Umesh Bajagain
The virus came
with a blow
smacked me in the face
blew me out slow
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Srividya Sivakumar
In Coonoor, childhood tumbles
down a hill to find its way home.
The cobra lily has made a comeback.
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Smitha Vishwanath
Seven years she’d waited for him
She’d prayed five times each day
At fajr, zuhr, asr, maghrib and isha
On the nineteenth day of Ramadan
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Mutiu Olawuyi
I’ve toured the whole protests;
All enjoined but one detest:
You cannot campaign for best
and converge for States – unrest!
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Parneet Jaggi
Taste of Ashes
In a remote village
amidst silent hills of the Himalayas,
a tale of the ashes lures every passerby.
Smoke lighting up the azure sky
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Melissa A Chappell
What do the birds cry
when the sun sinks upon a killing,
and the taken life feeds the hungering, blood-rich soil of a nation,
as it has for centuries.
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Himadri Lahiri
In the worst of times my specs too have betrayed.
Only the day before yesterday
it fell from my hand, lost its shape and swayed.
Though the lenses remained intact
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Ra Sh
When I die, will you come with me?
I asked my mango tree.
She pondered for a while and replied wisely
When I was a sapling,
(Click here to read)
Scott Thomas Outlar
Mellow is the fog hanging heavy with persuasion
all the doves are cooing near the edge of absolution
but nature doesn’t forgive without a bite
One more dance of light behind the optics of transcendence
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Obinna Chilekezi
as while in school, we’re
warned of dangers of going global
for a big small village, but we thought only
of the passion and money, the beauty and trade
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Sutanuka Ghosh Roy
She is Rumki
No one knows whether she is a Muslim or a Hindu
She mops the floor in a sari shop in the city
Babu tells there are insects in the air
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By Chandni Santosh
The day we returned from the mulberry tree,
You bought me a pair of gold anklets,
With the thirteenth symphony set inside,
The symphony of sadness.
(Click here to read)
By Madhu Srivastaw
Corona cries all around
Amphan raged destruction
Yet I am me
Living on day to day
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Ndue Ukaj
The world is sneezing in front of a virus
that has bound the earth and shakes it like a light toy.
People are panting like dogs after a long and aimless journey.
Everyone panting, and behind walls they compose a symphony of fear.
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Bibek Adhikari
Words dribble down from the corners
of your mouth. From within the temple,
gods tremble with your frosty voice—
they now need a glass of moonshine.
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Karunakaran (Translated by Aditya Shankar)
No Warplane Has Ever Flown Like A Bird
No warplane
has ever flown like a bird,
has lost way like a bird,
has halted mid-flight reminiscing a bygone aroma.
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By Dr Rumpa Das
Nowadays,
I don’t go anywhere near where you live –
Spring is elsewhere.
The flowers in your garden have wilted…
(Click here to read)
Amrita Sharma
Love in the times of quarantine
Prologue
Your confessions never mattered,
Your agreement was never my call,
Your choices never governed mine,
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Stefan Markovski
Following the white griffin’s trail
In a body of demigod beast imperial shadows of chthonic forces douse
kingdoms united into the singularity of all beings
become golden ruins under steel-feathered wings
in an incense smoke sighs are clothed through which gods send answers
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Amrita Saikia
I sat listening to the tap tapping of the raindrops,
And the blissful sound of the wild mountain stream,
I smelled the pure and pristine air of the valley,
Laden with the sweet scent of orchids…
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Jee Leong Koh
Unctuously fried oyster omelet.
Hainanese chicken rice. Sambal fish balls
pierced on a stick, as in the old night markets,
airborne kerosene lamps lisping with a flair.
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Gopal Lahiri
Sometimes there is a night you just want
to get so far away from,
fire burns out in life’s long years,
memories are plucked, timid words wipe the window
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Vandana Kumar
It felt like another eon
This surely wasn’t our century
Plagued by something
As evil as the bubonic
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Sarra Colleno
Year 2 file into the assembly hall,
For parents, arrange the order they stand.
In dreidel graphics, white and blue. Or all
Gold jewellery, bindis and henna hands.
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Kashiana Singh
Three dimensions, home and more
Sailboats at sea
Neglected rains
Dehydrate my bones
Outlandish refrains…
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Sushant Kumar BK
You know? I was a single mother,
Hear my story of pain.
I struggled to raise my children,
Putting my own hunger in shade…
(Click here to read)
Sarita Jenamani
When our nocturnal solitude
makes us mourn the moment given
we should think of the images
of those handwritten notes…
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Anjana Basu
Like a circle in a spiral
like a wheel within a half heard song
from a womb
my father talking strategy to my yawning mother
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Michael Bailey
When silence finds its way between the soft
When silence finds its way between the soft
seconds of a hushed reminder,
the unquiet dark will soon fill…
(Click here to read)
Biju Kanhangad
(Translated by Aditya Shankar)
Beneath the blue waterline,
father’s catch basks in the sunlight: a fish.
The gray-black of crows shroud the pale oar.
Reddish crabs reach the shore, transcending
the festered basket discarded by mom.
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Vatsala Radhkeesoon
Born from
the Divine’s golden thread
Molded with
perfection, purity and grace
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Himani Sood
Today I will fall out of love with you.
I’ll sweep out the motes of dust
that clung to your feet.
Each speck a single story,
of your worldly being.
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Pavol Janik
In a horizontal mirror
of the straightened bay
the points of an angular city
stabbing directly into the starry sky.
(Click here to read)
Abdelmajid Erouhi
Never talk to a bee as it is fecundating a sunflower,
Never talk to a butterfly as it is flying over a daisy,
Just keep seeing and thinking, and never glower
At them, just wonder on the way they go crazy!
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Jibonanada Das ( Translated by Suparna Sengupta)
For a thousand years, am I trailing the paths of this earth —
From the oceans of Ceylon, amidst darkling nights, to the Malay seas
Much have I wandered; To Bimbisara and Asoka’s ghostly days
Have I been; even farther, to the distant dark Vidarbha wen;
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Dr.Santosh Bakaya
Black Beauty
It was just a small thing.
Come to think of it, not actually small,
but pretty big.
Huge and black. A Black Beauty.
(Click here to read)
Juan Pablo Mobili
To Victoria, my grandmother
My grandmother had inherited
a wooden egg from her mother who
had used it to mend countless old socks;
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Pravat Kumar Pradhy
the stones stack
one above another
in deep silence
void mingles with the wind
rumbling into the emptiness
(Click here to read)
Aditya Shankar
Katsaridaphobia/Gospel According to Cockroaches
And the insect haters, repellent sprayers, broom
wielders will eventually reside beneath soil:
the second life. The hand that swats thy loved
ones will lie defenseless. Time of cockroaches
and oppressed shall arrive.
Orbindu Ganga
Painted in a shade
Rested in her cave,
Silent enough to be staid
To be camouflaged
(Click here to read)
Manu Dash
The ocean is now equipped to endorse swimming.
It’s time to endure the ineluctable annual trip.
The sky mirrors the swashbuckling journey;
(Click here to read)
Matthew James Friday
The Birds in These Strange Times
A pair of kites have come for the lake
now the airport is closed, buoyed by empty
skies, rustling wooded hills, lacey waters.
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Gauri Dixit
The blades rotate at a constant speed
My eyes etch a pattern on the thick layer of dust
‘The fan will not clean itself’
The mind says
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Dr Sangita Swechcha
Over the rim of the eyes
welled weary are the tears
asking the eyes—
“Should I trickle or not?”
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Dustin Pickering
Before I met you, my life was full of joy.
Before I met you, my life was full of fear.
The day I met you was fearful and joyful,
a joyous unbinding from merciless wounds
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Vasile Baghiu
Yesterday, I met poetry
on the stony Loch Long shore,
near Ardpeaton.
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Amit Shankar Saha
Fear of your inexistence
surrounds me at night
like muggers in a dark lane.
Fear that hoods my head,
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Barnali Ray Shukla
Her home wears nothing but a silence
that waits–where noir feels warm like
a quilt of breaths, as it begins to reel in
(Click here to read)
Ali Jan Maqsood
Gestured the mountains of the outlooks
Offered dryly, albeit, wet in nature
The glittering beauty of the flowers Out in the sun of shadow
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Moinak Dutta
Living in the times of Lockdown
Living in the times of Lockdown
Is curiously surreal,
For spaces we, the humans leav, are claimed by others,
Like pigeons come in flocks to dance on the chowrasta,
(Click here to read)
Basudhara Roy
In teeming landscapes of
punctiliously ordered signifiers,
I strive to break free of grooved
meanings to rebelliously create
(Click here to read)
Eduard Schmidts-Zorner
I tie the Ariadne’s thread
into my wide-meshed cardial net,
where points of view dissolve
and deep thoughts evolve.
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Annie Blake
The Boy with The Yellow Light and more
/ for the cupid charges his dart / but to dodge love / for eros is invisible without a lamp /and who the hell knows who we’re really marrying / and venus was angry she had to come down to earth / for kenosis is giving up being god / living between the dark /
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Mutiu Olawuyi
Stay home not with fams
Cleanse not your palms
Dash no space
Be deaf… –
Death!
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Melissa Chapell
Elmhurst, O Elmhurst,
I did not know you in your mothering shift
of glass and mortar.
I ticked off your name in my mind
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Mallika Bhaumik
love quarantined
I pull up the blinds
and look at the glassy darkness waiting outside,
night is a pause,
droplets of the day’s fatigue gathered in its palm,
Christian Manners
In solitude’s splendour, I was blessed
by that graciously guiding breeze,
fervently free with towering thoughts,
as I philosophized amidst the trees…
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Nabina Das
When the Quotidian Wrote our Notes of Isolation
We were brought up by folks who respected the encrusted time,
wound in their watches every morning, opened windows to days.
*
They swept the morning breeze with either their prayerful ways
or brisk footprints out about the gardens of mint and marigolds.
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Desmond Kon
If I say I love you.
If I say this love we share will be our last.
If I say we should trust our every emotion.
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Aditya Shankar
Was so tiny
he did not belong among humans.
Too big for microbes and fungus to befriend.
Too small for mushrooms
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Sheldon John Dias
Gazing into a mirror on a Saturday morning…
As I gaze into the crystal flattened and stretched
I search for meanings – of life and of memories etched.
Who am I?
(Click here to read)
Melissa A Chappell
Do you remember,
as the alarm bells were crying,
how we were silent in the sun,
our blood oiling red with the ruins of the sun.
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Marc Nair
In her last hours, birdlike,
heaves of brittle breath
flutter like grace notes
in a sodden sonata.
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Ra Sh
Two Covid-19 viruses meet Albert Camus
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
(Click here to read)
Nalini Priyadarshni
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
(Click here to read)
Nishi Pulugurtha
A garden tracing its time back
Centuries,
The river flowing by
As it had always done
They have been there together
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Sarita Jenamani
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
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