By Marc Nair
( First published in Vital Possessions, Ethos Books, 2018)
( First published in Postal Code, Red Wheelbarrow Books, 2013)
Marc Nair is a poet who works at the intersection of various art forms. He is currently pursuing projects that involve photography, movement and creative non-fiction. His work revolves around the ironies and idiosyncrasies of everyday life. He has published ten collections of poetry.
(A Dystopian spoof on Corona and Camus)
By Ra Sh
The world was calm now. And silent.
Only the birds chirped tweeted sang cawed.
Only the animals barked mewed mooed growled.
Only the river gurgled.
Only the sky thundered.
Only the fires crackled.
Two covid-19 teenage viruses walked around the city
assessing the damage. On Route vers l’ouest, they found
mansions with cars parked in front and little gardens.
Four dogs ran out of the house dragging a well dressed
woman and a naked man. It was the posh area of the city
and in house after house dogs feasted.
On Route Vers le nord, that led to the fields, unharvested paddy
lay in the fields. That was the operational area of the rodents,
snakes and the jackals. On Route vers l’est, that led to the offices,
the road lay thick with the police, applicants, clerks, officers and
mounts of paper. The vultures landed on them and tore away
the flesh. It was a mass of rotting flesh, blood, hair and
official communiqué.
On Route vers le sud, that led to the river, peacocks danced on
the road. From the two theatres that showed no films, super stars
grinned from posters. Weeds were slowly climbing up the
courtyards of the college and the schools. The grounds were
covered with bodies , furniture, lab instruments and aprons.
The teenage viruses reached the river and sat holding hands.
Being young, they were in love and being idealistic a tad bit
sad about the end of humans.
They then spied a human in a trench coat and trousers angling for
fish on the bank. He smoked a pipe and chuckled while he spoke
to the fishes. The adolescent viruses approached him and asked,
“Who are you sir, how come you are in one piece when
all humans are dead all over the world?”
The man chuckled again and retorted, “I am Camus
and I wrote a novel ‘The Plague’ long back. I wrote that the city
was happy, life went on, but the plague bacillus never dies or
disappears for good. It can lie dormant for years and years
in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves and perhaps the day
would come when it roused up its rats again and sent them
into a happy city. You are those rats now and you are the plague.”*
The Gen X viruses who could barely understand him, watched
as Camus gathered his things and made his way up stream with
fishing rods, bait and the day’s catch, whistling to himself.
*From the last lines of the Albert Camus novel, The Plague.
Ra Sh is a poet based out of Kerala
First published in Countercurrents.org
By Nalini Priyadarshni
Come to the Summer of my Arms
Come to the summer of my arms
the winter of our discontent has lasted too long
peppering our wisdom with salt and snow
settling into nook and crannies of our being
shadows of the moon on your forehead
has lengthened to reach our eyes
that have been growing dim
with each revolution of earth.
Come to the summer of my arms
we have harvested too long the silence
sown with the best of intentions
that has been whittling us beyond recognition
think of the moles and the birth marks that
need to be salvaged before we forget they exist
or keys that must be forged to unlock life
read books we discarded as unreadable
Come to the summer of my arms
for one of us cannot thaw without the other
winter of our discontent
inch by inch recovering the expanse of unexpressed
so that intimacy could be tilled into rows and rows
of languid kisses strewn with endless possibilities
perhaps then, someday we will
live our way into the passion we always sought
Bristle Stories
They arrive uninvited
like guests during summer siesta
and find strength in numbers
Stubborn as teens in combat boots
looking for trouble at street corner
my chin hair refuse to die
or remain dormant
They recoil every time I wax
Let me celebrate victory after a laser
Disappear for maybe a couple days,
but always return snapping gum vivaciously
to sun themselves unabashed
bold and burping on a cloudless terrace
On weekdays, they foil with vengeance
my all attempts at prettiness
refuse to apologise
throw tantrums, stomp and yell
spitting at the feet of men smiling at me
Feeling right at home, my bristles stretch themselves
claiming more space with each day
play cards, exchange stories and smoke cigarettes
Greedy
unapologetic
bordering on contemptuous
they reassure the woman in me
that they are paragons of
proud and vicious feminism
The woman inside me wonders
if greying calls for a truce
to make peace with my rebellious mongrels
Nalini Priyadarshni is a feminist poet, writer, translator, and educationist though not necessarily in that order who has authored Doppelganger in My House and co-authored Lines Across Oceans with late D. Russel Micnhimer. Her poetry, prose and photographs have appeared in numerous literary journals, podcasts and international anthologies including The Lie of the Land published by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. A nominee for the Best of The Net 2017 she lives in Punjab, India and moonlights as a linguistic consultant.
By Nishi Pulugurtha
Witness to times past
A garden tracing its time back
Centuries,
The river flowing by
As it had always done
They have been there together
For years now
Bound by geography, by place
Witness to all that has changed
Witness to all that is changing now
Huge trees, overarching branching
Creepers, shrubs, foliage
Dry leaves – red and brown
Rustling, now quiet
The wind blowing through the green ones
Leaning on, some bent
Broken too,
Twisted and curled
Cut down, decayed
Banks derelict too
The river’s course has changed
Mud flats with debris
Muddied waters.
Glistening in the winter sun
On the broken bench a lone figure
Asleep in the winter sun
Some rest amid all the noise and bother
Before life resumes all over.
Yellow Bird
That yellow bird with a black band around its neck
Perched itself each year
December/January
Its winter haunt, I guess
It sits for a while perched on the branch
And flies off
To land on another branch
The little leaves barely a camouflage
Solitary on its perch
Chirping for a while
To soar away
It is back soon
Almost each morning
The pleasant winter sun seems to be just right for it
It feels nice
It makes me feel nice
The colour, the motion
The flight.
That happy yellow bird
With the black band around its neck.
Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is Associate Professor in the department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College and has taught postgraduate courses at West Bengal State University, Rabindra Bharati University and the University of Calcutta. She is the Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata (IPPL). Her research areas are British Romantic literature, Postcolonial literature, Indian writing in English, literature of the diaspora, film and Shakespeare adaptation in film and has presented papers at national and international conferences in India and abroad and published in refereed international and national journals. She writes on travel, film, short stories, poetry and on Alzheimer’s Disease. Her work has been published in The Statesman, Kolkata, in Prosopisia, in the anthology Tranquil Muse and online – Kitaab, Café Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The World Literature Blog and Setu. She guest edited the June 2018 Issue of Café Dissensus on Travel. She has a monograph on Derozio (2010) and a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019). She is now working on her first volume of poems and is editing a collection of essays on travel.
By Sarita Jenamani
Winter in Vienna
Winter is usually foggy here
It blurs the reflection of your dream
in the mirror of your imagination
Night does not sojourn here
but when the snowy night
passes through the city
a violet glow envelopes everything
A certain passion erupts in me
and jumps back to its own caldera
Conversation is a sin here
Voice darkens and submerges in the sorcery of silence
Snow trickles into the stillness
Exile
All through life
an unending journey
accompanies you
And in the absence of
a destination
much of what’s inside gets lost
And the warp and weft of being
keeps on breaking
Beyond
Stillness spreads its wings
like the desert
beneath a dawning sky
The paraplegic pyramids glitter
in a mixture of azure and gold
There is still a lot to say
beyond civilization
Viennese Coffee-houses
No sooner does dusk fall
than the city’s cafés come to life
with the tinkling clang of indifference
Gradually the crowd of solitude gathers
around the tables
Sankt Marx Friedhof*
Silence is magnificent
particularly when it connects
the monumental music of lives
that sleep peacefully
with the absolute space
Flowers and graves shoot up
rupturing earth’s breast
They exist side by side in stillness
I wonder what they think
of volatile souls that travel to the sky
with the chanting
of mysterious mantras
or of those who wait
for an undefined time to resurrect
Beyond cemetery’s wall
a swarm of sound passes through
slicing the essence of existence
in our trivial time
*Mozart was buried in St. Marx Communal Cemetery, Vienna.
(These poems are excerpted from her latest collection, Till the Next Wave Comes)
Sarita Jenamani is a poet of Indian origin based in Austria, a literary translator, anthologist, and editor of a bilingual magazine for migrant literature – Words & Worlds – a human rights activist, a feminist and general secretary of PEN International’s Austrian chapter. She has three collections of poetry. She writes in English, Odia and translates to and from German. Sarita translated Rose Ausländer, a leading Austrian poet, and an anthology of contemporary Austrian Poetry from German into Hindi and Odia. She has received many literary fellowships in Germany and in Austria including those of the prestigious organizations of ‘Heinrich Böll Foundation’ and ‘Künstlerdorf Schöppingen’. She studied Economics and Management Studies in India and Austria where she works as a marketing manager.
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