by Bakul Banerjee
A gracious Russian mother Anna was
but chose to give up her child for vain Vronski.
Why did she make the railroad ties her last bed
and let drifting snow be her final shroud?
In Iraq, a girl protested and ran off with a boy
then lay dying in the pool of her own blood
Did she know that women of her ilk must make
their bed of dirt with a coverlet of stones?
An Indian girl refused to bankrupt her father
urging him not to fulfill the demand of the dowry.
Why did she choose to die writhing, choosing
the rat poison as her last love potion?
Women of their ilk never gave up
breaking rules, but others broke them
without mercy.
Award winning author and poet Bakul Banerjee, Ph.D. published her first volume of poems, titled “Synchronicity: Poems” in 2010. For the past fifteen years, her poems and stories appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies throughout U.S. and India. She lives near Chicago and received her Ph.D. degree in computational geophysics from The Johns Hopkins University, Maryland.
A very powerful write with potent perspectives!