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# One Poem by Sreshtha Sen
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/one-poem-by-sreshtha-sen/
- Published: 2018-11-21T12:01:15.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:24:20.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Sreshtha Sen for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/11/smithereens.jpg)

Merion Estes, “Smithereens” (2012), fabric collage and acrylic paint on printed fabric (Collection of Kelly Boyer, photo by Matt Kazmer, work currently featured in Merion Estes: Unnatural Disasters at the Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) in Los Angeles)

## Origin Story

there are no Hindu deities in this poem / no goddesses that slay / stay within this poem.

there are no spices / named / after color / or skin or color / of skin

I do not wear / a saree in this / poem & when / I do/ cloth means cloth not

what you or I want it to / I will try / not / to switch / tongues or speak / with footnotes where

you’ll find / yourself / in my land / there is no land / that is mine that was / mine

to begin / with / in this poemif I do bring / up this religion we try / so hard to forgive

I could tell / you like most / our humans beget / a violence / so sharp we didn’t touch

our selves for years / when we did / we called it by another: / love & law but not history

because there is no / history in this poem / that hasn’t been rewritten first / or named the future

there were those / who caste / hate / & those who say / they never agreed on the rules

but we all watered / this fallow anyway / there are no Hindus in this poem

nor those / like me / fleeing from this word / *Hindu* who didn’t grow

out of this / crop we petal / the past everyday—our stomachs swollen / with blood

& ash & stolen feed / this poem will try to tell you we did what we did to exist / but the truth is

Like most / our humans beget a violence sharp / so we would rule

\* \* \*

Sreshtha Sen is a poet from Delhi, India and one of the founding editors of The Shoreline Review, an online journal for & by south Asian poets. She studied English Literature at Delhi University and completed her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in *Breakwater Review*, *BOAAT*, *Bitch Media*, *MACK*, *Meridian*, *The Margins*, and won an Amy Award in 2017\. She was the 2017–18 McCrindle Foundations Fellow at Poets & Writers and currently lives and teaches in Las Vegas where she’s completing her PhD in English and Creative Writing.

*Readers are encouraged to submit 3–5 poems as a PDF to Wendy Xu for consideration at* [*poetry@hyperallergic.com.*](mailto:poetry@hyperallergic.com)