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” which 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 problems like human rights violations, immigration, gun violence, and racial discrimination. This collection is not only a reflection of individual rights violations but also addresses the human rights violations 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," that graces the cover of Megha’s book.
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” which 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 problems like human rights violations, immigration, gun violence, and racial discrimination. This collection is not only a reflection of individual rights violations but also addresses the human rights violations 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," that graces the cover of Megha’s book.
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” which 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 problems like human rights violations, immigration, gun violence, and racial discrimination. This collection is not only a reflection of individual rights violations but also addresses the human rights violations 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," that graces the cover of Megha’s book.
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).
Megha Sood( She/Her) is an award-winning Asian-American author, poet, editor, curator, and literary activist from New Jersey. She earned her Postgraduate Degree in Computer Application (M.C.A)and Bachelors in Computer Sciences (B.Sc.) from India.A Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Her literary partnership "Life in Quarantine" with Stanford University has been presented at the Open Education Global Forum 2020 and received mention in the Stanford Daily newspaper. Her works have been supported by the National League of American Pen Women, VONA, Kundiman, Dodge Foundation, and Martha Vineyard Creative Writing Institute.
Her four poetry collections include the award-winning ("My Body Lives Like a Threat", FlowerSong Press, 2022) and (My Body is not an Apology", Finishing Lines Press, 2021). She was inducted as an honored listee for the 125-year-old Marquis Who's Who. A 2020 National Level Winner for the Poetry Matters Project, and a Four-Time State Level Winner for the NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Poetry Award. Recipient of “Certificate of Excellence” from Mayor Stephen Fulop, Jersey City. Member of National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW), The Artists Forum (USA), ArtPride (NJ), and United Nations Association-US Chapter. She has also been chosen as a featured poet for the 2024 Dodge Poetry Festival.
Her widely anthologized poems, essays, and other works discuss her experience as a first-generation immigrant and woman of color. Her 900+ works have been widely featured in print, online journals, public exhibits, and anthologies including the Poetry Society of New York, MS Magazine, NYPL, Pen Magazine by American Pen Women, Journal of NJ Poets, Dime Show Review, Panoplyzine, PBS American Portrait, NPR, WNYC Studio, etc and numerous universities including Stanford University, John Hopkins, Howard University, George Mason, Temple University, etc. Her poem "Deciphering the Madness" was also broadcast on WNYC-Studio Morning Edition as part of National Poetry Month in April 2022.
Her co-edited anthology “The Medusa Project” and other works have been selected to be sent to the moon in 2025 in two separate rocket missions as part of the historical LunarCodex Project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and her 14-year-old son. Find her at https://linktr.ee/meghasood
Poetry Collection ” My Body Lives Like a Threat” by Flower Song Press,2022
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