THE DEPARTURE
At midnight, by the windowpane,
He sat for the last time.
That night in my lap, he lay as if a toddler,
So motionless that I felt he was dead.
Supposed to run he was but he paused.
With the barrel pointed to the foe,
He asked,
"What would you seek from the Bohr model?"
Nothing much but a race of feats.
The barking dogs with devils' eyes
brought to us gestures of fear.
Three and me, together we stood to fight,
To fight for the cause you never understood.
You never knew the urge and zeal
That binds and bonds within a second.
No breaks and cracks can bring a halt.
He then woke up after a dream
And said, " No need to fear for the Lord is there."
The chains of hell are there in the neck,
"I see them yelling amid the devastating fire."
Hurrah! we had won the midnight game,
as the dawn had broken with a drizzling air
"What is it to the mountain if a bird rests?" said he for the last time.
Subzar Ahmad is a student in Kashmir.
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LAST PEACE
You are the glimmer that resides in me.
I am spellbound by your aura.
I take my every breath at your bedside,
Waiting for your inner warmth
To light the breath of life in you.
And I have sat back listening
To your dreamy whispering voice
Flow like a stream of serenity,
Sharing with me your zest for life,
Yet ready to draw curtains over it.
You look at me with imploring eyes
As if seeking my permission
To leave me to explore the other side.
These calls have slowly become louder.
The oxygen is often in short supply.
The flame flickers while you lie there.
The last few months have passed like this.
They have taken a heavy toll on me,
As we look at each other helplessly,
Embracing the love that flowed
Between our tear-filled eyes,
We wait for the dreaded separation.
The one that beckons us in its arms
Is the one that torments me no end.
One day, you chose silence over agony...
I know that our love will linger long
In hope of our next meeting.
You have left me on your journey to heal.
And with me fixated on you, I will sleep deep
To awaken in your arms, never to leave again.
Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is the 2014 recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award. He is currently a guest Professor at the IIT Gandhinagar, India.
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Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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Woman with Lilac by Renoir (1841-1919). Courtesy: Creative commons
She Gathered Lilacs
(for Beth)
She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.
She kept her secrets
in a silver locket;
her companions were starlight and mystery.
She danced all night
to the beat of her heart;
with her tears she imbued the sea.
She hid her despair
in a crystal jar,
and never revealed it to me.
She kept her distance
as though it were armour;
gauntlet thorns guard her heart like the rose.
Love!—awaken, awaken
to see what you’ve taken
is still less than the due my heart owes!
Goddess
(for Kevin N. Roberts)
“What will you conceive in me?”—
I asked her. But she
only smiled.
“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled . . .
naked, and gladly.”
“What will become of me?”—
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.
Centuries later, I understand:
she whispered —“I Am.”
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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An Incomplete History of the Colours That Never Became Red(from Western Motel, Edward Hopper)
Mrs. Hopper waits for me in the Burgundy Room of the Western Motel. She will greet me while sitting on the corner at the foot of the bed, her satchel filled with Rorschach test manuals unpacked beside the front door. Her sleeveless maroon dress remains the same as the one she has worn for our past encounters in America’s automats and hotel lobbies. We have found fleeting havens in a bar beneath a Phillies cigar sign, in a tall house by a railroad track and, once, in a room by the sea. Tears of sweat bead her shoulders and upper arms. She eschews makeup but has dyed her hair from the choices found on the fool’s gold spectrum. As is our custom, we will pull two chairs to the picture window to witness the sunset. I will speculate on the message hidden among the dusty hieroglyphics that zigzag across the passenger door of the green sedan parked outside our room. An Oldsmobile, its presence as constant as a chaperone. As darkness settles in the desert, she will challenge me to reclaim my spirit creature from the ink blots she spreads across her mattress until I am forced to choose between a coyote and a bear. Mrs. Hopper knows the history of the colours that never became red. Magenta. Plum. Purple. Once she kept an atlas of cities named for the shades that are not quite red in her traveling bags. Cherryville and Pink. Before the Oldsmobile’s time. Before the ink blot beasts. She prefers that I call her Jo, but in my unguarded moments, I revert to Mrs. Hopper. Or Josephine. She no longer has any interest in knowing what I am called.
Lois and Rose (Years after You Fled)
Years after you fled from my Zittenstein monster into the dead-end alley behind Schlichte’s grocery store, I dream of Rose’s rag doll. I’m a hermit in the depths of a pandemic. A disheveled man with a henchman’s beard who hoards kokopeli face masks. As a kid, I played the horrible brother and the bed-wetter son who murdered his mother. What frightened you into that mad dash into a cul de sac? My sour reputation? My horny breath? I skipped out long before our hometown deputy shot his toe off during a mandatory gun-safety convocation at the middle school where your children went after you set aside dolls. But I bought two packs of baseball cards that afternoon. And unwrapped Jimmy Wynn and Leon Wagner. The Toy Cannon and someone’s guardian angel. I lost my baseball cards when my family moved to 7th Street from the country. I had a crush on one of you. That burr-cut freak in a madras shirt who mumbled Rolling Stones lyrics while boys named Stanley and Jerome crooned “Yeah yeah yeah,” to you. Face boys in white chinos and fruit-loop button-downs. Last night at the end of the American plague, one of you drove a pink Mustang past my house. One of you idled at the stop sign while both of you harmonised on Nowhere Man. I was fired from the shambling ogre gig the same day the BMV issued my license. I have until midnight to make up a dream for the wild horses we’ll ride. These days I’m more of a werewolf than a beast of burden.
February Dog Walk with Snow Light
You walk your shih tzu/poodle through the core of the night. All day snow and sleet have dappled the lawn with hibernal shades of white, and, in the darkness, the snow light with its pale mantle guides your dog and you along the paths of the day’s earlier treks. She leaves small scallops in the ghost trails of your past dog walks, stopping by the scents of a pinecone and a windblown wrapper from Taco Bell. Urinates along the fencerow where your neighbours planted tomatoes in June. Around you the snow muffles the short month’s night, much as your deaf dog and your dulled ears cannot hear the leaves and sticks that must crunch beneath your weight. You hear a large dog bark in excitement or alarm across the street but not a dog’s nails clicking on the frozen ground. As the two of you wander past the red maple, you notice for the first time that its roots girdle the maturing tree while your shih tzu/poodle noses the rabbit scat on the south side of the yard. From the rabbit with the lame leg you startle from its shelter behind the compost heap at the end of your morning strolls. Crossing cat and possum tracks, you recognise your passage through the new snow by the way your heels drag through every fourth step. Your dog defecates among the mounds you raised in preparation for a butterfly garden this spring. The shih tzu/poodle takes no notice of the songs you hum, and you cannot hear cars brake at the four-way stop at the corner of your block. You will not hear the songbird’s mating calls of April. It has been another silent winter. The bare silver maple holds a hornet’s nest in its upper branches, but there are no remnants of the swooping presence of robins or finches. Your dog swallows a scattering of rabbit pellets then turns toward the backdoor, eager for her arthritis cookie treat. You have grown familiar with the harbingers of silent springs.
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana where he is looking for a dog to adopt. His poems have appeared in Pine Cone Review, Parliament Literary Journal, and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan. Poems are forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal and Lion and Lilac.
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Painting by Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Courtesy: Creative commons
Under the Sapphire Sky
Sprawled on the beach chair under the open azure sky
Surrounded with a panoramic enormous expanse of sapphire waters of the Indian Ocean
Absorbed the blue of the skies
And the turquoise waters
The beautiful verdant foliage
Trying to sink in the utopian state
Of mental and physical wellbeing
Far-off youngsters swim
Making the most of their lives
Some laze in the sun under canopies
Others splash their thighs in the blue seawaters
And a few pose for selfies
Soon to be posted on their Whatsapp and FBs
Their wanderlust's evidences…
Dr. Sangeeta Sharma, an associate editor of SETU and an academic, has authored a book on Arthur Miller, a collection of poems, edited six anthologies on poetry, fiction and criticism (solo and joint) and two workbooks on communication. She has free-lanced for The Times of India. A book of hers is used as a reference at the Clayton State University, Georgia, USA.
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Reunion
They are overjoyed!
For them, it’s once in a lifetime affair.
They spend sleepless night to make the event grand, garlanding the wall,
and putting decorative painting on the floor.
Dressed in stylish attire, they are ready to welcome the seniors
one by one with roses, most of whom they have never met before.
The aged and the superiors are swept with great delight
assembling after a long gap,
and savouring memories is refreshing quite,
as they are beginning to unwrap.
Watching the younger people reminds me
those golden days.
Myself being youthful and courageous
so much that I could fan the fire to a blaze!
So much love, so many dreams were
hidden within,
that the winter was as romantic as spring
when I sat on the garden to play the violin.
This holy place of learning has not changed much
even after so many years.
The classroom, the library, the top floor canteen,
the picturesque skyline of the city, and
the renowned alumni who have few peers.
They are agile, they are jovial,
someday this young batch would learn –
The journey to the summit of the Everest
is precarious, and danger lurks at every turn.
Dr. S N Banerjee has a great passion for travelling, photography and writing. His articles have featured in the recent issues of Cafe Dissensus and Muse India.
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Reminiscence
The wind blows bringing in the
redolence of my land
I bow my head and pay my homage
When the Siberian cranes flutter
their wings in winter
I reminisce the sultry smell of our lakes
When I stretch my eyes to the
epitaph of the ocean
I feel my country’s sands slither
away from my fingers
When I hear the cuckoo’s enchanting song
I float dreamily to our mango gardens
with fresh blossoms
The sweet aroma of the baked cookies in cafes
Reminds me of my mother’s petite kitchen
Oh! How it feels to be disparate from one’s native land
To be lost in a sea of strangers for what duty demands
The lakes, the trees, the sea and my share of sky
Something that was to live for and will be always to die
If I don’t live to grow old
If I don’t live to grow old
You will still have my verses
to trace back to the days,
we smiled despite the
summer tempest that
showered on our egos
You will still find yourself
in my words and remember
our carefree laughter from
another time that set our
moods ablaze with zest
If I don’t live to grow old
You will still have my pages
that speak of the time we spent
together, the contentment
that is timeless, and shall
last for now and ever
You will still read between
my lines and be our dream
catcher, feel what I lived
to create and saved for
you to pursue later
If I don’t live to grow old
You will still grow old
in some corner of my book,
in the lines of my page,
in the stanzas of my poetry
and in the words of my verse
Mitra Samal mostly writes poems and occasionally pens down stories or memoirs. She is a software professional with a passion for both technology and literature. She often participates in poetry open mics. Her works have been published in various online and print media. She is also an avid reader and a Toastmaster who loves to speak her heart out.
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Form Rejection Letter
In this star chamber, three men
with cowls read endless poems,
the paper offerings of souls
mailed with a return envelope.
A pair of ancient scales weigh
and measure the worth
of uncommon pain squeezed
into verse -- metered, rhymed
or free. Hearts break, beauty
dies, but there is only space
enough for poems that fit
current editorial needs.
Once human, poets themselves,
they must coldly judge the most
awful confessions, maps
of despair, personal grief.
And on that scale, your best words
almost tip the golden bowl,
a pound, just half-pound,
an ounce found wanting.
Coyotes
In her Irish Channel kitchen,
she drinks imported herbal tea.
Her backyard is safe for two
thriving little kids. All is well
until night—she sees the leanest,
meanest dog lying with
her pups as if she owned
the grass. This is no park breed
with sleek brushed fur,
fed Ethiopian grain by hand.
Her husband calls the police,
who call Fish and Game,
who never call back.
All the moms, all the children
are asleep except for two
mothers who know men
protect no one, not really,
not even their own families.
They breed quickly, run off
to the batture* or fall on
the couch, watch the replay
of the Saints last home game.
Their wives would kill, rip
and tear flesh from female bones
if it came to that. A truce
is made, eye to eye understanding,
a secret woman’s pact.
Grown pups wander off—
their mothers too in dreams,
still young enough to mate for fun.
*Batture: Bar in New OrleansWomen’s Shelter, York, PA
All that summer, I did Christ’s chores—
Meals on Wheels, the only man
at the clothing drive, penance
for leaving my wife, the woman
I left my wife for.
Past red brick facades, colonial
slave porches, I followed a wet
cobblestone street to a door
with a barred window,
rang the buzzer.
That face in the window turned
me to stone, the pale woman’s
hard brown eyes, her only
request simple and blunt—
“Put it down, leave.”
I wanted credit, time served—
my mother abandoned me
when I was twelve. I still
saw her in every dyed blonde
with fake breasts.
No other choice, retreat inevitable,
I put down two plastic bags
filled with toothbrushes,
toothpaste, candy bars
and soap bricks.
These walls were made
of more than fired clay
troweled by slave hands--
they were two-feet thick
like the fear between us.
Ruth’s Garden
Latex gloves, surgical green,
protect her hands from thistles,
sticky thorns, opioid needles.
The homeless are the children
she never had, never wanted,
not even since Katrina
made her homeless as the next
pale survivor in long line for
a FEMA trailer.
These ferns and flowers redeem
her spotted hands, watered
with a swan-neck spout
twice a day. Like a turtle’s,
her shell is thick enough
to repel the insults of gutterpunks
on the broken sidewalk,
their contempt for an old lady
who believes in growing
green things. Survival
of the unfit is the unhealthy norm
in a Quarter that once
was a neighbourhood,
beer drunk from tin buckets
on the banquette, a light
in every dormer window.
She alone is the reptile,
the mud creature who
reminds us a rose is still
a rose, nothing blooms
without a few drops of love.
William Miller’s eighth collection of poetry, Lee Circle, was published by Shanti Arts Press in 2019. His poems have appeared in many journals, including, The Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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We consider faith
Of course, you believe in gods,
not your own, you have none,
but your mother’s, she has numerous.
You talk to them when you are in trouble,
or want something and know you cannot get it.
It’s easy to blame them, but the conversations,
always one-sided, seem pointless.
You want to know if they can hear you.
You like to think He or She, or They,
(there are so many, you tend to lose track)
listen to you, at least often, if not always.
They must — your mother’s devotion demands it.
All her life she had but one prayer —
‘Make my sons happy’.
Now, you demand,
‘Fulfil my mother’s wish, make me happy.’
This, of course, they cannot do, you know,
but at least, they should hear you out.
You talk to them under the sky,
not in front of an idol,
where they are distracted by their very beauty,
imagined by a poor sculptor in his filthy slum,
or in a temple, where they are disquieted by
the multitude of sycophants with their bribes
of sweets and cash and piteous prayers.
It’s easier in the open, though
you tend to forget who’s who.
There are so many of them,
with so many departments —
you are never sure if you are
talking to the right god
at the right time,
for the right obstacle,
in the right manner.
Of course, you believe in gods, and you know,
they are as helpless as you are.
With so many interpreters to relay their causes,
they must be as wary as you are.
They, the gods, nice fellows, they went
on an exile and now they cannot return.
The door is barred in this world of frigid science
and dazzling machines, where men took over
and became divine, and you know, it’s a selfish
nightmare, which now, we all must dream.
(First published in Book of Prayers for the Nonbeliever, Red River, 2018)
Dibyajyoti Sarma, is a writer, editor, poet and translator based in Delhi. His latest, a translation of Assamese author Indira Goswami, Five Novellas about Women, came out in July. He also runs the independent publishing venture, Red River.
Borderless 