‘The Harvest is Bare’ & ‘In Kashmir the Snow Is White’
Clara Gillin is a rising artist, photographer and writer- as well as highschooler balancing her time with school work and many extra curriculars. She doesn't shy away from challenges, starting multiple of her own clubs and managing top grades while exploring her interests. After winning a district-wide writing contest, she's submitted to many different artists’ outlets in hopes of being discovered and sharing her art with the world.
The Harvest is Bare
Memory is a fickle thing − a bushel of apples, the grunt of an old oak and grasshoppers in the rain − trudging up the slime of hill, I miss a step.
The harvest is bare − gobbled up by wildfires − my auburn landscape is waylaid by an alien streak of red; a lone scarecrow folds over, the tadpoles are motionless in the mud, and nocturnal visitors flounder in the night.
Yes, the harvest is bare and my bushel now empty.
There is nothing here for us.
The fields of my everything are claimed by another.
Hastening, I give way to these shadows that lengthen; and gracelessly, I concede to the ghostly figures creeping out from under the sycamore tree.
In Kashmir the Snow Is White
In Kashmir the snow is white.
Staring out the ricket of window,
I yearn for a daybreak as pristine;
but I find the twisted roots of an old Chinar,
forlorn in the fog of war.
My breath swirls before me,
rising up the black of chimney,
obscuring the nightmare that befalls me,
as it calls out in a Siren’s song,
a fearsome medley of
drum beats and dulcet tones.
Yes, in Kashmir the snow is white
and splattered with blood.
Agneya Singh is a writer and filmmaker from the Global South whose work explores themes of resistance, memory, ecological collapse, and political grief. His debut feature film M Cream received multiple international awards, and his recent poetry engages with lived experiences of war, occupation, and environmental devastation. Based between India and Malta, he is currently completing a novel set in Kashmir.
