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| ‘Noble Juveniles’ 2014 Sultana Raza Mixed Media |
Cocooned in comfortable zones
will the well-heeled ‘educate’
starving millions
forced to beg for work,
borrow permanently,
steal sympathy in grim daylight?
Billions of babies aching to learn
the basics of how to melt glaciers,
cause virgin forests to shrink,
help economy spurt/stutter
after earning enough to consume
as mindlessly as those ensconced
in miles of matching carpet
wall-paper, curtains, trivialbilia,
with too many bulbs,
burning too brightly too late at night.
They’d have a better shot
of being treated nobly
royally, exaltingly
if somehow they got out word
of how they suffered
at the hands of an enemy
that necessitates
the creation, maintenance, and sustenance
of the ‘defense’ industry.
Defending the rights of kids
to stale mouthfuls, rags,
a semblance of childhood
under the highest roof in the world
would be so much more justified
highlighted, applauded,
if only they’d dramatically denounce
popular enemies
of nations who actually possess
rational weapons of mass destruction
who ‘helped’ create
said empty-headed adversaries
in the first place.
Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza has an MA in English Literature. Her short stories and poems have been published in Ancient Heart Magazine (Australia), India Currents (USA), Szirine (USA), Kindred Spirit (UK), Cygnus Review (UK), Arabesque Review, London Grip (UK), Literary Gazette (USA), All Things Girls (UK), and Caduceus (Ed. Yale University, USA), Beyond Bree, (an American MENSA newsletter), the Peter Roe Series, (Tolkien Society UK), The Whirlwind Review (USA), Writer’s Asylum (India), and Silver Leaves Journal #5 (Canada). An awarded artist, Sultana Raza has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in the USA and Europe. She has also participated in international art shows, such as the Nightshow at Riccione, Italy, B.AGL Postbanhof during the Berlin Art Week, the Biennale of Chianciano, Italy in 2013; and ArtExpo New York (alongside Andy Warhol), and Art Monaco in 2014.