Shivani Mehta

Shivani Mehta was born in Mumbai and raised in Singapore. She moved to New York to attend Hamilton College and then earned a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law. Her prose poems have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Coachella Review, Cold Mountain Review, Fjord’s Review, Hotel Amerika, The Prose Poem Project, The Normal School, Used Furniture Review, Generations Literary Journal, Midwest Quarterly Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, children, dog, two cats, and several fish.

Sample Poems

THE BUTTERFLIES

You unzip my dress, a curve from the side of my left breast to the top of my hip. My body is a column of butterflies. One by one, roused by the light and cool air, they wake from sleep. One by one they open their wings, answering the instinct to be free. They scatter in all directions; I learn what it means to be in many places at once.

~ ~ ~

THE MAN

When I saw the little guy, nose pressed to the glass wall of his cage, I knew I had to have him. He was just what I’d been looking for, as tall as a ball-point pen when clicked open. He weighed no more than a sprig of black sage when I lifted him, placed him in the breast pocket of my shirt where he settled, nestled into the warmth of my body. I wondered if marsupial mothers felt like this, if they gestated their miniscule babies as I carried my little man, forgetting he was there until he moved, jabbed a hand or foot into the side of my breast. That first evening in my apartment we got acquainted over spaghetti and meatballs. I opened a bottle of champagne, poured him half a thimbleful. He ate five crumbs from my plate and a sliver of shaved parmesan the size of a clipped fingernail. I take him everywhere, dress-shopping, tucked into my waistband at the gym, on dates with other men. They never know he’s there, pressed into my cleavage. At the office, I set him in a glass jar on my desk. He naps for much of the morning, sliding between the folds of an old dishtowel. Every evening, after supper I sit on the balcony, let him perch on my shoulder. I’m so happy, he murmured once, his breath teasing my earlobe, his fingers tickling my neck like a cat’s whiskers.