Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

A Disappearing Defeat

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

A Street in Winter by Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924). From Public Domain 
A DISAPPEARING DEFEAT 

I have been that very stooped man
in disappearing defeat, 
an indiscernible plaque by the darkened doorway
in Jakub Schikaneder’s A Street in Winter,
you can feel the bone-cold of that marvellous Czech oil,
that lone arching streetlamp passed with vague notice,
lights in the upstairs windows, you wish you could be those 
people still inside with a familiar warmth, the twisting naked branches
and a stilted water tower in the near distance.  Once you turn the corner
and stumble out of view.  I know that man, I have made that walk 
a million times.  A fresh patch of snow crunching underfoot
with each bulky routed step.

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 Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Poetry

Speaking in Palindromes

By Dustin P Brown

The wind is an old friend.
We meet on Wednesday afternoons
to catch up over a coffee.

Some days she’s late, held up
by work in the Gulf Coast
or Ireland, somewhere more interesting
than the corn-plained fields of southern Michigan.

I never mind 
because her stories about
broken quartz shattered
into a thousand stars
against limestone cliffs
remind me that even
destruction can be beautiful.

This week, I tell her
over the hushed babble of
other café-goers
about my cat’s death.
She promises to scatter its ashes
over ancient pine forests in the
upper peninsula. She pays

for my coffee. She offers two
kisses on each cheek
and a sincere ciao before
returning to the world. It’d be nice

to be able to do the same.


Dustin P Brown is a US-born, Spain-based author of poetry, prose, and the occasional drama. His work has appeared in other journals like Lit Shark and Bacopa Literary Review. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Categories
Poetry

Nature Poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

BAKED MOUNTAINS

Mountains are baked
into the earth,
caked with mud, green
grass, rocks and dirt.

Somewhere between
trees and brushes, 
howling wolves belt 
out nature’s blues.

Blades of grass, smooth,
and rough pebbles,
lead to the edge 
of the mountain’s

peak. In the fog,
in the pines, a
lone wolf keeps to
itself as birds 

sing all day long,
far from the towns,
cities, in the
baked mountainside.


FINEST PAINTBRUSH 

Unfold your finest paintbrush
to night’s blackboard,
with gentle strokes fill the darkness 
with starlit skies. In the morning
clean your paintbrush,
dip it in orange, red, and yellow
colors to paint the blue skies
for the amusement of lovers
and friends, even strangers.

Do not languish in apathy.
Bring that paintbrush around
and cover every square inch 
of the canvas that surrounds us.
Unleash your Leonardo, your
Michaelangelo, and your Vincent.
Splash the skies like Jackson,
spread out like Diego and Frida.
Make the roses blush and open.


PULL THE BLINDS 

Pull the blinds,
outside our illusions
live as birds,
their monotonous song

fill the skies.
I love them.
They are fragile.
With their wings they are safe.

I pull the blinds.
It is like taking masks off.
For days I close the blinds.
For days I leave them open.
For all I know, I just pretend

there are no blinds.
I do not care
about what happens 
outside in the light or darkness.

I pull the blinds
for the last time.

Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry has been featured in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Mad Swirl, Rusty Truck, and Unlikely Stories. 

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Categories
Poetry

Brown Water Swirls by Ron Picket

From Public Domain 
AND THE RAIN CONTINUES TO FALL

The brown water swirls,
Waves grow and break.
Huge trees are tossed like toothpicks.
Water flows over the weir.
And the rain continues to fall.
The brown water, heavy with sand,
Scours the riverbanks.
The water rises and broils.
Nothing is safe.
And the rain continues to fall.
They say it’s a hundred-year storm,
They say it’s a thousand-year storm.
They say it’s the changing climate.
They say the rain will stop.
And the rain continues to fall.
The brown water has secrets, terrible secrets.
Friends need to know,
Sisters need to grieve,
Parents struggle with why? Why?
And the rain continues to fall.
And the rain continues to fall.
From Public Domain

Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. His 90-plus articles have appeared in numerous publications. He enjoys writing fiction and has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away with It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, EMPATHS, and Sixty Odd Short Stories.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Categories
Poetry

Sunflower

Poetry and translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi

From Public Domain 
In those far-off, flower-like days,
before a flickering oil lamp,
I wrote, then erased, then wrote again—
Running only toward you, always toward you,
like the tender heart of first love,
I bloom at last into a single, radiant flower.
This longing, both aching and earnest,
must be a precious gift for me by the Creator.
Ah, dear companion,
will this yearning, burning beneath the scorching sky,
one day fade— as the breeze drifts softly through the autumn fields,
leaving me standing alone in the empty plain,
shivering and weeping in the cold wind?
Today, under the blazing heat of the noonday sun,
my life burns hot with passion.
Even I can no longer contain my heart,
beneath the shining sun,
as all living things sway in the hymn of life,
I, too, offer my heart
like a great lantern of petals turned solely toward you.
In this long, hot summer field,
all day long, I am consumed by this fiery devotion.

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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

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Categories
Poetry

The Scarecrow by Anwar Sahib Khan

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch

Anwar Sahib Khan

Anwar Sahib Khan (1944–2018) was a notable poet, drama artist and film actor. His poetry explores a wide range of themes, from love and romance to social and political issues. He published two anthologies, Chaotaar (A Riot of Colours) and Sareechk (The Scarecrow). The translated poem is taken from his second anthology, Sareechk.

Like a scarecrow,
I stand—
Rooted in fields of green,
Until time strips away
The truth of my being:
A breath of nothingness.

I am the emblem of eternal stillness,
My outside,
My inside —
Two different tales. 

When the truth dawns,
The beasts — once fled
From the fear I’d fashioned —
Will return.
My walls will scatter
Like tufts of cotton
Cast to the wind.

Birds will nest in me,
Jubilant creatures will roam
Unafraid,
Dancing in my shadow.

And the tale of my stillness
Will drift through the air —
I’m a lifeless scarecrow standing here.

Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights to Anwar Sahib Khan’s works. 

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Categories
Poetry

Permutations by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
Sitting up, unconjured by thoughtless easel,
a turpentine painter runs through all the permutations 
of light and license – the early sunrise crawling his curtains 
with sleepless termites; this is how the unrendered morning
will appear to proxied bothered mind, precursor to eager 
foot traffic by hours.

It is said to be quite unhealthy to stew in the quicksand 
of one's own thoughts, to wander as doddering widower
might, muttering gibberish before a return to prolonged silence:
Washington Square had its own hanging tree,
an old execution ground long before it became the Village.

And one may feel ghosts upon shivered nape, but never see them.
Never know them like the neighbourhood bodega*, that smell
of simple courage.  The binding of someone not named Isaac.


*Small neighbourhood shop

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 Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
In Memoriam Poetry

Poetry by Fakrul Alam

From Public Domain 
In Memory of Iffat Sharmin

Depressingly, you kept disappearing by degrees.
First, the emerging woman in you had to be veiled.
Next, the shy charm you exuded had to be obscured.
And then it seemed you decided life itself should cease!
Now, more than ever, I see you smiling ever so softly
Now, keenly, I think of your bright but quiet presence.
Could it be that you had finally opted for absence?
Did you decide to extinguish your light fully, voluntarily?
Why else would you fall to a rare, autoimmune disease?
Surely you had felt it was time for you to cease!
All of us can only rue that so brilliant a mind had so short a lease
But tired of remorseless life you had decided in the end to cease!

(Written for the condolence meeting for Iffat held at EWU on 20 July, 2013)

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Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibanananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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Categories
Poetry

The Sparrow

By Ashok Suri

From Public Domain 
There it is!
Flitting from nook to nook,
In fear of the thundering clouds.

For a while, 
There is silence all around.

I hear no sound
Except rain
Lashing the ground.

Then, I hear her jubilant notes again.
I understand the clouds have relented
And there is no rain.

I look out, and lo!
I behold the chirpy creature,
Flapping its wings in the little pool of water,
Without any worry or bother.
From Public Domain

Ashok Suri is a retiree and is settled with his family in Mumbai. He tries to convey with simple words what he wants to say.

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Categories
Poetry

Poems by Angshuman Kar

Angshuman Kar has translated some of his shorter Bengali poems to English

Angshuman Kar
RULE
 
A river wants
pebbles on its bosom.
Only then the water will get a jolt,
the current will be visible.
 
The wind wants
a few trees to stand against it.
Only then it will whiz,
the speed will become visible.
 
A word also wants a few antonyms
in opposition.
Only then can it sparkle like a jewel!
 
Nature wants opposition
 
A boss slavery…
 

GROUP PHOTO 

Father is gone. Uncle is gone.
Grandma is gone. Tikla is gone.
I am still here. Tukai is here.
Looking at a forty-year-old group photo,
it becomes clear that people take pictures together
only to realise, someday,
that in a cruel world made of black stone,
they are alone.
 
UMBRELLA 

A broken rib.
The plastic handle is partly cracked.
It holds back the drizzle,
but when the rain pours hard,
it gives up.
From head to toe, I get drenched.
 
And so, the monsoon comes, the monsoon goes.
 
Looking at the umbrella, sometimes
it seems,
it is my father from the distant past.
 
Always hesitant.
 
 
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE 

One can immediately identify the other
the moment the two meet.
 
One understands the other.
Understands the pain, the suffering, their causes–
everything.
 
The two drink coffee together.
Gossip. Quarrel.
Together they watch the young couples
pass by.
 
Boarding the same bus, then,
they go back home together.
 
One solitary man, still,
can never become the friend of
another.
 
 
LOVE

The wind is blowing gently
and the leaves of a tree
are shivering.
It seems
a deaf and dumb boy
has fallen in love
with a girl, deaf and dumb.
 
 
 THE WIND

 Those who think you are a friend
 are fools.
 You just touch and pass–
A foreigner in every land.

Angshuman Kar, a Bengali poet and novelist, is Professor of English at University of Burdwan, West Bengal. He was also the Secretary of Sahitya Akademi, Eastern Region. Kar is the recipient of several prestigious awards including Paschim Banga Bangla Akademi Puraskar, Krittibas Award, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Puroskar and Shakti Chattopadhyay Samman. He has read his poems in Scotland, Germany, America and Bangladesh. Wound Is the Shelter is a collection of his poems translated to English. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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