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Get ready to hear from northern Illinois’ “prose pros." Hosted by WNIJ Arts Reporter Yvonne Boose, you will hear voices from northern Illinois poets as they share their words about the world around them. If you would like to submit a poem for consideration, please send submissions to yboose@niu.edu
Get ready to hear from northern Illinois’ “prose pros." Hosted by WNIJ Arts Reporter Yvonne Boose, you will hear voices from northern Illinois poets as they share their words about the world around them. If you would like to submit a poem for consideration, please send submissions to yboose@niu.edu

Poetically Yours - It's deeper than your outer cover

Sriven Srilakshmi
Sriven Srilakshmi

Sriven Srilakshmi

Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets but this week’s artist is from India.

Sriven Srilakshmi calls herself a beginner writer. She has a bachelor’s degree in engineering and said she writes when her heart feels heavy.

Srilakshmi also has a WordPress blog. Her poem is called “Skin.”

SKIN

Bare yourself uncovered? It is a free world.

Yet entrapped in your own skin. This cover, what if it peels off, we scrape off?

Would it be different? Would we have different colours? Have Colours of our own?

This skin, is a cover alright, Layers and layers beneath it, lies you.

The you, you know and not just the cover.

A shield that you cannot see for yourself but are obliged to see from another.

The other who sees it as not you.

The other who sees it as not beautiful.

The other who sees not beneath the cover.

How would they know you?

How would they know to see beyond the layer?

Yvonne covers artistic, cultural, and spiritual expressions in the COVID-19 era. This could include how members of community cultural groups are finding creative and innovative ways to enrich their personal lives through these expressions individually and within the context of their larger communities. Boose is a recent graduate of the Illinois Media School and returns to journalism after a career in the corporate world.