YELLOW FINCH

by Tara Menon

A yellow finch with blacks stripes on wings

stands on what’s left of a yellow zinnia.

The yellow finch explodes like the sun

after the rain and gloom of the day’s news.

I don’t bury my head in the sand.

The world throbs its troubles

and I feel its accelerated pulse.

The wars, the famines, the wildfires,

and zooming in, the family tragedy

of a woman, dedicated to her three children,

who strangled them when her husband 

went to fetch pizza. She leaped to the ground

from a second-story window, 

hoping for death, only to end up paralyzed

and put on trial.

It’s bad enough immigrants are put behind bars,

killed or handed trumped up charges.

It’s bad enough Black men are killed

for routine traffic violations.

Mothers with postpartum psychosis 

are taken to trial and some are imprisoned

when they should be treated in hospitals.

The tragedy of lost children is compounded.

The yellow finch. The yellow finch.

The explosion of yellow on yellow.

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems have appeared in Gray Sparrow Journal, The New Verse News, The Sucharnochee Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Blue Heron Review.

SHORTAGE

by Tara Menon

The Boston Globe states
there’s a shortage of breast biopsy needles 
in the nation, the result of a recall.
Doctors need to conserve their supply.
Breast cancer diagnoses are delayed. 
 
We mustn’t sprout cancer cells 
at least until the end of March.
Better yet, we must remain healthy 
our entire lives while science
invents ways to cure or prevent diseases.
 
What do we do about shortages
when the Strait of Hormuz closes
or when nations hoard supplies as weapons of wars
or when global warming results in more pandemics,
overwhelming hospitals to prioritize surgeries,
or when doctors are forced to turn down patients
or when the cost of insurance swells to smother us?
What then?
 
None of those scenarios have to happen, you know.
The worst enemy is the shrug of shoulders.

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems are forthcoming or have appeared in AMPLIFY (Sheila-Na-Gig), The Sucharnochee Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Chaotic Merge Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal.

MONA’S HEAD SPEAKS

by Tara Menon

A grinning man who decapitated his wife and paraded down the street with her head in his hands has been jailed for just eight years in Iran. Mum-of-one Mona Heydari (above) was just 17 when she was dragged from a car outside the family home and killed in February last year, a court heard. Her husband Sajjad Heydari and his brother Heydar carried out the brutal attack in Ahvaz, the capital of the southwestern Khuzestan Province. Mona, who had been married since the age of 12, had fled her violent husband with another man, the court heard. However, the woman was tracked down in Turkey by her own father - named as Javid in local media - who returned her to her violent husband. The man allegedly used Interpol to trace his daughter and returned her to Iran, where her husband - who is also her cousin - slaughtered her, claiming she had shamed him. —The Mirror (UK), January 19, 2023

How much is my head worth
in my country?
Beheaded that is
with pools of blood.
Eight years?
So little for my murderer.
Why not seventeen
for every year I’ve lived?
Or eighty minus seventeen
assuming I’d have become an octogenarian.

I fled his violence,
but my family lured me back to Iran
with assurances I’d be safe. I was not.
And then my family pardoned my husband
else he’d have been killed by the state.
No woman is free from danger

when unfair laws lurk.

 
Ask Mahsa Amini,
who was killed for showing 
a bit of hair peeping out of her burqa.
 
Look up at the sky
where we hover
waiting to enter heaven
after justice finds its way to earth.
We could blow the clouds, strike lightning bolts,
thunder from above forever.
The weight of our souls burdens hearts, 
but no one knows
we’re also present inside palpitating organs
to get across our message.

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her most recent poems have been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Arlington Literary Journal, San Pedro River Review, and The Loch Raven Review. Her latest fiction has appeared in The Hong Kong Review, Litro, The Bookends Review, Rio Grande Review, and The Evening Street Review. She is also a book reviewer and essayist whose pieces have appeared in many journals.