Category: Poetry

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Poetry

Still Breathing

Barnali Ray Shukla Still breathing Her home wears nothing but a silence that waits--where noir feels warm like a quilt of breaths, as it begins to reel in a tequila sunset, unsure of the strange fingerprints in her voice, ‘admit two’ she hears, last breaths of life, air or lyrics. The newborn gurgles in the next room, and her mother in another, they are there for her, a little distant, and she… grateful for a death so beautiful that comes on time, as promised. Untouched by loved ones behind masks, not the one they were born with, the one they need to keep her away.

By Barnali Ray Shukla

Still Breathing

Her home wears nothing but a silence that waits--where noir feels warm like a quilt of breaths, as it begins to reel in a tequila sunset, unsure of the strange fingerprints in her voice, ‘admit two’ she hears, last breaths of life, air or lyrics. The newborn gurgles in the next room, and her mother in another, they are there for her, a little distant, and she… grateful for a death so beautiful that comes on time, as promised. Untouched by loved ones behind masks, not the one they were born with, the one they need to keep her away.

Barnali Ray Shukla is a writer, filmmaker & poet. Her writing has featured in Sunflower Collective, OutOfPrint, Kitaab.org, OUTCAST, Indian Ruminations, Vayavya, Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry II, indianculturalforum.in, Madras Courier, Bengaluru Review, Voice& Verse (HK) UCityReview (USA) and A Portrait in Blues (UK). She has a feature film to her credit as writer director, 2 documentaries, 2 short films & a book of poems, Apostrophe. Her short fiction & non fiction feature in print anthologies by Amaryllis, Speaking Tiger Books. She is shooting her third documentary & scripting a movie.She lives in Mumbai with her plants, books & a husband.

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Poetry

And then it begins….!

            By Ali Jan Maqsood

Gestured the mountains of the outlooks

Offered dryly, albeit, wet in nature

The glittering beauty of the flowers

Out in the sun of shadow

Of my territory, nevertheless, the land of my home

I reckon!

I imagine I am a butterfly

Caged by the river, flows up each second and then comes down

In merriness!

For, it owns the feeling

The feeling of sense of belonging

In particular!

The joyful days continued and would have continued

Unless, interrupted by the stormy alarums and excursions

And then chained, indeed, feet by hands

The vociferations would have gone on and on…!

If the stones had not remonstrated

Although they fall, but have learnt to stand back strongly

Accompanied by the rains of the Above Power!

The salvation we made in grievance

The souvenir in future

Entitled with the tears of glory

Of thine…!

Ever since everything sounds so irritating

Wandering on the land of survival

In the streets that are seized entirely

The fighting butterflies, fearlessly, against the burning sun

Shadowed all around, yet in fear

Fear of setting back!

For, the sun has to rise someday

And then begins the journey of thorns and flowers

Of the territorial conflicts of butterflies

Near the mountains, under the sun of shadow

In the land of my home!

And then culminates the mournings

Upon the arrival of the victory

Awaite  desperately

Who knows who dies

“In the battle of life of love and war”

When the journey begins all anew…!

Ali Jan Maqsood is a student of Law at University Law College Quetta and a former guider at Dynamic English Language Teaching Academy (DELTA) in Turbat. He can be reached at alijanmaqsood17@gmail.com and tweets at @Alijanmaqsood12

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Poetry

Living in the times of Lockdown

By Moinak Dutta

Living in The Times of Lockdown

Living in the times of Lockdown

Is curiously surreal,

For spaces we, the humans leave, are claimed by others,

Like pigeons come in flocks to dance on the chowrasta,

Where before lockdown, cars stood bumper to bumper,

Blaring horns, letting out sooty smoke;

A friend from Gurugram sent me a picture of serious traffic signal violation on a thoroughfare —

A grand peacock slowly, almost leisurely walking across the road, oblivious of the traffic lights turning green;

Dolphins, showed on TV, danced their ways near the Marine Drive at Mumbai,

They looked surprisingly happy —

No fishing boats to chase them;

The sky of my city never looked so clear and blue

Like it does now,

The trees looked greener too,

And the roads, so clutter free.

What Covid19 taught us

Covid 19 outbreak has brought into fore

How in the time of distress and panic

Religion  closes its doors; and even family members become distant;

How even the dead bodies are left behind;

How Fear controls every bit of us;

And how the old ways of enjoying life in rest and repose

Had been the most perfect ways to lead our lives;

And above all, how it is that home is all that matters at the end of the day.

Quarantined

This life is good.

You and I —

Looking at each other

And heaving a sigh.

Moiank Dutta is a teacher by profession and published fiction writer and poet with two literary & romance fictions to his credit. His third fiction is going to be published soon. Many of his poems and short stories have been published in dailies, magazines, journals, ezines.

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Poetry

Pidgin, Pockets & more…

Pidgin We have no language in common, hence, turn to pidgin. Pitch makeshift tents on half-hearted ground. Peg raw, jagged adjectives, broken verbs on stubborn clotheslines of need to offer damp confessions to the watery sun of our understanding. Some significations fall into place like punctuations well-meant. Others are lost like winged seeds as they spin towards uninviting ground. For the rest, silence rules; eats its way with acerbic faith into the hesitation of spaces. We meet in pidgin's transit; part without memory. Pockets When it comes to chests, drawers, pockets, I can be a nuisance. Given one to myself I pile an entire life in it sans a sense of order. Staples, clips, buttons, a watch perhaps will jostle here with currency notes, pencil shavings, a chance leaf, an unfinished letter, some candies for you, a book I am trying to read. Their nature hardly matters save they each matter to me. In the way that sharing every morsel of my hours with you matters and I thoughtlessly feed you with pieces of myself the day through. Putting in guilt, memory, sorrow, laughter all together, unsorted, a mosaic of myself, a mess. Is that why you left? Granted We grow up taking too many things for granted - hems, shores, rivers, knots, words, locks, walls. Yesterday, I felt betrayed when a door that had promised to stay shut, unwarranted, gave way. Uncritiqued In teeming landscapes of punctiliously ordered signifiers, I strive to break free of grooved meanings to rebelliously create my own. I knife through assumptions, dig into inferences, plunder synonyms, claw allusions. But, on diet, it is futile to want to turn words into salt-shakers in the concrete hope of sprinkling salvation. Some texts, perhaps, are best swallowed, uncritiqued.

By Basudhara Roy

Pidgin

Pockets

Granted

Uncritiqued

Basudhara Roy is the author of two books, a monograph, Migrations of Hope: A Study of the Short Fiction of Three Indian American Writers (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2019) and a collection of poems, Moon in my Teacup (Kolkata: Writer’s Workshop, 2019). She has been an alumnus of Banaras Hindu University where she was awarded the gold medal for academic excellence at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She secured the UGC Junior Research Fellowship and has earned her doctoral degree in diaspora women’s writing from Kolhan University, Chaibasa.  Basudhara’s areas of academic interest are diaspora writing, cultural studies, gender studies and postmodern criticism. Her research articles and book reviews have widely appeared in reputed academic journals across the country and as chapters in books. As a creative writer, she has featured in an anthology, Dancing the Light: Poems from Australia and India,  and in magazines like Muse India, Shabdadguchha, Cerebration, Rupkatha, The Challenge, I-mantra, The Volcano, Gnosis, Daath Voyage, Das Literarisch, Reviews, Triveni, Setu, Hans India and on the Zee Literature Festival Blog. She is Assistant Professor of English at Karim City College, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and can be reached at basudhara.roy@gmail.com.

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Poetry

Thread of Life

By Eduard Schmidt-Zorner

I tie the Ariadne’s thread into my wide-meshed cardial net, where points of view dissolve and deep thoughts evolve. Lead him past the rubble heaps where longing grows and stockpiled are forgotten things. Bind him where the swallows fly and fix him near heaven’s dome where clouds rush by and seagulls are at home.

Eduard Schmidt-Zorner is a translator and writer of poetry, haibun, haiku and short stories.He writes in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese style poetry and prose.

Member of four writer groups in Ireland and lives in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than 25 years and is a proud Irish citizen, born in Germany.

Published in 76 anthologies, literary journals and broadsheets in USA, UK, Ireland, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Bangladesh, India, France, Mauritius and Canada. Writes also under his pen name: Eadbhard McGowan

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Poetry

The Boy with the Yellow Light & more…

By Annie Blake

THE BOY WITH THE YELLOW LIGHT                                                      

/ for the cupid charges his dart / but to dodge love / for eros is invisible without a lamp /and who the hell knows who we’re really marrying / and venus was angry she had to come down to earth / for kenosis is giving up being god / living between the dark / the night lapping and the shore smacking her lips / the birth of my divine child / my husband promised to return / but the river nile is also the waterfall of the styx and i was sad so many babies had to die /

/ the nurses showed us how to experience death / and we all had to be prepared / but psyche brought her life and her lamp / but the light made his body glow / and i wasn’t ready for god back then / so i dropped the knife and the oil and burnt my own wings / or webs and i wonder how i could have despised my own wedding ring /

/ palm oil has cleared so many forests / but never give alms whilst ascending from hell /for my mother and father will climb on top of my body and we shall both drown / i left my parents but i was rejected by them first / and left bread as crumbs / so he grew out of the water / but an overgrown cupid / there was a door and a yellow light / the boy and a door and blood / my son and a door and i buried his head in the sand / for he drove a dodge dart and the jocasta complex /

/ for so many men say they can tend gardens but in the summer they let their flowers dry up / so i told him to assemble a steering wheel / made out of felt and robin hood green / for mothers must steal from the grinch and let their sons feed from their hands / so i handed him over to my husband / for the father is the son / mutatis mutandis / his wings outstretched on god’s table / the blood and the nails that strengthen the stable and how the fountain lights / his mountain climb /

LAKE MONOGRISTA                                                                                     

/ i thought she said montecristo and i was on the train heading home /

but as i was about to exist / i realized i had forgotten letters / photos of my child when she was young / and i had to stop myself from falling out / the train had walls / and the backs of passengers / for i wanted her to be pretty and pure / to wear a poncho because of my indictment of winter and the fall / hail stones as small as baby teeth and the union of demeter with persephone /

/ only alone / i had to go through lake monogrista / when will the goddess become a woman / energy which embeds will not floar up / above the ceiling / a maze or village roads archetypes or archangels made of white marble / suspended and upside down / for this map and where do i cross or sort out the corn to make flour / the eleusinian mysteries /

/ heilagr bread and i prayed for akeru / for when i’m not sure if what i’m seeing is real or conducive to evolution / wassilissa the beautiful / the black grains and the wild peas / a pestle and mortar like pen and paper / then a grain of earth in the poppy seeds / i prepared kvass on her table / her tongue / small flame heating her lips / pointy fire of a hybrid flower / she had down syndrome / and told me i had been waiting a long time to ask a question /

/ so i gave my child money for her tooth / and for charon a drachma under her tongue and i took her letter / and i hoped she would only ever find the box when she grew /for to have pistis / she made me see a light outside / daylight candle and she was in a cradle in the branches / but to admit she is really here / for newborns were saved and to rock in the wind / but for all their dead weight / or faith that she was a fait / and my fate / to breathe / her out / to life /

TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM                                                              

/ limbs / sacred animal / in the ground / i dig with my fingers and my toes / nails like roots / my back / spine rises / snake charmer and out of the casket / when i ask psychoanalysts questions they often say / how does that relate to what we’re talking about / me and peek a boo with the clock / and the whole point is missed and an altered sensorium /

/ so my husband pulled a chandelier out of the ground / arms out of the soil / the colour of spoilt iron / he told me it had sunk with the titanic / ostensorium / in miss havisham’s house / made out of flight light and rock / he swings in my room / he said for those who will hold both order and chaos / or tell the truth and for the stunting of our time / that lovemaking and the tragedy of it / triadic and in christo / 

/ for he who acquires patience / discipline to maintain the meaning of ritual / not a single offering will be missed / a man’s joined hand / veins like rope / upright sconce / within his skin / rivers green / yellow strength in his candle / in his body / burdens / burn like a forgotten forest church / for to know the same man since / baring our child / dark garden of gethsemane /

/ he now knows not to move any paper for they are my lifeskins / for my mouth is volubly mute / not to move a single body or a single letter / my altar and my cup / my holden host / golden moon and how our son impailed / the hour of adoration / for i would rather he climb as fragile as a looking glass / tread on me carefully instead /

THE BLACK STEAM TRAIN RATTLES OUR BACK DOORS IN WINTER              

/ snake of moses / rose branch to the apple / round as stone / its mouth did speak and the soul was satisfied / so whole he grew / fed his interregnum from the birth cord / extended his arm from the ground / took of his body and ate /

/ i was in the desert / for where i grew up and live / bridges wired up like cages / and the silos because the sky / sheets of steel / and our sense of responsibility / for our own lack will give us a life sentence and a prison cell / and i have always felt worried because during the war / and he could not yet cry / for suffering sedates and shuts the eyes /

/ working mechanical shark / iron box crashes / debris of his body / sea ash / how the smoke sits thick like clouds when i burn my wedding ring / the ticking clock and the next train / snake railway / and to trespass the halo of her body / but i was always good at diving in and unhooking the bait from my mouth / o soporific soul and my auseinandersetzung /

/ he hadn’t slept for days / how a man had to watch the child’s head come about 325 wordsengthen off / how he was given a broom to sweep his parts up from the ground / because when he was a boy / but then his mother died / and the easiest way to kill a man’s woman is to send him to war /

/ so there was a border / or the edge of a road / for the vestiges of my old intransigent world / a lily as white as his hand in the sand and as i lay down my clothes / for one must take the time to mourn our absences / my army clothes / his school uniform / because he was now larger than me / i couldn’t yet see the enemy / but to climb / a tomb hollowed out the next word / and we reveled in what he lay /

/ i had to stay with my ear close to his roots / and to run / river of dust when i could detect where they were / our old linen garments / submerged and lifted out of the river / i told my mother to wash our clothes because / it is more comforting to confront death and to know her then / for when your mother will not know you /   

HABENTIBUS SYMBOLUM FACILIS EST TRANSITUS                          

/ fowl sowl of men / mouth of men / sour bowl / i’m sorry / for she wears the devi cloak / how words are left to hang like jowls / uphill road / light forest / crevice of light / cervical and a cat’s eye / the color black is a deep empty hole / both in each other’s soak / for our bodies warm and the nights black / digesting the plaited crop /

/ i always had long births for i hold onto my children for too long / my body / my boy / every six months / the indian lady would sew back my eye / she said i must be patient and i was not to move / and my husband asked me how he was to learn patience / so at the hospital / i asked to have my dream interpreted / she gave me chopped apples in a ceramic bowl and i had to eat them piece by peace / so when i let go from the substructure of the world /for some people cannot live if they are not sticky inside a web / so i remember to smile even if the felicity doesn’t exactly belong to me / breasts of milk / nipples made of pearls /

/ when a mother’s suffering is manifested into her child / then i must unglove and evolve my mother / for it is our children who remain hidden and who always validate the truth /

/ so i took the time to bathe myself / and i remembered the first time my children were awed by their own hands / a leitmotif or iteration / for to see my one body / white as soap / all belonged to be / 

Annie Blake (BTeach, GDipEd) is a divergent thinker, a wife and mother of five children. She commenced school as an EAL student and was raised and, continues to live in a multicultural and industrial location in the West of Melbourne. She enjoys experimenting with Blanco’s Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Logic to explore consciousness and the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. She is an advocate of autopsychoanalysis and a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne, Australia. You can visit her on annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au  and  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009445206990.

Categories
Poetry

In The Midst of The Plague

By Mutiu Olawuyi

Stay home not with fams Cleanse not your palms Dash no space Be deaf… – Death! Death claims dirty wayward haughty minds Who snub hailing signs -- East beast feasts uncleanst wrists… This wave knows no chest; crashes East and West; surpasses all pills; disgraces bills… – Spate! Spate schools mates: Love hoards souls averts weird death tolls; ties humans to shame woes!
Stay home not with fams Cleanse not your palms Dash no space Be deaf… – Death! Death claims dirty wayward haughty minds Who snub hailing signs -- East beast feasts uncleanst wrists… This wave knows no chest; crashes East and West; surpasses all pills; disgraces bills… – Spate! Spate schools mates: Love hoards souls averts weird death tolls; ties humans to shame woes!

Mutiu Olawuyi (popularly called the Jungle Poet) is an international award-winning poet –  2013 World Poetry Empowered Poet Awardee, Canada, Honorary Professor of International Art Academy, Volos Greece; World Poetry Cultural Ambassador (2014) – Vancouver – Canada; and Master of Literary Innovation (2019) – World Poetry Conference, Bathinda Punjab, India . He is the producer and host of ArtFlakes on CBA TV, the Voice of East Africa and he is also the Editor-in-Chief of Parkchester Times and MCR newspapers (Print and Online) based in Bronx, New York, USA. He has authored numerous books of poetry (Among them are American Literary Legends and Other Poems [2010], Thoughts from the Jungle [2012], 9/11 Poetry [2012], and The Journey to the Archangels [2013]) and has edited numerous international anthologies, journals and magazines. Mutiu is a teacher, English language and literature curriculum developer, freelance writer/editor, literary critic and inventor of a new form of poetry called 9eleven (a poem of 9 lines written with 11 syllables) and the first writer of a story without verb – The Blotted Pawpaw (published 2013 by Bharat College in India). He is also an editor for The Criterion International Journal in English based in India. Mutiu has some of his poems, short stories and research papers published  in online and offline journals and magazines in India, Ireland, England, Canada, Greece, Nigeria and USA. Finally, some of his works have been translated to Arabic, French, Esperantos, Malayalam, Telugu and Hungarian.   

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Poetry

Elmhurst, O Elmhurst

By Melissa A. Chappell

(Elmhurst, the only public hospital in New York City was founded to serve the poor in 1832. It serves Western Queens County.)

Elmhurst, O Elmhurst, I did not know you in your mothering shift of glass and mortar. I ticked off your name in my mind as you caught my ear on the morning radio: “Elmhurst.” This, as I authored my own survival. Perhaps I may be one of the remnant. Perhaps this wasting bane may steal away on some wing of the breeze. But, no, Corona prefers to steal the air from the ravaged world; so that one day I saw on my 52 in. screen, Elmhurst, with an almost snake like refrigerated truck, parked outside its venerable walls, the vile work of Corona unmasked, by the shining light of day; so that, the wretched of God gathered at the hem of her weeping garments. The poor and the dead, thronging around her. She has mothered them for generations, now they lie dead in the emergency room, with none to kiss their brow. She weeps over those who have waited so long to shelter within her. Yet she rejoices in those who leave her, walking from her doors. Elmhurst, O Elmhurst, I did not know you in your mothering shift of glass and mortar. Yet now, now, I catch the genesis of the most improbable invitation on a wind that comes out of the surly darkness: “Breathe, breathe. I will keep your going out and your coming in.” This, for the poor who gather around the shabby fringes of the earth. This, for you, O Elmhurst, form this time on, and forevermore.

Melissa A. Chappell is a native of South Carolina, USA. She contentedly resides on land that has been in her family for over 130 years. She has a BA in the Theory of Music and a Master of Divinity degree. Besides writing, she plays several instruments, including the lute. Music and the land are her primary inspirations for her poetry. She has had two chapbooks published: Rivers and Relics (Desert Willow Press)

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Poetry

love quarantined

By Mallika Bhaumik

I pull up the blinds and look at the glassy darkness waiting outside, night is a pause, droplets of the day's fatigue gathered in its palm, its sighs and shadows coming back like cards from an anonymous lover, his unclaimed love. An insomniac tells the tale of the time that has flown through me, its slippery mossy trail, of a heart that remains folded in a Kashmiri wooden box, the smell of unread verses, the fluid love of Darbari Kanada slow dance on my skin. I close my eyes Night becomes a long lonely stretch of asphalt sound of footsteps fading, mingling with the dark an eerie silence envelopes a fear stretching itself to the fragile china cup that brings the day to my lips, the quotidian of virus laden news and hand sanitisers follow me a black kitten mews around the bin I go through another day of quarantine.

Mallika Bhaumik has a Master’s degree in English from the university of Calcutta.Her works have been widely published in reputed e mags like Cafe Dissensus, Shot Glass journal, Harbinger Asylum, Mad Swirl, In Parentheses, Madras Courier to name a few. Her first book of poems, Echoes (2017) by Authorspress, has won the Reuel International Award for the best debut poetry collection, 2018. Her second book of poetry is, How not to remember (2019) by Hawakal Publishers. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for poetry, 2019. Her poems have been included in the PG syllabus of BBKM university, Dhanbad (2020). She lives and writes from Kolkata

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Poetry

In Solitude’s Splendour

By Christopher Manners

In Solitude’s Splendour In solitude’s splendour, I was blessed by that graciously guiding breeze, fervently free with towering thoughts, as I philosophized amidst the trees, energized as I examined existence, contemplating through the destined day, curiously seeking that cosmic clarity, while the swift birds seemed to play. And suddenly I was jolted by joy, as a resplendent and racing river overflowing on its progressing path, as the forest did decisively deliver this serene sense of triumphant trust in the universe, its underlying frame, in the valiant vessel’s secure voyage, with old anxieties to finally tame. Immersed in that ecstatic elation, though the experience was only brief, it had this lasting influential impact, vanquishing all my grueling grief, as I was past my small worrying self, in this euphoric expanse and tied momentarily to the river’s source, while the Sun’s chariot I did ride.

Christopher Manners has had 2 poetry books published by Poetica Press – Sophia Perennis.  He has also had poems published by Harbinger Asylum. Born and residing near Toronto, Canada, he has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from York University.   Manners is the founder of poetryimmortal.com, a poetry blog and encyclopedia dedicated to the classics.