Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

A Tale of Hair Knots

By Swetarani Tripathy

A TALE OF HAIR KNOTS

She barely ties her hair or pulls it together into a knot or a bun.
It prefers the taste of liberty, sometimes kissing the breeze until it dries. 
As whimsical as it can be, 
or sometimes it's ideally set on a shoulder; cascading.

It mirrors the river that flows at will; one uncontrollably ferocious river,
evoking constructed sensuality and stigma alike. 
Like the same river whose fervour is captured by civilisation in dams, 
a civilisation whose women are confined to four walls.
So, it refuses to be kept, on their face in a rebellious act.

She fears the tangled ones though, 
stubborn knots like those inevitable questions put forth to women who set to fly.
But the quest to undo them is perhaps life; 
life that women live in their quest to be seen.
Should the mess be kept in an updo?
Because it's an absolute fear if someday she finds someone untangling those tousled ties, 
while wrapping her in all sorts of bindings.

Like that woman, forever tending the furnace that keeps and sustains her home,
sweat of whose work would deny the hair to touch the nape.
So in a perpetual bun, her hair remains, the way she is stuck to flawed familial bargains. 
Whether tied or untied, kept or unkept, 
for her, it's a constant elopement to stay unattached from the old skeleton of woman-being,
and if free, it always escapes the arms of new bindings.

Swetarani Tripathy is a feminist scholar based in India. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi.

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Categories
Poetry

On Turning Twenty…

By Nusrat Jahan Esa


As I count the years,
something changes and I do notice that.
If I tell you about --
One to five,
I named my little doll ‘tuktuki’.
Six to ten,
red lipstick was my escape,
and I played with my friends and neighbours.
Eleven to fifteen,
Everything seemed beautiful.
butterflies, flowers, poetry, cats, and the ocean.
Sixteen to twenty,
I am drawn to memories now.
It’s habit to collect pieces of everything,
and paste them in my scrapbook.

It is a process of telling me that I am now older,
but my heart says something else.
Why do I still like butterflies?
and why does red make my heart beat faster?

I often write letters to myself.
It is indeed an art --
there are flowers stamped, poetry in cursive.
They cherish a piece of my childhood.
Reading my own letters,
feels like,
touching a different soul,
re-discovering the inner child.
I’m telling you --

Being twenty is also being a child at heart.

Nusrat Jahan Esa is a BA English Literature student at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). Writing Poetry is her way of expressing herself and embracing her inner child.

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Categories
Poetry

A Visit to the Sky

By Ayesha Binte Islam

Yesterday I visited the sky,
and found stars suspended in space.
All of them emitted sparkles 
like diamonds. 
Some sparkles were so intense 
that I couldn't keep looking at them. 
Yet, all of them were immaculate.
After all, those were not mine. 
I am not the owner of those–
the starry sky or its stars. 
I turned to my side and recalled–
There are many potholes in the sky.
How would I get back home?


I was made to travel back home. 
Then I looked at the sky again 
through the transparent window-pane,
and saw countless traversable paths.

Ayesha Binte Islam writes as a hobby, and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering.

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Categories
Poetry

An Age-Old Struggle

Poetry and translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi

Abelard & Heloise, a French painting between 1425-1450
Love affairs are usually secret,
But some must be kept especially hidden.
In the case of Abelard and Heloise*, it had to be secret,
Though no matter how flawless a love affair may be, it is best hidden.
Because even then, it was not declared that God is dead.
Daytime words were heard by birds, and night-time words by rats.
Lotte and Werther*, 
Caused turmoil before the expiration date, 
Romeo and Juliet*,
Were talked of by people.
A love that has passed its expiration date should blend into the myriad of green like a flowering tree,
But being left desolate like the back of a sandcastle by the sea
Or an empty reed warbler nest in a field
Is a lonely affair.
Though a story ascends high into the peaks of immortality
And a spectacular scene tempered by fiery flames may remain,
In the case of Abelard and Heloise, who heated the Middle Ages,
It was an age-old battle between God and mortals.



*The names of a high-ranking cleric and a young nun in medieval France.
*Lotte and Werther from Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s 1774 novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther
*Romoeo & Juliet (1597, play by William Shakespeare)

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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Categories
Poetry

Fleeting Images

By Wayne Russell

FLEETING IMAGES 

Fleeting images jostling for
a permanent place in the
hallowed halls of my mind,
can't help drowning in my
nostalgia.

I hold her within the sweaty
palm of my hand, the soul of
this candle trembling in the
gentle springtime breeze.

The river continues its journey
effortlessly, lost in the haze of
millennia gone; I can see her in
dark shadows, her ghost drifting

in the abstract of life death and
everything else in-between.

Wayne Russell is a creative jack of all trades, master of none. Poet, rhythm guitar player, singer, artist, photographer, and author of the poetry books “Where Angels Fear” via Guerilla Genius Press, and the newly released “Splinter of the Moon” via Silver Bow Publishing, they are both available for purchase on Amazon.

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Categories
Poetry

Beneath the Baobab Tree

By R. L. Peterson

Beneath a Baobab tree a black and white cat, body tense,

Black tail straight as a shotgun, legs spring loaded,

Delicate left paw lifted

Claws flashing in the morning sun,

A bushy tailed red squirrel her target,

Ancient instincts at play.

The red squirrel’s companion hidden until now behind the Baobab tree,

Hears the silent warning, leaps over the black and white cat,

His bushy tail waving, his chatter a laugh or a taunt,

A black and white cat and bushy-tailed red squirrels

Playing life and death games

Beneath a Baobab Tree in Long Beach, California.

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R. L. ‘Pete’ Peterson’s award-winning fiction has graced many publications over the years. His After Midnight – A Short Story Collection, (Pallamary Publishing), debuted in 2019. His novel, Leave the Night to God (Pact Press), is available wherever books are sold. Hisshort story workshops are popular for their practical content andhumorous delivery. As a Marine, Pete served at American Embassies inthree foreign countries. Reach him at petersonwriter9391@gmail.com.

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Categories
Poetry

In Exile

By Rinku Dutta 

“In exile, you are an uprooted tree. Naked.
 
Leafless.
Bloomless. 
Barren.”
 
She drops words, like tears,
Into the urn of our silence.
 
“Look!” she thrusts forward a tattooed wrist,
“In exile, you are a ghost tree: 
No cicadas mating on your bark. No birds nesting,
No birdlings vying to fly. No squirrels scurrying.
 
No soil.
 
Hugging your roots, no solacing 
Moisture.” 
 
“In exile, you are a fish flung from water,”
She rolls up her sleeve and reveals 
A tattoo of a fish, its skeleton.
 
“In exile, you have been picked to the bone
 By Grief -- 
                 Grief has gouged out your pink flesh.
You have no skin. 
                                 You are left with spare spine
And bones;
                Bones, hanging from your backbone.”
 
Turning, she pulls up her shirt: “But see!
Here’s my real secret.”
 
Nestling in the curve of her back,
Another tattooed fish;
A whole fish this one, shimmering silver.
“See! She’s alive! She’s swimming up the river.” 
Says Hanan (whose name means the warm-hearted one)
 “Like salmon, 
She’s battling upstream.
She’ll return one day to her spawning ground.
Trust me. She will. 
Never doubt that. Ever.”

Rinku Dutta is an educator writing about her experiences. Exploring the Roots of Harmony: India and Pakistan Conflict Transformation is a monograph of a selection of her essays. Her poems have been published in RIC Journal.  

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Categories
Poetry

Poems for Dylan Thomas

By Michael Burch

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
DOWNDRAFT 
 
for Dylan Thomas
 
We feel rather than understand what he meant
as he reveals a shattered firmament
which before him never existed.
 
Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted
out of too many words,
but only flocks of white birds
 
wheeling and flying.
 
Here, as the sun spins, reeling and dying,
the voice of a last gull
or perhaps some spirit no longer whole,
 
echoes its lonely madrigal
and we feel its strange pull
on the astonished soul.
 
O My Prodigal!
 
The vents of the sky, ripped asunder,
echo this wild, primal thunder—
now dying into undulations of vanishing wings . . .
 
and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings.
 
ELEMENTAL 
 
for and after Dylan Thomas
 
The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.
 
The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.
 
Belatedly, he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

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Categories
Poetry

Dylan Thomas in Ardmillan Terrace?

Poetry by Stuart McFarlane

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953);Portrait by Augustus Edwin John (1878–1961) from Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales
ENCOUNTER

I met the ghost of Dylan Thomas
late at night in Ardmillan Terrace.
His face, as white as alabaster,
he shouted out, 'Hey, you're plastered'!
Well, true, I'd imbibed some alcohol,
but did not take to his tone at all.
I conveyed my protests as best I could
but he just quoted from Under Milk Wood*.
I expressed my liking for his verse.
'The best', he said 'is by far the worst'.
I tried to guess this statement's meaning
yet could derive no glint or gleaning,
nor corpuscle of comprehension,
so I thought I could just as well mention
why he was out late on the street tonight,
in view of his tenuous links to life.
'To find a drink, just like always,
like I used to spend the old days'.
'I've the key to life, you can have the key,
if you can point me to a hostelry'.
'None', did I retort, 'twixt Earth and Heaven,
for they don't serve spirits beyond eleven'.


*Radio drama by Dylan Thomas published in 1954 and read first on stage on May 14th, 1953.

Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.                                                                                                                    

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Categories
Poetry

‘Brand Loyalty…’ by Ryan Quinn Flangan

‘Brand loyalty, loyalty to the brand is paramount’

It starts early, like learning to walk or sucking that soother into milked oblivion.
As soon as the senses have been developed and primed:
‘brand loyalty, loyalty to the brand is paramount,’ 
say it with me as though we are trapped in an Orwellian elevator
counting the floors we are told are rushing by, but never witness.
And what stays with us is always the invasive species,
latching on, building appetites and limits, destroying potential.
Replacing creator with consumer, what a slippery little eel of a trick!
Slogans instead of sentiments truly felt, products and their placement. 
Armies of jingle writers and focus groups that dwarf any once 
great Napoleonic offering. Revenue streams no longer those idyllic 
little fishing holes your grandfather took you to on weekends, in secret.
When the sun across your neck and arms and legs felt like 
a strengthened reprieve. And what bounced off the water was some 
marvellous simple truth revealed, if only for a moment and to you, 
who by chance, was born again.

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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