Meena Alexander (1951–2018) was a distinguished Indian American poet, scholar, and writer whose work poignantly explored themes of migration, identity, memory, and trauma. Born in Allahabad, India, she spent her formative years in Kerala and Khartoum, Sudan, experiences that deeply influenced her literary voice. She earned a BA in French and English from the University of Khartoum and a PhD in English from the University of Nottingham in England.
Alexander's poetry is renowned for its lyrical intensity and its engagement with the complexities of displacement and cultural hybridity. Her acclaimed collection Illiterate Heart (2002) received the PEN Open Book Award, and Raw Silk (2004) further established her as a vital voice in contemporary poetry. Her final collection, Atmospheric Embroidery (2018), reflects on personal and collective histories, weaving together narratives of loss and resilience.
Beyond poetry, Alexander authored the memoir Fault Lines (1993; revised 2003), which delves into her experiences across continents and cultures. She also wrote novels such as Nampally Road (1991) and Manhattan Music (1997), and edited the anthology Indian Love Poems (2005). 
As an academic, Alexander taught at institutions including Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Her work has been translated into multiple languages, reflecting its global resonance. Through her evocative writing, Meena Alexander offered profound insights into the human condition, leaving an indelible mark on the literary world.
Muse
Meena Alexander
I was young when you came to me.
Each thing rings its turn,
you sang in my ear, a slip of a thing
dressed like a convent girl—
white socks, shoes,
dark blue pinafore, white blouse.
A pencil box in hand: girl, book, tree—
those were the words you gave me.
Girl was penne, hair drawn back,
gleaming on the scalp,
the self in a mirror in a rosewood room
the sky at monsoon time, pearl slits
In cloud cover, a jagged music pours:
gash of sense, raw covenant
clasped still in a gold bound book,
pusthakam pages parted,
ink rubbed with mist,
a bird might have dreamt its shadow there
spreading fire in a tree maram.
You murmured the word, sliding it on your tongue,
trying to get how a girl could turn
into a molten thing and not burn.
Centuries later worn out from travel
I rest under a tree.
You come to me
a bird shedding gold feathers,
each one a quill scraping my tympanum.
You set a book to my ribs.
Night after night I unclasp it
at the mirror's edge
alphabets flicker and soar.
Write in the light
of all the languages
you know the earth contains,
you murmur in my ear.
This is pure transport.
Stone Oven
Meena Alexander
Kasr Avenue was where the birds lived,
In a mud silo millet seeds flourished
All winter long and through the dry season
Laila was in my soul, also Majnoon’s madness.
I was a girl growing up and you, crossing the
Nile—yes a flat boat is all you had—
Came in, trousers wet and flapping,
Sat down with your back to me.
Hunayn ibn Ishaq the great physician
Thought of the heart as the oven of the body.
In the Grand Hotel the waiters wear
Cummerbunds, always maroon, over tunics, white
I asked for a lemonade with crushed ice.
Majnoon lived with his goats in the desert north of here
On a mountain of sand, where the sky turns dark
The color of millet burnt in a stone oven.
Darling Coffee
Meena Alexander
The periodic pleasure
of small happenings
is upon us—
behind the stalls
at the farmer’s market
snow glinting in heaps,
a cardinal its chest
puffed out, bloodshod
above the piles of awnings,
passion’s proclivities;
you picking up a sweet potato
turning to me ‘This too?’—
query of tenderness
under the blown red wing.
Remember the brazen world?
Let’s find a room
with a window onto elms
strung with sunlight,
a cafe with polished cups,
darling coffee they call it,
may our bed be stoked
with fresh cut rosemary
and glinting thyme,
all herbs in due season
tucked under wild sheets:
fit for the conjugation of joy.
Udisthanam
Piercings of sense,
Notes lashing time
Ecstatic self hidden
In the ship’s hold
“I” legible
Solely in darkness:
Shot flames,
Anchorage of divinity.
On the South Indian coast
In eighth century heat
Tiruvalla copper plate
Marked the morning hour
Before the sea clamored
And the shadow of the body
Lay twelve feet longer
Than Sita herself,
Littoral burning
With sacred fires – passage
To a kingdom beyond
The peepul trees.
Where are those refugees
Amma did not want me to see,
Gunny sacks and torn saris
Stitched together with cord?
Breath of my breath, bone
Of my bone, dark god
Of the Nilgiris,
Who will grant them passage?
The Journey
I was blindfolded and had only the mercy of the sea
(And sprigs of jasmine in my arms).
The journey was awkward: lines blown inward, syllables askew.
Gulls nestled in torn pages.
There were many languages flowing in the fountain.
In spite of certain confusion I decided not to stay thirsty.
When we got to that country, a war was going on
A mound of stones grew outside our window frame.
I was five years old and tried to understand what was happening.
My soul ran away with me.
Forests with branches torn off, mouths that split open into my mouth,
Eyes that mirrored mine, ears torn off, few birds warbling.
Close at hand, afloat on water, a tall cliff scarred with glyphs,
Visionary want, attuned to nature’s substances.
Rock and ruin, pathways of salt, scents of crushed jasmine,
Returning me to what I cannot bear to remember.
Torn Branches
Grandfather lies in wait for me.
I cannot see.
My voice is young and burnt
My voice is a bramble berry squashed on stone.
All afternoon I lay curled in a hole
In the bamboo grove where cobras rove.
No one knew.
Rove – How did I learn that verb?
From my Scottish tutor –
She rapped my knuckles hard.
A swan in a bag, worth two in the lake.
A stitch in time saves nine.
She taught me some such things.
Who will bring me sweetmeats,
Swirl henna on my palms?
Who stokes sugarcane with kerosene
Binds cords of broken rope?
Dark sisters in the sky, their wings are torn.
They have stumps for wrists.
They sing Hosannas to our Lord.
Black Sand at the Edge of the Sea
Soon I will be given to earth,
Folded in a death squat
Together with pig marrow,
Swan’s down, thread-leaved sundew,
Pitchblende sucking bones in.
Where is grandfather now?
My friend says think of old Walt
Bent over his dead enemy –
Touching lips to encoffined flesh.
So where do they live
The twin sisters Night and Death?
Will they wash the ground clean?
Port Sudan
I hear my father’s voice on the phone.
He wants me to come from America to see him
he does not want to die and be put in the earth,
my sweet father: who held me high above the waters
of the Red Sea, when I was five,
who saw a white ship, docking at Port Sudan
and came sprinting for me
through a crowd of labourers
forced to raise bales of cotton to their heads.
Someone cried Kef Halek!
My skirt spun in the wind
and Arabic came into my mouth
and rested alongside
all my other languages.
Now I know the truth of my tongue
starts where translations perish.
Where voices cease
and I face the image of the Pharoah,
the one who murmured at the hour of his death,
throat turned towards the restless waters:
If I forget Upper Egypt,
cut off my right hand.
Here lies memory.
The same man loved his daughter so
he knew she needed knowledge
of the imprints of earth:
glyphs cut in granite,
inscriptions on rough cloth,
underwater moorings
and the black sun of death.
Her Garden
The mountains crackle
they are full of flint,
the cicada bristles
it does not sing
in grandmother’s garden
as mulberry trees
gnarled like her hands
start their long slide
seawards.
I imagine her sitting
under the mulberry leaves,
hot fruit splashed
to her eyes,
a blindness cleaned
in that solitary house
when trees clamber
out of bark
and swim
to a rock that is black
and bare
and like nothing
else in this homeland.
I like to think
she died in the day
her face set heavenward,
exacting little attention
from the sun —
once risen it sets
in finicky chaos
in a sky so flat and blue
that light mirrors itself
as if on water, soundlessly.
So losing body
she crept into her own soul
and she slept.
As young goats leap over cracks
in the garden walls,
as the cicada shunts sparks
from its wings
I remember her.
She died so long
before my birth
that we are one, entirely
as a sky
disowned by sun and star,
a bleakness beneath my dreams
a rare fragrance
as of dry mulberry
pierced by this monsoon wind.
