Visage aux cheveux bouclés (1956) – Pablo Picasso (1891 -1973). Courtesy: Creative Commons
cordant umbilical,
a mistress to one but Time;
that flurry of falsehoods, coats of paint
sporting jammed zippers,
dredging lakes of hard sink water
with cracked cups for hands,
persistent blackheads in the facial tick
lime disease grass
when something catches your eye
like an errant frisbee
from freckled double-dare water-winged children
of the long splashing summer
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
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I wave my flag in thorny poems
Because I am too embarrassed to show you off in tatters
Stripped of your stripes
Your crescent eclipsed
Your pointy star blunted
My words are meant to prick
But they are not daggers nor keris
It's not good for my constitution to keep them inside
It's also bad for my heart
But if you look closely
You can see the patriotism in the whites of my eyes
You can feel the nationalism when they are bloodshot red
You can hear the anthem of my soul crying out when I am blue
You can sense the pride when I march in unison with my fellow yellows
(We link arms and sing the Negaraku because—hey—it's our country too)
My poems are my battle cry for you
My rhymes are there to straighten their crooked lines
My alliterations are a raucous rallying rap to get us back on track
My puns are the stitching of your sides
My consonance are the higher thread count of your fabric, the higher ground we tread to discount their dread
My imagery yearns to return your colours that have run, insane
My metaphors are my longing to unfurl you in the sun, again
My Malaysia is a million valiant vigorous voices wanting to raise a nation's flagging fading fervour
Don't need to stand in attention to appreciate it
Just pay attention
Because it's freely given
And if they still can't take the brave words of us poetic souls
Then they can just hang us from the nearest pole
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Julian Matthews is a former journalist and trainer currently expressing himself in poetry, short fiction and essays. He is based in Malaysia
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A tribute by Sutputra Radheye for Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist, Danish Siddiqui, who died while covering a clash between Pakistan, Afghan security forces and Taliban on 16th July 2021. He is known to have said :”I shoot for the common man…”
For Danish Siddiqui
“I shoot for the common
man”
in the future
when no one will remember
the crows anchoring
inside the small boxes
we call televisions
Danish and his photographs
will be discussed --
appreciated far beyond
the boundaries
of classrooms and exhibitions
in streets, in protests
in the songs of humanity
and in the voices of people
the streets will never forget
the smile, the eyes
and the camera that could speak
write stories
and shake the city
inside every human
where humanity lives
Sutputra Radheye is a young poet from India. He has published two poetry collections — Worshipping Bodies(Notion Press) and Inqalaab on the Walls (Delhi Poetry Slam). His works are reflective of the society he lives in and tries to capture the marginalized side of the story.
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To the Origin of a Free Poem
I don't know how I can climb these steps
Perhaps I'll never think of anything
These steps lead to a free poem
The large mossy steps to her smile
And make it my poems,
Long thought-out ways
How shall I begin with her?
I shall hold pains mounting to joy towards her
With our morning milk white looks, thoughts deep.
I shall turn the cloud
Into intelligible forms
The stones shall hear my rhymes.
This long night settles
On my heartbeats, lines
Into her ears, a leaf falls on me.
Swinging Back in Free Thoughts
While swinging with pleasure
we converse late into the borders.
Words pour on to blank pages
with irrepressible urges, free leaves
When turbulence brews in the sky
you go down the river
take along a little of me with you,
and remember very well
to leave a bit of you, yours
on the promise to meet again
and find each other soon.
Freedom Safari
On this bird cooing morning
The sun rays on the books I am reading these days
Lighting up all words, emotions and charm
Calling it good morning. Repeating the name.
My nation is my name, a timely cooked cuisine
A morning bird, a debut collection of promise
Where clouds court in joy, raining the light.
Another beautiful day
Thoughts never arrive late here
What a lovely feeling it is to be free
Sitting, reading and returning to my unsaid words for you.
Jaydeep Sarangi, dubbed as ‘bard on the banks of Dulung’, is a widely anthologized and reviewed bilingual poet with eight collections in English latest being Heart Raining the Light (2020) released in Rome. Sarangi has read his poems in different shores of the globe. He is on the editorial boards of different journals featuring poetry and articles on poetry like Mascara Literary Review, Transnational Literature, (Australia), Teesta, WEC(India).
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By the small window of the distant city Santiniketan, I met the morning of my birthday.
I have arrived here by train and airplane, where language and customs are different.
Does my mother know this city? She stays in a land further than the sun and the moon.
Long, long time ago, I was a tiny seed in my mother’s womb.
She left for a land farther than the legend of the sutras,
Leaving the frail bud in this world like one who pushes away her own baby with hate.
The day when the tiny black seed sprouted for the first time in the garden is my birthday.
Mother usually remembers the small bud and the sunshine of that spring.
Today should have been my mother's joy, but she is in a land further than the sun and moon.
When I approached the window of the unfamiliar city in the twilight with my body and mind worn out,
Mother visited me as an afterglow of the evening sun.
After looking around my room and my face, she brought me my birthday dinner.
When I finished having dinner, she had already left me,
Putting aside the silent blanket of night next to me.
She left me with the afterglow of the evening to the land further than the sun and moon.
Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.
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Alberta Bound
I own a gate to this prairie
that ends facing the Rocky Mountains.
They call it Alberta --
trails of endless blue sky
asylum of endless winters,
the hermitage of indolent retracted sun.
Deep freeze drips haphazardly into spring.
Drumheller, dinosaur badlands, dried bones,
ancient hoodoos sculpt high, prairie toadstools.
Alberta highway 2 opens the gateway of endless miles.
Travel weary, I stop by roadsides, ears open to whispering pines.
In harmony North to South
Gordon Lightfoot pitches out a tune-
"Alberta Bound."
With independence in my veins,
I am a long way from my home.
Tiny Sparrow Feet
It's calm.
Cheeky, unexpected.
Too quiet.
My clear plastic bowls
serves as my bird feeder.
I don't hear the distant
scratching, shuffling
of tiny sparrow feet,
the wing dances, fluttering, of a hungry
morning's lack of big band sounds.
I walk tentatively to my patio window,
spy the balcony with my detective's eyes.
I witness three newly hatched
toddler sparrows, curved nails, mounted
deep, in their mother's dead, decaying back.
Their childish beaks bent over elongated,
delicately, into golden chips, and dusted yellow corn.
Michael’s poetry sung to music
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois. Mr. Johnson is published in more than 2033 new publications. His poems have appeared in 42 countries; he edits and publishes ten poetry sites.
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I see a little girl amongst the millions
With dreams in her eyes and wild curls in her hair,
Her unbreakable spirit to survive and her passion for life.
She moves forward in life playing by the rules one day at a time,
until she asks herself, 'Why am I here in this rat race?'
Some say to bring new life.
Some say to live for others.
Some say to be creative and to appreciate creation.
Some say to love.
Some say by God's will.
Some say for money and to build empires.
Some say just to live, and
Some say, just about make it each day.
She bravely treads each path to see
Where would she find peace?
What could be her final destination?
She chooses each path
And looks for footprints to follow
Till she finds a lonely untrod road.
She makes that one her own.
She finds she has no need to 'fit in' anymore.
She fought her fears and won her wars.
She lived for others and found true love.
At last, she found her way, her peace.
She had finally found her heart, her God!
Rachel Jayan has been a passionate educator for 24 years and is currently the Primary Years Coordinator at Indus International School, Bangalore. This is her maiden attempt at writing.
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My Beloved Singapore
who would have thought
in 50 years you'd grow
from a village/town
to a city/metropolis?
and yet if I had been
attentive, the seeds were sown
and the fruits were expected.
little in my nation
grows spontaneously
there's careful planning,
planting of opportunities
obtaining rewards
for jobs well done.
so now, celebrating
our National Day
comes naturally-
and we rejoice knowing
many become one.
Reaching Out...
we are known globally
as a nation of multi-cultures
but we are united as one people.
not an easy goal to realise
knowing how differences divide
and make unity problematic.
despite the given difficulties
we have come through-
showing there is hope
when the desired ends
are commonly shared-
and understood.
Kirpal Singh is a poet and a literary critic from Singapore. An internationally recognised scholar, Singh has won research awards and grants from local and foreign universities. He was one of the founding members of the Centre for Research in New Literatures, Flinders University, Australia in 1977; the first Asian director for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1993 and 1994, and chairman of the Singapore Writers’ Festival in the 1990s. He retired the Director of the Wee Kim Wee Centre.
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Three moving poems on the nuclear blasts that ended the Second World War and the lives of many innocents in Hiroshima & Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, respectively.
Hiroshima School for GirlsAugust 6, 1945
The day began like any other:
all of us lined up for morning
drills beneath a clear sky,
mock wooden rifles propped against
our shoulders. Suddenly there was a sharp
blue light like a camera flash.
Teacher cried
“Down!”
We tossed our
guns aside, dropped to
the ground, thumbs in
ears, fingers over
eyes to protect
them from damage
just as we’d practiced.
(Published first in Skipping Stones)
At that Moment
I was in the schoolyard
singing the Student Brigade song
when a B-29 flew overhead.
A verse appeared in my mind:
Madness reigned
on the the bloody
battleground of Saipan.
After the flash
silence
the city, destroyed
transformed into ruins.
Next thing I knew
I was sitting in a field
barefoot
gazing at clouds of dust
houses without roofs.
Rain began to fall
drops drumming on
the ground, my body
staining my uniform
with brown spots.
Everything around me was
painted gray.
Burnt people lay along
the riverbanks. A woman
stared from swollen sockets
her hair charred
only a wisp of clothing on
her shoulders. From her
twisted mouth:
My child! My child.
My Daughter
Etsuko left home wearing
baggy pants and a straw hat,
school bag on her back.
At 8:15
flash
explosion
inferno
Men and women
burnt, drooping
drifting from Hiroshima
like sleepwalkers.
We waited.
Etsuko didn’t return.
Clinging to hope we searched
through smoldering rubble
heaps of corpses, among
ravaged victims pleading
for water, begging for help
naked women stooping at
bridge girders.
At 6 p.m.
we headed home.
Someone said, “Etsuko’s here!”
But she was scorched, every
limb swollen, her eyes blinded.
“I was with a friend,”
Etsuko said. “We went
west with the wind
crawled across the train
bridge, came back to Koi.”
I brought her to the
emergency clinic where scores
were treated, died anyway.
The next day, Etsuko
opened her eyes. A miracle:
“I can see!” she said.
”Good. We’ll be going
home soon.”
Etusko gazed at me
and departed this world at
10:15.
(“At that Moment” and “My Daughter” were first published in When Women Waken)
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
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Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.
Bikini
Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s bright eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise ...
something lurks where the riptides sigh:
something old, and odd, and wise.
Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and, with tentacles like Medusa’s squirming,
it feels the cloud blot out the skies’ ...
then shudders, settles with a sigh,
understanding man’s demise.
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Michael R. Burchhas over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems have been translated into fourteen languages and set to music by eleven composers. He also edits The HyperTexts (online at www.thehypertexts.com).
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Borderless 