Sreekanth Kopuri Ph.D. is an Indian poet, Current poetry editor for The AutoEthnographer Journal Florida, Alumni Writer in Residence, Athens, and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry in Oxford, John Hopkins, Heinrich Heine, Caen, Banja Luka, Gdanski, and many universities. His poems appeared in Arkansan Review, Christian Century, A Honest Ulsterman, Chicago Memory House, Two Thirds North, Heartland Review, Tulsa Review, Digging Through the Fat, Expanded Field, Contrapuntos IX, Untethered Review, A New Ulster, Liquid Imagination, Vayavya, Wend Poetry, Stray Branch, American Diversity Report, Litbreak Magazine, Plants & Poetry, Burro, Rational Creature, Lannang Achieves, Better Than Starbucks, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry San Jose, Bosporus Review of Books, Synaeresis Journal, Word Fountain, Ann Arbor Review, Ariel Chart, Five 2 One, Oddball Magazine to mention a few. His forthcoming book From an Indian Diary is the finalist for the Eyelands Book Award 2022, Athens. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of Golden Book of the Year 2022. Kopuri did his Ph.D. on the Autoethnographic poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.

PORTRAIT OF A HAPPENSTANCE

for Mayflower



You never know
what draws out, 

line-in, to a likeness, 
surreal stroke. This

sudden, strange acquaintance 
to the virtuous shades of 

your image from a teacher, 
that often flickered in the eye
  
colours you up now, on    
my canvass within. A segue  

paces, brushes across
roads not taken, wonders

what more contours of this intuition 
to fill your image with, till I recall

how our teacher rain-bowed
those soft-hued adjectives, and

verbs, ad-verbing her love
for you, mothering meaning

full life, portrait to wall -
clock of a memory today.



Notes: After an unexpected acquaintance with a far away writer from our common teacher’s introduction to the virtuous profile