Niesha Rad's Original Poems

Ekphrastic Poem on the famous painting Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

The town of the grateful yet,

soon to be dead,

receive one last glance of the universe.

The radiant truth stills voices

and tranquilizes breath.

Eleven fireballs illuminate the moondust sky.

The grim Saphire hills wicket the town.

Is this the way to heaven.

This is the way to the stars.

The black tree's hair is a moussed flame,

a pin-point on the absent map.

An imaginary itinerary to starry night.

The orange crescent moon sings

lullabies to a silent town,

trapped in Bardo.

As the wailing spirit of death

slurps the brilliance from the stars.

Eleven stars, eleven souls.

Soothe gratefully to death

on a starry night.

Ekphrastic Poem on Flame Flower by Frida Kahlo

I envy the flower of life

where bodies and souls become one.

A stem of youth radiates the sour tats of masculinity

And the pulsing touch of femininity.

The burnt orange sex organs

Collide into a bombshell mandrake in full bloom.

Her petals caress the roots in lullabies.

This is

an explosion of life that meets

at the sacred sun.

Universals become one, at the bottom of their

flower.

Her womb is coated in leaves.

They are burning bodies birthing

More flowers that will shed

This addictive energy.

Fiery sparks crackle at the pistil of the bombshell

Planted where the sun shines day and night

The lovers tend to the mandrake.

The flower of life baptized in infinite rebirth.

Emmitt Till Case spurs the Civil Rights Movement

Because it smelled of ivory in Money,

Mississippi.

Because he and the boys were plucking pieces of

cotton.

Because the scorching sun slipped sweat down

their backs.

Because the meat market was hungry for a new

taste of color.

Because the black boy blew bubbles of sugar.

Because the clickety-clack of the cash register

made the clerk

snap, her husband had to crackle POP.

Because the meat market men know how to

slaughter locks.

Because countin' sheep turned you into dead meat.

Because a .22 turned the boy's hue.

Because led piercing through his head was not

enough

to teach little boys to hush.

Because the cotton gin separated flesh with

barbed wire as a necklace.

Because the little boy still wore his daddy's ring

Uncle Wright told

his sister to let the angels sing.

Because the black boy birthed a whistle his lips

turned blue.