Find the beauty. In 2017, writer and educator Rahul Mehta began a writing practice to find solace and beauty-in the natural world, in their family and friends, and in everyday simplicities-during a time of political tensions, environmental disasters, a global pandemic, and personal disappointment. From the vibrant color of a blade of grass, to their dog sleeping quietly in the corner, to delicate petals fallen from a rose, a mindfulness of the beauty in their surroundings helped offset the feelings of fear, outrage, and helplessness. The result of this exercise is a profoundly moving poetry collection that explores Mehta's South Asian and Appalachian culture, their Queerness, their relationships with self and others, race, privilege, and a deep admiration of nature and the spiritual realm. With the ear of a poet and a novelist's understanding of narrative motion, Mehta draws in the reader through humor, tenderness, and complexity. This debut poetry collection from the Lambda Literary Award–winning writer is a magnificent celebration of our own ordinary yet miraculous daily lives-an acknowledgment of the "messy beauty... ugly beauty" in the world.
"A defining work that speaks to a Queer, immigrant experience that needs to be read."
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, author of I Don't Want to Be Understood
"In their probing debut poetry collection, Rahul Mehta delves cycles of seasons, cycles of suffering, cycles of persistent aliveness. The poems in Feeding the Ghosts don't offer solutions to racism & homophobia, to trauma and grief: rather, they provide accompaniment, witness, wonder. Here we discover a profundity of the will to sever, to continue, to shape-shift into belonging as a daily practice
