecies,

that she is bearer and harbinger),
and would birth dead foetuses
on beds of spirits that came back

for her. She says she is a swan
on waves of fire, on pure waters
of a place reserved to receive

her like a queen – notions of mad
dreams coming to her as fortune-
telling; the world is a diseased orb

in the pulse of festering hearts.
She sent worms to blood for food
of those she decreed faithless;

the old sage told her she would
be traded in flesh by her nemesis,
and her children would be born

as shadows looming over her bed,
the same throne she delivered
as sentences of illnesses to others;

and her body would carry bruises
of brutal pleasures until her notions
showed her the doorway to hell.

Fiction © Copyright Sheikha A.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Sheikha A.:

Nyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee

“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).

Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.

Available Here!