Artist Bio:
Sheri Vandermolen has served, for fifteen years, as editor in chief of Time Being Books, an independent publishing company based in St. Louis, Missouri. Her projects have included overseeing the archives for and compilation of The Complete Poems of Louis Daniel Brodsky (a series that comprises verse spanning five decades) and managing four collected-works editions.
She has also facilitated the publication of dozens of individual poetry and short-fiction volumes. She graduated summa cum laude, with Phi Kappa Phi academic honors, in 1990, and relocated to Bangalore, India, in 2008. Exploring the subcontinent via camera and pen, for a full six years, she ultimately formed the manuscript Jasmine Fractals, organically generated from experiences as mundane as a trip to the local city market and as distinct as a visit to the Maha Kumbh Mela (considered the world’s largest gathering of humanity, for a single event).
Her verse pieces have been published in various international literary journals and anthologies, including Camel Saloon; Contemporary Literary Review India; Earthen Lamp Journal; Muse India; Jersey Devil Press; Papercuts; Taj Mahal Review; Veils, Halos and Shackles (edited by Dr. Charles Fishman and Smita Sahay); and Verse-Virtual.
with wandering steps, back into our reality,
grateful to have beheld such magical humanity.
• • •
All are ash-coated, head to toe, shivering and yet
exuberant
• • •
• • •
draped in…swaths of marigolds
…surge to the river, hand in hand, for their holy dip,
proving that, in being clothed solely by the sky and bathed by the Ganges,
they have pleased and received Lord Shiva.
• • •
seated, turbaned, mystically smiling guru swamis
surrounded by dozens of obliging attendants
• • •
• • •
let the glistening oranges, purples, reds catch the breeze
• • •
Circus-light-bright powders fly
by the fistful,
into buckets of water
(hard to come by, in the dry season),
filling pichkari gun barrels
with fuchsia-blooming H2O,
for ten-year-olds to aim
at every passing friend-foe.
• • •
