The Sunday Poet: Prema Bangera

Prema Bangera

Prema Bangera is a poet, an artist, an educator, and an editor. Her writing has been published in Quick Fiction, Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, and other journals. She has had featured readings at Mass Poetry's Poetry Coalition themed U35 Reading Series, Salem Arts Festival’s Afternoon Delight, Medicine Wheel, and other venues. Her artwork was exhibited at G Studios and at AAMARP Studios (as part of Peace Drum Project programs), and has appeared on music albums, as promotional designs, and as a book cover which has been archived at Harvard University, University of Buffalo, and UMass Boston libraries. Bangera is currently the Mixed Genre Editor of Midway Journal. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Teen Voices Emerging, an all-girls program for Boston teens with a focus on writing and female empowerment. She also recently launched a healing Arts project called Narratives of Transformative Love. The incentive of this project is to use art and writing to address past traumas, negative criticism, and societal expectations in order to heal and transform our identity to reflect our own strengths and develop self-love.

Ethereal Beginnings

This erratic laughter of wind, masking

the loneliness one feels when in someone else’s country, 

when in face of this terrible beauty

of dark angelic cathedrals crawling into grey worrisome sky,

ready to devour its world beneath.

Even the light of sudden sun against one’s tender skin

leaves you afraid -- this calming loss,

this glistening starry water, its waves chiming against the air.

How when aware, you can hear

it whisper,

as if it were speaking only to you.