Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

         Spot Assessment     

By John Zedolik

These skeleton keys hail from Portugal,
states the hand-drawn phrase on gray
 
cardboard, which provenance unlocks
my thinking as to what is so special
 
about these thin fingers of old iron and brass
that to my lay-eyes do not appear any different
 
from the domestic variety that might sell
for far less, especially as used item and even
 
worse lacking the complementary locks,
necessary for utility securing some equally lost
 
door or chest, but in which some expert
in Iberian antiques might find money
 
and historical value. I cannot rid
 
      thus, my doubt of the sign’s worth
 
and the wares, better left to the keener sight
and mind that can unlock the mystery
 
safe, pendant and plain before a blind view.

John Zedolik has published hundreds of poems in many journals around the world. Earlier this year, he published Mother Mourning (Wipf & Stock), his third collection, which is available on Amazon.

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Categories
Poetry

One Jujube

Poetry and translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi


Beside the front gate,
a single jujube,

Grown ripe and red throughout the summer,
Even the cat passes it by without a second glance,
And the magpie, coming down from the tree in haste
To devour the food left by the cat
Passes by the jujube without looking at it all.

The wind, carrying fallen leaves, gracefully changes its course,
But for the past three days, this lone jujube has remained in solitude.

That jujube, high up on the jujube tree,
Among the branches and amidst the leaves,
Alongside rain, wind, starlight, and the song of crickets,
Has thrived through the summer, becoming crimson,

Concealing a single sturdy seed within.
Beside the road where fallen leaves roll,
At the crossroads where seasons pass by,
Still, like a small hut, a long journey ahead,
One jujube is dreaming silently beside the front gate.

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

A Homage to Yuan Zhen’s Grief of Separation

Poetry and translation by Rex Tan

A Homage to Yuan Zhen’s Grief of Separation*

Shall I compare an ocean's vastness to 
the width of the greatest river? The 
evening sky pales to the azure of the summit. 

The time I wandered through a familiar flower field --
I can’t be bothered to look back, partly due 
to Fate’s weaving hands, partly due to you. 

Smoking under the 
bleak wintery overcast
memories of your 
bright summery laugh dissipates 
into a fleeting mist.

Forlorn, I’m a shadow by the hills 
of a spire-filled dream.
And with a gentle flick, I cast 
the hanging memories of your sojourn 
into the wind. 

*The first two paras are a liberal translation of Yuan Zhen's "Grief of Separation". 
Yuan Zhen was a Tang dynasty poet, lived from 779 to 831 in Luoyang, China

Rex Tan is a journalist by trade and a poet at heart. As a Malaysian, he is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Malay, yet he calls none his first language.

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Categories
Poetry

Purple Deadnettle, at the Foot of a Failing Rockface 

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Purple Deadnettle, at the Foot of a Failing Rockface 
 
I turn that corner, towards the galloping glue factory homestretch,  
stumble upon this wild patch of purple deadnettle,  
at the foot of a failing rockface, run calloused sweat fingers 
down the side of fresh barber craft, hair off the neck like the oily  
gallivanting gallows given a stay in the bottom of the slimy  
eleventh and the UV warnings are out in numbers  
like idiot storm troopers so that agoraphobia  
is the new 30 – 
the bugs don't bite any more than the relentless taxman  
and everything leaves its mark if we are honest, 
which of course we are not, so that the lie is fed and grows 
large as some less than panicked Godzilla-stomped city  
taken right out of the movies and given some sorry phonebook  
name that anyone could call by mistake, so that fear is the crutch  
of the dreaming bed head Man brought to wake.

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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Categories
Poetry

Letter

By Pramod Rastogi

Courtesy: Creative Commons
LETTER

The postman has passed by my house.
The news is out, and joy is in the air.
The letter is from my beloved mother 
Who lives on the other side of the globe.

People, curious, wait outside my house,
Waiting for me to unveil the letter’s content.
Winged with cheer, I run around the house,
Ecstatic to have a letter from my mother.

Age seems to have overtaken my mother,
She cannot travel nimbly so far by a flight.
Rain is unsubdued and the wind crackles, 
Yet people wait to know how she is.

Loving bonds are what connect us at heart.
Trees have lost most of their golden leaves.
Autumnal wind makes me think of heaven.
Words afloat tell me she lives no more.

Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the EPFL, Switzerland. He is a poet, academician, researcher, author of nine scientific books, and a former Editor-in-chief (1999-2019) of the international scientific journal “Optics and Lasers in Engineering”. He has published over ninety poems in international literary journals.

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Categories
Poetry

As the City Sleeps

By Tohm Bakelas

as the city sleeps

Four months from today
I’ll be 34, my hands have 
been trembling for some 
time. Sleep hasn’t been too 
good these days, exhaustion 
and boredom overwhelm me. 
I fiddle with death thoughts 
while microwaving leftover 
food and wonder why I am 
the way that I am. Long gone 
are the days where uncertainty 
meant absolute freedom. These, 
days, every day is predetermined 
by responsibilities to myself, my
job, and my children. Going 
through life afraid of shadows 
once had its appeal, but now, 
as the city sleeps, I dwell in 
shadows, I am a shadow.

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. He is the author of twenty-five chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023).  

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Gopal Lahiri

Courtesy: Creative Commons
CELEBRATION

This morning there is a celebration in the prettiest world.
A tiny bird starts singing and then swings over the lake.

Imagine lifting the water jug and finding it empty
in the monsoon; it’s only dry winds blowing all seasons.

Fairy lights dance on the yellow grass, the avian world
knows there is less rain, roots die deep within.

Somewhere at the corner of the sky, grey clouds build up
and now other birds join singing in the curtains of leaves.

How important it is to stay together, looking at everything,
then fly away drawing a great circle over and above!

They whistle and show how happy they are in unison,
their small ecstatic faces shine under the moist sky.

The trees, the oak leaves on the water’s edge and
those yellow reeds clap as the birds’ rest on the pine top.

RESISTANCE

You can’t tell a nest from a tangle of jasmines,
can’t tell a snake shedding its skin.

At times rocks meet, strike, roll together 
to the first obstacle or the end of the slope.

You can’t tell hands from ivy choking in a fence.
beyond the split windows of the room,

can’t recognise a man who lives in my very own clothes,
my mirror notes only the geranium and growing pains.

You take steps to the place where you begin to vanish
until you go back and wait under the shadow,

like an inheritance, like land surfacing
a morning halved by grey and white clouds.

Some space to breathe, but just enough --
I must find myself in the wind’s swelling lung.

WONDROUS THING 

Perhaps they are mother and daughter
still together from last year’s final clutch.
I keep waiting for one of them to start a nest
out in the marshy woods, the great blue
robin rookery is in full swing --
building four nests in the still leafless sycamore
each in full view of the bold eagles.

The forest is cooler and shadier than my yard.
Spring ephemerals are just emerging --
little strands of stalkless flowers
and pepper root toothwort that I look for.
Happy still to see that spring
seems a bit slower to arrive at the woods.
In their eyes, it remains a wondrous thing.

Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 29 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose in Bengali and English are published across various anthologies globally. His poems has been translated into 16 languages.

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Categories
Poetry

Stasis

By Reeti Jamil

STASIS

Tell me if the road stops,

Where roads meet

And then stop again.

Yet, one never advances

While suspended in mid-air,

Unable to come down or fly higher.

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Is one then as powerful as gulls and eagles?

Or an impractical fool eager to reveal skills?

Or then, neither but both and conceited —

Thinking that all errors can be acquitted?

Are we so myopic, disorderly and defeated?

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Tell me if the road stops,

If I stop,

Or my heart stops.

Despite legions of errors,

I cannot call myself human.

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Reeti Jamil is an avid reader and lover of books, arts and humanity. She writes with the hope of inspiring people to move towards a world larger than themselves.

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Categories
Poetry

Cast Away the Gun: Balochi Poetry by Mubarak Qazi

Translated by Fazal Baloch


Mubarak Qazi (24 December 1955 – 16 September 2023). Photo courtesy: Kamanchar Baloch
Fellow traveler! “Moons and seasons” have changed.
The eyes and the gaze are now trailed to elsewhere. 
You too forget the roar of muskets and bullets, 
Of our sorrow and happiness, the reasons have changed. 
Speak of the sun,
Of the moon.
Speak of light, 
Of life.
Cast away the gun! 
  
Fiddle pain, pluck soulful strings. 
Stop rhyming songs, extolling the curse of war. 
Don’t raise the fire of envy and hatred anymore. 
I long for love, its love I’m so desperate for. 
Speak of wine,
Of wineglass.
Speak of pain,
Of colors. 
Cast away the gun! 
  
Remind me of soft-treading maidens, 
And of sweet and dainty betel nuts.
Nobody’s pain is ever healed by fire and steel. 
Remind me of those fair and pretty damsels.
Speak of flowers,
Of lips. 
Speak of love, 
Of intimate moments. 
Cast away the gun!

Mubarak Qazi (1955-2023), is one of the most prolific and popular of modern Balochi poets. He is credited with making poetry a vocation for the masses in a lucid vocabulary. In other words, Qazi is lile the conscience of the people — one who addresses them in a language they can easily comprehend and decipher. Instead of maintaining a subtle or vague approach, he conveyed his sentiments in simple and unembellished language. He has published ten anthologies of poetry. The translated poem is taken from the second edition of his first anthology published by Drad Publication Gwadar in 2007.

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.

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Categories
Poetry

A Hunger for Stories

Poem by Quazi Johirul Islam, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam

Quazi Johirul Islam 
As a boy I heard the same story from my father again and again:
My grandfather hadn’t left behind for his son any kind of plot
Where seeds could be planted that would yield a garden full of yummy stories.
In the same vein, a hunger for stories engrossed me in my childhood and teens. 

I know that all ye still to be born children
Will cry glumly like I once had, hungry for stories.
That is why I’d braved cresting, roaring waves,
Cooked soups of stories on immigrant cookers on wintry nights;
Diving to the bottom of the sea, I’d seen how marine species
Dance to the rhythm of hidden waves,
And write on whale bodies of the sea!
From empty spaces, I captured wild African stories of desert bisons;
Standing in the chilling North Pole blizzards, 
I was able to divine stories of stormy nights;
From Gibraltar, I fetched the bright light of new stories
Which I then strewed on Casablanca’s ancient eyes!

Out of my sweat and blood, I create endless stories for coming generations
For I know that even though all other causes of hunger may die, 
What will only survive in the dark is the hunger for more and more stories. 

From wintry prairies to grey Savannahs,
And in all pathways of the world,
I’ve been sowing seeds of new stories every day.
Climbing down from the lap of juicy fruit-filled gardens,
Seated on the soft mat that is earth,
They keep developing the craving for new stories endlessly.
Endlessly, the hunger for untold stories
Vibrate all sleepy pathways of the world!

Quazi Johirul Islam has been writing for over 3 decades. He has published more than 90 books, 39 of them are collections of poetry. His travelogues are very popular. He has been with United Nations, has traveled all over the world, worked in conflict zones, his bag is full of colourful experiences. In 2023, Quazi was awarded Peace Run Torch Bearer Award by Sri Chinmoy Centre, New York. He has also received many awards and honors in Bangladesh, India and abroad.

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda 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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