Tag: Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Categories
Editorial

Imagine…

Art by Pragya Bajpai

Imagine a world without wars, without divisions, where art forms flow into each other and we live by the African concept of Ubuntu — I am because you are’ — sounds idyllic. But this is the month of March, of poetry, of getting in touch with the Dionysian elements in ourselves. And as we have said earlier in the introduction of Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, what could be a better spot to let loose this insanity of utopian dreams than Borderless Journal!

Having completed three years of our Earthly existence on the 14th of March, we celebrate this month with poetry and writing that crosses boundaries — about films, literature and more. This month in the Festival of Letters or Sahityaotsav 2023, organised by the Sahitya Akademi, films were discussed in conjunction with literature. Ratnottama Sengupta, who attended and participated in a number of these sessions, has given us an essay to show how deep run the lyrics of Bollywood films, where her father, Nabendu Ghosh, scripted legends. It is Ghosh’s birth month too and we carry a translation from his Bengali autobiography which reflects how businessmen drew borders on what sells… After reading the excerpt from Nabendu’s narrative translated by Dipankar Ghosh and post-scripted by Sengupta, one wonders if such lines should ever have been drawn?

Questioning borders of a different kind, we have another piece of a real-life narrative on a Japanese Soldier, Uehara. Written by an Assamese writer called Kamaleswar Barua, it has been translated and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. The story focusses on a soldier’s narrative at his death bed in an alien land. We are left wondering how his need for love and a home is any different from that of any one of ours? Who are the enemies — the soldiers who die away from their homes? What are wars about? Can people live in peace? They seemed to do so in Kurigram, a land that has faded as suggests the poem by Masud Khan, brought to us in translation from Bangla by Professor Fakrul Alam, though in reality, the area exists. Perhaps, it has changed… as does wood exposed to a bonfire, which has been the subject of a self-translated Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi. Tagore’s poem, Borondala translated as ‘Basket of Offerings’, has the last say: “Just as the stars glimmer / With light in the dark night, / A spark awakens within/ My body. / This luminosity illuminates / All my work.” And perhaps, it is this luminosity that will also help us find our ideal world and move towards it, at least with words.

This is the poetry month, and we celebrate poetry in different ways. We have an interview with poet Heidi North by Keith Lyons.  She has shared a poem that as Bijan Najdi said makes one “feel a burning sensation in …[the]… fingertips without touching the fire”. It flows with some home truths put forward with poignancy. We have poetry by Michael R Burch, Kirpal Singh, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Amit Parmessur, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, George Freek, Sanket Mhatre, Asad Latif and Rhys Hughes. While Burch celebrates spring in his poetry, Parmessur explores history and Hughes evokes laughter as usual which spills into his column on Indian Pale Ale. Devraj Singh Kalsi has written of simian surprises he has had — and, sadly for him, our reaction is to laugh at his woes. Meredith Stephens takes us on a sailing adventure to Nouméa and Ravi Shankar explores Aruba with photographs and words. Suzanne Kamata shows how Japanese curry can actually be a multicultural binder. Prithvijeet Sinha links the legends of artist MF Hussain and Mother Teresa while Paul Mirabile explores the stylistic marvels of James Joyce in his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a very literary piece.

We have a book review by Aruna Chakravarti of Bornali Datta’s In A Better Place: A Doctor’s Journey, a book that is set amidst immigrants and takes up certain social issues. Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna’s Journey, translated from Marathi by Deepra Dandekar, one of the oldest Indian novels has been discussed by Somdatta Mandal.  Bhaskar Parichha has told us about S.Irfan Habib’s Maulana Azad – A Life. Basudhara Roy has brought out the simplicity and elegance of Robin Ngangom’s My Invented Land: New and Selected Poems. He writes in the title poem that his home “has no boundaries. / At cockcrow one day it found itself/ inside a country to its west,/ (on rainy days it dreams looking east/ when its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)”. We also carry an excerpt from his book. Stories by Jessie Michael, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Sangeetha G and Shubhangi bring flavours of diversity in this issue.

Our journey has been a short one — three years is a short span. But, with goodwill from all our readers and contributors, we are starting to crawl towards adulthood. I thank you all as caregivers of Borderless Journal as I do my fabulous team and the artists who leave me astounded at their ability to paint and write — Sohana Manzoor, Gita Vishwanath and Pragya Bajpai.

Thank you all.

Looking forward to the next year, I invite you to savour Borderless Journal, March 2023, where more than the treasures mentioned here lie concealed.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

‘Prayer beads, what may come’

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Hand of great age – what you find wrapped 
around you in shawl-like cover, in humble endowment;
prayer beads, what may come,
this mustiness of basement galleries,
the art of Dutch colonials loading ships  
no man can remember sailing 
and the bell in the distance is for dinner 
and never church; breaks in wrinkled skin, now weeping –
a pensioner’s sudden chill and you are laid up for days!
What is gallant is gone and it is these many long
silences that remain.

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. 

.

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

Categories
Editorial

And Wilderness is Paradise Enow…

Hope in Winter(2020) by Srijani Dutta
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”

― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)

I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet. 

Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.

We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.

Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.

Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul: America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?

The books in our review section have a focus on the past and history too. Meenakshi Malhotra’s review of Priyadarshini Thakur Khayal’s Padmini of Malwa: The Autobiography of Rani Rupmati, again focusses on how the author resurrects a medieval queen through visitations in a dream (could it be her spirit that visited him?). Somdatta Mandal writes of a book of history too — but this time the past and the people are resurrected through objects in Sudeshna Guha’s A history of India through 75 Objects. Bhaskar Parichha has also reviewed a history book by culinary writer-turned-historian Colleen Taylor Sen, Ashoka and The Maurya Dynasty: The History and Legacy of Ancient India’s Greatest Empire.

This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.

Hughes of course brings in dollops of humour with his travel to Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka as does Devraj Singh Kalsi who writes about camel rides in Chandigarh, a place I known for its gardens, town planning and verdure. Suzanne Kamata colours Japan with humour as she writes of how candies can save the day there! Sengupta continues to travel to the past delving into the history of the last century.

Poetry that evokes laughter is rare but none the less the forte of Hughes as pensive but beautiful heartfelt poetry is that of Asad Latif. This February, the edition features poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan that borders on wry humour and on poignancy by George Freek. More poems by Pragya Bajpai, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Chad Norman, John Grey, Amit Parmessur, Sister Lou Ella Hickman, Saranyan BV and many more bring in varied emotions collected and honed to convey varieties that flavour our world.

Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.

This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.

Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

Categories
Poetry

Air Traffic Control Has Never Heard of John Denver

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
The busiest airport on the continent –
air traffic control has never heard of John Denver,
I can hardly blame them, the job takes extreme focus;
did he lose his luggage? some caffeine-wired Pixie cut 
tries to be helpful.  He lost a lot more than that, I say.
YOU AGAIN? the shift supervisor walks in with his 
three cream, four sugar Tasmanian Devil mug
and I tell him he would make a great sumo wrestler 
with such a low center of gravity, but the Flat Earthers 
aren’t having it so the muscle is called in, in a sudden fit of protein 
to push me down those metal exterior stairs 
that lead back to baggage claim and all those husky four-legged 
drug sniffers that work their way up your leg while 
the 10:45 out of Dulles disembarks.

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.

.

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, November 2022

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

We did it! … Announcing our first anthology … Monalisa No Longer Smiles… Click here to read.

Conversations

Suchen Christine Lim, an iconic writer from Singapore in conversation about her latest book, Dearest Intimate. Click here to read.

Blazing trails, as well as retracing the footsteps of great explorers, Christopher Winnan, a travel writer, delves into the past, and gazes into the future while conversing with Keith Lyons. Click here to read.

Translations

Rows of Betelnut Trees by My Window by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

A Day in the Life of the Pink Man is a story by Shankhadeep Bhattacharya, translated from Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee. Click here to read.

The Clay Toys and The Two Boys is a story by Haneef Shareef, translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Saturday Afternoon is a poem by Ihlwha Choi, translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Tagore’s poem, Tomar Shonkho Dhulay Porey (your conch lies in the dust), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty as The Conch Calls. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Jared Carter, Asad Latif, Rhys Hughes, Alpana, Mimi Bordeaux, Saranyan BV, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Quratulain Qureshi, Jim Bellamy, Sourav Sengupta, Ron Pickett, Davis Varghese, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Jonathan Chan, Terry Trowbridge, Amrita Sharma, George Freek, Gayatri Majumdar, Michael R Burch

Poets, Poetry and Rhys Hughes

In Infinite Tiffin, Rhys Hughes gives an unusual short story centring around food and hunger. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

The Scream & Me

Prithvijeet Sinha writes of how Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, impacts him. Click here to read.

A Fine Sunset

Mike Smith travels with a book to a Scottish beach and walks in the footsteps of a well-know novelist. Click here to read.

The Death of a Doctor

Ravi Shankar mourns the loss of a friend and muses on mortality in his experience. Click here to read.

My Contagious Birthday Party

Meredith Stephens writes of her experience of Covid. Click here to read.

Dim Memories of the Festival of Lights

Farouk Gulsara takes a nostalgic trip to Deepavali celebrations in Malaysia. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Strumming Me Softly with His Guitar…, Devraj Singh Kalsi talks of his friends’s adventure with the guitar. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Therese Schumacher and Nagayoshi Nagai: A Love Story, Suzanne Kamata introduces us to one of the first German women married to a Japanese scientist and their love story. Click here to read.

Essays

My Favourite Book by Fakrul Alam

The essay is a journey into Fakrul Alam’s evolution as a translator. Click here to read.

The Ultimate Genius of Kishore Kumar

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, an eminent film critic, writes on the legend of Kishore Kumar. Click here to read.

T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land: Finding Hope in Darkness

Dan Meloche muses on the century-old poem and its current relevance. Click here to read.

The Observant Immigrant

In Piano Board Keys, Candice Louisa Daquin talks of biracial issues. Click here to read.

Stories

The Funeral Attendee

Ravi Prakash shares the story of the life of a migrant in rural India. Click here to read.

A Letter I can Never Post

Monisha Raman unravels the past in a short narrative using the epistolary technique. Click here to read.

Red Moss at the Abbey of Saint Pons

Paul Mirabile takes us to St Pons Abbey in France in the fifteenth century. Click here to read.

You have lost your son!

Farhanaz Rabbani gives a light story with a twist that shuttles between Dhaka and Noakhali. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from Manoranjan Byapari’s How I Became a Writer: An Autobiography of a Dalit, translated from Bengali by Anurima Chanda. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poems by Afsar Mohammad, translated from Telugu by Afsar Mohammad & Shamala Gallagher. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Reba Som has reviewed Aruna Chakravarti’s Through the Looking Glass: Stories. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy has reviewed Afsar Mohammad’s Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poems, translated from Telugu by Afsar Mohammad and Shamala Gallagher. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Rahul Ramagundam’s The Life and Times of George Fernandes. Click here to read.

Borderless Journal Anthology

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

Categories
Editorial

We Did It!

That good things happen despite darkness, despite prognostications of doom, that light glimmers hope if you strive to focus on your strength in hard times is borne true both in fiction and in life. Perhaps, we cannot get back the old ways (but is that what we want?) but new paths emerge. Old gives way to new. And while trying to gather pearls of human excellence — borne not of awards or degrees but of bringing out the best, the kindest, the most loving in human hearts — we managed to create with a team an outstanding anthology. Woven with the writings of old and new — we created a tapestry together that the editor in chief of our publishing house said was “classy, literary, engaging and international”. That one of the oldest and most reputed publishing houses in India with bookshops countrywide took it on was also an unusual event! We are truly grateful to Om Books International, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri and Jyotsna Mehta along with all our writers and readers who made our anthology a reality, and to Radha Chakravarty and Fakrul Alam for the kind words they bestowed on our effort.

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

Please greet our first anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles, with love and friendship. It could be the perfect Christmas gift in the spirit of the season! And as the blurb says, “it will definitely bring a smile to your face because it is a celebration of the human spirit.”

The anthology is different from our journal in as much as it has a sample of an eclectic collection that has been honed with further editing and has some new features. Most of the writing is from our first year and showcases our ethos, except for Lesya’s poetry and interview. Lesya Bakun from Ukraine is still on the run, looking for a refuge — she cannot return home like you or I can. Her family is scattered across number of countries. Her cousin, who was guarding the factory at Azovstal, was taken prisoner. We included her story in the anthology hoping to create global empathy for refugees as the numbers will increase not only due to war but also due to climate change.

The reason we felt a hardcopy anthology was a good idea was because nothing beats the joy of having a bunch of interesting reads in the warmth of your hands (especially where internet cannot reach or is unavailable). In any case, books with the feel of paper, the rustling whispers which carry voices of leaves can never be replaced as Goutam Ghose had also said in his interview which is now part of our anthology.

And that is why we celebrate more books… this time we feature Singaporean prima donna of literature, Suchen Christine Lim, with her new book Dearest Intimate, a novel that spans more than hundred years including the harrowing Japanese invasion during World War II. She shared sound advice with writers: “Suffering is good for the writer. It will deepen lived experience and expand the heart’s empathy.” And perhaps that is what is echoed through the experiences of the other writer interviewed on our pages by Keith Lyons. This is a writer who not only brought out his own books but was a regular contributor of travel pieces for Frommer’s and National Geographic traveling to unexplored destinations — Christopher Winnan. Another writer Lyon had interviewed recently, Steve Carr, has passed on. We would like to convey our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.

We have a number of books that have been reviewed. Reba Som reviewed Aruna Chakravarti’s Through the Looking Glass: Stories that span eras spread across time. Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises and Bhaskar Parichha, Rahul Ramagundam’s The Life and Times of George Fernandes. Basudhara Roy has written of Afsar Mohammad’s Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poems, translated from Telugu by the poet and Shamala Gallagher, verses that again transcend borders and divides. We have an excerpt from the same book and another from Manoranjan Byapari’s How I Became a Writer: An Autobiography of a Dalit, translated from Bengali by Anurima Chanda.

More translations from Bengali, Balochi and Korean enrich our November edition. Fazal Baloch has translated a story by Haneef Shareef and Rituparna Mukherjee by Shankhadeep Bhattacharya. We have the translation of an inspirational Tagore poem helping us find courage (Shonkho Dhulaye Pore or ‘the conch lies in the dust’). Another such poem by Nazrul has been rendered in English from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. He has also shared an autobiographical musing on how he started translating Tagore’s Gitabitan, which also happens to be his favourite book. More discussion on the literary persona of TS Eliot and the relevance of his hundred year old poem — ‘The Waste Land’ by Dan Meloche adds variety to our essay section.

Evoking the genius of another outstanding artiste, Kishore Kumar, who happened to pen thought provoking dialogues in some films, is Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri’s essay, review of a recent book on the legendary actor-singer and an interview with the authors. Infringing the boundaries of literary with popular culture and art and integrating all forms into a wholistic bundle has been part of our ethos. In that spirit we have a musing by Prithvijeet Sinha on Edvard Munch’s famous painting called Scream. We have non-fiction from Australia spanning Meredith Stephens’s recent brush with Covid, Mike Smith visits a Scottish beach in the footsteps of a novelist, Ravi Shankar has given us a poignant piece for a late friend and Candice Lousia Daquin talks of the existence of bi-racial biases. In contrast, Suzanne Kamata sent a narrative that bridges divides showcasing a German wife of a Japanese scientist that draws us to conclude that biases erode over time to create an acceptance of bi-racial people. Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in humour with his funny narrative about a guitarist. Rhys Hughes writes in a lighter vein on Indian cuisine in his column and spouts more funny poetry bordering on the absurd.

Jared Carter has shared beautiful poetry on murmuration in birds and we have touching verses from Asad Latif for a little girl he met on a train — reminiscent of Tagore’s poem Hide and Seek (Lukochuri). Michael R Burch has given us poems setting sombre but beautiful notes for the season. We host more poetry by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Quratulain Qureshi, Jim Bellamy, Gayatri Majumdar, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Alpana, Jonathan Chan, Saranyan BV, George Freek and many more. We have stories from around the world: India, France and Bangladesh.

Gathering all of your thoughts in strings of words from all corners of the world, we present to you the bumper November issue of Borderless Journal . Thank you all for sharing your thoughts with us. Thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fantastic painting and more thanks to the whole Borderless team for seeing this issue through. We would not have been able to do the anthology or these issues without each one of you — writers and readers.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

There is always hope for a new tomorrow!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

Categories
Poetry

Mannequin

By Ryan Quinn Flanagann

Courtesy: Creative Commons
MANNEQUIN

All those weekends with my mother.
Driving out to that K-Mart in the mall
along Bayfield Road.

Leaving me in the toy section 
back when such things were okay.

So she could shop on her own.

And how I quickly bored of the toys.
Heading over to the clothing section 
to pretend to be a mannequin.

Standing perched up on that display still as I could.
Posed like the family of mannequins 
around me.

A few women smiling at my pretend
as they wheeled by.

Even a wink or two.
A moment of shared knowing.

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. 

.

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, October 2022

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

The Sky … Click here to read.

Conversations

Anthony Sattin, an award winning journalist and travel writer in conversation about Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped our World, his recent book published by Hachette, India. Click here to read.

VR Devika talks of the dynamic Muthulakshmi Reddy, the first woman in the world to preside over a Legislative Assembly who sought justice for Devadsis and prostitutes and discusses her book, Muthulakshmi Reddy: A Trailblazer in Surgery and Women’s Rights published by Niyogi Books. Click here to read.

Translations

Daridro or Poverty by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

The Browless Dolls by S.Ramakrishnan, has been translated from Tamil by B Chandramouli. Click here to read.

Two poems from Italy by Rosy Gallace have been translated from Italian by Irma Kurti. Click here to read.

Flowers of Love Bloom Everywhere, a poem for peace, written by and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Aalo Amar Aalo (Light, My Light) a song by Tagore, has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty from Bengali. Click here to read.

Pandies Corner

Songs of Freedom: Moh-Reen is an autobiographical story by Amreen, translated from Hindustani by Janees. These stories highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Michael R Burch, Kirpal Singh, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Jonathan Chan, Ron Pickett, Saranyan BV, George Freek, Pramod Rastogi, Mike Smith, Gayatri Majumdar, John Grey, Vandana Kumar, Ahmad Al-Khatat, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Crossing the Date Line, Rhys talks of his fascination with this imagined construct. Click here to read.

Essays

Epaar Bangla, Opaar Bangla:  Bengals of the Mind

Asad Latif explores if homeland is defined by birth. Click here to read.

The Wabi-Sabi of Making a Living

Aditi Yadav calls for taking a break from hectic work schedules. Click here to read.

Just a Face on Currency Notes?

Debraj Mookerjee writes of Gandhi’s relevance and evolution. Click here to read.

A Mother, a Daughter & a Demon Slayer?

Meenakshi Malhotra checks out the festival of Durga Puja, declared the a heritage festival by UNESCO. Click here to read.

The Observant Immigrant

Candice Lousia Daquin explores festivals and the God gene in We had Joy, We Had Fun…. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

KL Twin Towers near Kolkata?

Devraj Singh Kalsi visits the colours of a marquee hosting the Durga Puja season with its spirit of inclusivity. Click here to read.

A Five Hundred Nautical Mile Voyage to Tasmania

Meredith Stephens writes of sailing to Tasmania when the pandemic had just started loosening its grip. Click here to read.

Keep Walking…

Ravi Shankar recommends walking as a panacea to multiple issues, health and climate change and takes us on a tour of walks around the world. Click here to read.

The Matriarch of Hirronk

Ali Jan Maqsood introduces us to a strong matriarch from a Balochi village. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Drill, Fill, Just Chill, Devraj Singh Kalsi gives us humour while under a dentist’s drill. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

Suzanne Kamata writes of her A Ramble on Bizan, focussing on a writer, also by the surname of Moraes, who lived on Mount Bizan more than century ago, moving to Japan from Portugal having fallen violently in love. Click here to read.

Short Stories

Half-Sisters

Sohana Manzoor explores the darker regions of human thought with a haunting psychological narrative about familial structures. Click here to read.

Homecoming

Rituparna Mukherjee gives a poignant story about missing home. Click here to read.

The Phosphorescent Sea

Paul Mirabile journeys with his protagonist into the depths of the ocean. Click here to read.

The Literary Fictionist

In Deathless are the Words, Sunil Sharma explores madness and ideators who believe in the power of words. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Taranath Tantrik and Other Tales from the Supernatural by Bibhutibhushan, translated from Bengali by Devalina Mookerjee. Click here to read.

An excerpt from A Handful of Sesame by Shrinivas Vaidya, translated from Kannada by Maithreyi Karnoor. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal has reviewed BM Zuhara’s The Dreams of a Mappila Girl: A Memoir, translated from Malayalam by Fehmida Zakir. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy has reviewed Taranath Tantrik: And Other Tales from the Supernatural by Bibhutibhushan, translated from Bengali by Devalina Mookerjee. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Satyajit Ray Miscellany: On Life, Cinema, People & Much More, a collection of the maestro’s writings and illustrations. Click here to read.

Categories
Poetry

Fowler’s Revenge

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Abstract art by Picasso. Courtesy: Creative Commons
1.

There is this dummy quality about it all.
A sprawling suspension bridge vastness about 
the ambition if not the foresight.
I sit, surrounded by numerous bird-hatched plans.
Drinking down all the man’s beer, 
and none of his ideas.

2.

You are predictable as a subway train.
Eat, sleep, drink, talk the same so that
the sum of your habits make you an easy target.
Just two days ago, you were under surveillance.
From some tired hock shop camera
with a faulty aperture that has seen
better days.


3.

Time casts doubt, that is true,
so that anyone who waits on anything 
becomes less the suspect and more 
the patient opportunist all the time.

4.

I don’t care what you did or didn’t do.
This is Fowler’s revenge.
I hear you’re teaching his own children to hate him
which is utterly deplorable.
Keeping him from seeing them,
but such revelations come second hand.
I am friends with both of you
which makes this all the more difficult.

5.

Distance is another consideration.
No one could have invaded Russia 
from the pleasure-seeking funhouses 
of Coney Island.

6.

I hear you have taken up with your legal counsel now,
please tell me it is not true.
The rumour mill never stops spinning.
I hear it is still on the sly.
He is in it for the favours as much as you are
for the money.  And he is married,
please tell me this is not true.
Perhaps you have already made 
your calculations.

7.

Fowler made good on his threats tonight.
Not against you, but himself.
The one he always hated most 
according to the letter.
I walked in and had to cut him down.
So blue in the face he looked like some dangling 
pathetic Picasso which angered me.

And the smell, let me tell you!
All alone in that sorry basement apartment.
After everyone had left.

8.

I guess you get full custody.
I hope you are happy.
A phone call would be nice.
We used to be friends.

9.

Tell Jimmy happy birthday.
I believe this would be his ninth.
I hope you got the gift I sent.
The mail is sporadic these days.

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 The Oklahoma Review. 

.

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, September 2022

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall… Click here to read.

Conversations

Meet Barun Chanda, an actor who started his career as the lead protagonist of a Satyajit Ray film and now is a bi-lingual writer of fiction and more recently, a non-fiction published by Om Books International, Satyajit Ray: The Man Who Knew Too Much in conversation Click here to read.

Jim Goodman, an American traveler, author, ethnologist and photographer who has spent the last half-century in Asia, converses with Keith Lyons. Click here to read.

Translations

Professor Fakrul Alam has translated three Tagore songs around autumn from Bengali. Click here to read.

Nagmati by Prafulla Roy has been translated from Bengali as Snake Maiden by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

A Balochi Folksong that is rather flirtatious has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

A Letter Adrift in the Breeze by Haneef Sharif has been translated from Balochi by Mashreen Hameed. Click here to read.

Jajangmyeon Love, a poem has been written in Korean and translated by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Eshechhe Sarat (Autumn) by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Michael R Burch, Sunil Sharma, George Freek, Sutputra Radheye, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Arshi Mortuza, Ron Pickett, Prasant Kumar B K, David Francis, Shivani Srivastav, Marianne Tefft, Saranyan BV, Jim Bellamy, Shareefa BeegamPP, Irma Kurti, Gayatri Majumdar, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In The Chopsy Moggy, Rhys Hughes gives us a feline adventure. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

A Tale of Two Flags in the South Pacific

Meredith Stephens visits an island that opted to adopt the ways of foreign settlers with her camera and narrates her experiences. Click here to read.

A Taste of Bibimbap & More…

G Venkatesh revisits his Korean experience in a pre-pandemic world. Click here to read.

September Nights

Mike Smith in a short poetic monologue evokes what the season means for him. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In El Condor Pasa or I’d Rather be a Sparrow…, Devraj Singh Kalsi explores his interactions with birds with a splatter of humour. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Rabbit Island, Suzanne Kamata visits the island of Okunoshima, where among innocence of rabbits lurk historic horrors. Click here to read.

Essays

A Turkish Adventure with Sait Faik

Paul Mirabile takes us on a journey to Burgaz with his late Turkish friend to explore the writings of Sait Faik Abasiyanik. Click here to read.

A Salute to Ashutosh Bodhe

Ravi Shankar pays a tribute to a fellow trekker and gives a recap of their trekking adventures together near Mt Everest base camp. Click here to read.

The Observant Immigrant

In Sometimes Less is More…, Candice Louisa Daquin explores whether smaller communities can be assimilated into the mainstream. Click here to read.

Stories

Where Eagles Dare…

Munaj Gul Muhammad takes on the persona of a woman to voice about their rights in Balochistan. Click here to read.

My Eyes Don’t Speak

Chaturvedi Divi explores blindness and its outcome. Click here to read.

The Royal Retreat

Sangeetha G gives a brief view of intrigue at court. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

Ruskin Bond, excerpted from Between Heaven and Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills, edited by Ruskin Bond and Bulbul Sharma. Click here to read.

Excerpts from Rhys Hughes’ Comfy Rascals: Short Fictions. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Rakhi Dalal reviews Rhys Hughes’ Comfy Rascals: Short Fictions. Click here to read.

Hema Ravi reviews Mrutyunjay Sarangi’s A Train to Kolkata and Other Stories. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Krishna Bose’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s Life, Struggle and Politics, translated and edited by Sumantra Bose. Click here to read.