“They say that because I didn’t take the jab, the virus has chosen to take a jab at me,” says poet, writer and artist, SEEMA MUNIZ

Head exploding with blinding bits of jarring light, body pumping out heat, bones broken into a million pieces…young leaves on the cashew tree form hearts and blow kisses. Birds are vocal. They come visit, blabber a lot. There might come a point when I would be delusional enough to understand the language of the avian world, and all my knowledge of the human tongues might simply slip away from me…imagine all the great secrets i might be privy to! Who knows I might even be able to spread my wings and take off. The idea excites me and is saddening at the same time. Yet, would I be a lesser being if Rimbaud’s audacious flights into visionary realms did not encompass my consciousness or Dostoevsky’s nosedives into the subliminal eschewed my pinioned comprehension? Or…there are illimitable ors which could be illustrated here and honed to brilliancy but I think the point is made.

Seema Muniz


A few moments from my feverish reverie:

1.

The sun stretched
lazily on the balcony
beckons me;
i haul my feverish
body and lie atop;
together we pump
out heat merging
into one another.
the volcano
erupts and lava flows
out; a file of black
ants marching past 
urges me back in

2.

the night a huge
organic beast
with uneven folds
where i lie tossing
and turning, craving to
fall through some deep
crack and disappear 
into an infinitesimal 
moment of not being…
a heart beating:
not mine.
a body breathing:
not mine.
dreams roll in like
a blanket of early
morning fog, smothering
the consciousness, yet 

here ‘i’ am, awake and
groaning with pain

3.

Beyond the mortal cells
dying and renewing
I resurrect myself:
an entity, an energy
a force of  
a sprawled shadow
with an arrow of sunshine
darting through it


Seema Muniz, a feature writer with the Times of India group in the nineties, is an avid reader and educationist, who homeschooled her son until tenth grade, while drifting between New York and Alaska with her family. She is also an artist, with a few solo and group shows in Albany, NY, to her credit.