my body lives like a threat by Megha Sood
“My Body Lives Like a Threat “is a deep exposition of gender and color-based discrimination, sexual and reproductive rights violations, body politics, immigration, and the impact of a toxic political environment on the country and its people. The full length has been divided into five sections namely “Black Truth”, “War and Peace”, “My Body is Not an Apology”, “A Just Immigration Policy” and “My Body Lives Like a Threat” that deals with the poems reflecting the blatant violation of human rights and the systemic oppression of the people of color in this country and around the world. The book reflects how body politics never remains at an individual level but molds and morphs into a social monster birthing problem like human rights violation, immigration, gun violence, and racial discrimination. This collection is not only a reflection of individual rights violations but also addresses the human rights violation in today’s toxic political environment as a whole. This book highlights my journey, gives it a voice, and strengthens the fact that how the body is so central as a whole yet it remains invisible and still acts as a threat.
Christy E. O’Connor, creator of the sculpture entitled, “Carried Trauma” graces the cover of Megha’s book.
Megha Sood is a New Jersey-based award-winning poet, editor, and blogger. She earned her Postgraduate Degree in Computer Application (M.C.A)and Bachelors in Computer Sciences (B.Sc.) from India. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for the UK-based Arts and Literary Journal MookyChick, Literary Partner in the “Life in Quarantine'' Project by Stanford University, USA, and Associate Editor with Literary Journal “Life and Legends”. She is the author of a chapbook (“A Potpourri of Emotions”, Local Gems Press, NY).
Her 500+ works have been featured internationally in literary journals, magazines, anthologies, newspapers, podcasts like Rising Phoenix Review, SONKU, Better than Starbucks, Poetry Society of New York, WNYC Studios, HUDSON Reporter, Kissing Dynamite, American Writers Review, Dime show review, Rainbow Project among others where she received her Pushcart 2020 Nomination.
Megha is a Three-time NAMI NJ State Level Poetry Contest 2018/2019/2020 winner and National Level Spring Robinson Lit Prize 2020 winner. Shortlisted in Pangolin Poetry Prize 2019(USA), Adelaide Literary Award 2019 (USA), Erbacce Prize 2020(UK), iWomanGlobalAwards 2020(India), TWIBB Beyond Black Sakhi Awards 2020(USA), Poetry Super Highway 2020(USA).
Her works have been selected numerous times by the Jersey City Writers Group and the Department of Cultural Affairs for the Arts House Festival. Chosen twice as the international panelist for the Jersey City Theater Center Online Series “Voices Around the World”.She co-edited anthologies (“The Medusa Project”, Mookychick) and ( “The Kali Project”, Indie Blu(e) Press). She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/ and tweets at @meghasood16.
Megha Sood’s first collection My Body Lives Like a Threat provokes and inspires. In her powerful voice, the author personalizes the political as in Transformation, Asphyxiated, and A Nation in a Chokehold. In this collection, bodies are prayers, safe-havens, and an eye of the storm. There is hope in these poems too: “…we expose our deepest and softest parts to heal … that's how the body learns …”
―Maria Lisella, Academy of American Poets Fellow and Queens Poet Laureate
"With its stunning imagery and beautifully crafted lines, My Body Lives Like Threat functions like a hand cupping our chins and turning our faces to that which we are too afraid to see alone. The world is difficult and filled with injustice, look. The world is broken and littered with boundaries, violence, and injured dreams. Look, look, do not look away. This is the collection that will build a new city over the bones of decaying patriarchy, and Megha Sood is the poet who will stand in the middle of that city, lantern-lit, leading us, with her words, to a better way."
―Melissa Studdard, Poet, and Author
Deeply conscious of her location as an immigrant and a woman, Megha Sood creates in My Body Lives Like a Threat a conduit for the voices of the vulnerable and oppressed in the United States. Through unrelenting images of pain and suffering, the poems bear witness to the history of brutality against African Americans and other immigrant groups, refusing to numb the pain wrought by injustice, since peace is “the metaphor of denial.” Megha’s powerful words find their resonance in the pause between language and action, where community and consciousness overcome voices of privilege. Despite the burden of patriarchy and state violence, in Megha’s poetry, solace lies with both grief and love.
―Pramila Venkateswaran, author of The Singer of Alleppey, Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island.
Megha Sood weaves stark reality with vibrant images to create a surreal yet sharp understanding of the complexity of humanity. Each piece entices you to the next, drawing you further into the heart of this body of work. Living. Vibrant. Unapologetic. Powerful. Once I started, I couldn’t stop reading.”
―Rescue Poetix, Poet, Author, Performer and 2021-22 Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey.
Megha Sood's My Body Lives Like a Threat is an impassioned and unflinching war cry against racial and gendered violence and oppression. Laced with Dante-esque, vividly visceral imagery, the poet poses a series of potent and compelling questions - "Does scream have a religion? Do cries have a race? Does hurt have a gender?". Railing against a catalog of griefs, from deeply personal to global "pain like a stray dog"- the "razor-sharp vernacular of death", "raging inequality" and "a cornrow of failed desires", the poet rebels against "a million slithering tongues" and the "putrid stench of indifference" in a world where systemic suppression "takes the shape of a chokehold". Much as this book is a fervent and unflinching war cry, it is also a cry from the heart, a bloody-knuckled digging for hope.
―Anne Casey, Author of "Out of Emptied Cups", Award-Winning Poet and Writer
Just to gain a little insight between interstices, I recommend the reader starts with the title poem before being wooed and devoured by Megha’s craft’s excellent attention to her social justice perspective.
The line that sells the book for me is:
every time I twist my tongue to
shape a word, I mispronounce
your fear
“a new threat is born.”
―Jacquese Armstrong, Author, Blues legacy ©2019, Winner 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.
My Body Lives Like a Threat by Megha Sood is a collection of poetry that speaks to the feeling(s) of many people living all over the world. Depending on the country, culture, race or religious orientation of the reader the title says it all. No explanation is required.
Read these poems and feel what life may be like for someone who is Not you.
―Lucinda J Clark, Founder Poetry Matters Project
“If we consider poetry as a polemic for societal change - then Megha Sood’s full-length poetry collection, My Body Lives Like a Threat, will strike a deep chord in the reader’s psyche. Sood doesn’t aim to soften the blow; her truth is brutal and honest, wrapped in her wordsmith craft. Reading these poems separated into five relevant sections, we’re submerged in a collective outrage against inequity and racism. When in recent history have we needed a book like this more than now? They say it takes a village, and Sood’s words are a veritable village of experience. Her reach into empathy and intelligent understanding of how the machinations of oppression, patriarchy, and injustice work, is uncanny and deeply moving. Sood’s poems deftly unravel the lies we’re told; instead, she presents the gory truth about suffering, bias, and prejudice as it really is.
―Candice Louisa Daquin, Senior Editor, Indie Blu(e) Publishing. Poetry Editor, The Pine Cone Review. Writer-in-Residence, Borderless Journal. Author of Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, publishing in 2022).