Asia Writes

25 April 2011

Mangaatha or the Case of the Former Circus Artiste Now Distracted

Around four in the afternoon,
a jack of hearts fell into my

palm and I asked him if
he’d put me down but he said

no, we are not done with you yet,
but don’t worry, only five of us

are left. I held the trapeze bars
very hard, and perhaps my nails

dug into his breath fogging at my ear
because he looked up at me and rasped,

how long have you been swinging across
and I said, ever since my costumes have been

made from specially imported Turkish silk.
He whistled to the others when I landed

with my stomach taut against the brick
wall with betel juice stains and they came

and watched and tossed their cards high,
until the clubs and the hearts were smearing

against the corner of my eye and until
the young policeman came running from

across the narrow street, his mouth blackening
as he saw my pooling silk.


“If a planet is weak, they fix it,” or, Dear Matchmaker

You came home with a leather purse tucked
under your arm, your face a shadowing

slate, forehead creased with why not this one
or this one has three oxen, your throat unreeling

bubbles as you gulped hot coffee, your index
finger forever on your nose, stroking possibility,

singing of a prospect. I often stared at you
from within the dank pantry, my fingers

tracing your frame upon the wall, your drooping
nose, your smooth lips, your cracked heels, black

and caked with dirt. You spoke with a drawling
aah, your eyes charting stars, planets and unions,

your expression wound taut around the edges
of two horoscopes placed side-by-side, the fogging

kerosene lamp flickering nearby. Even now, as my
daughter begins to wear anklets, her face chalked

with talcum powder, I rummage the pantry
for your hands, your serrated voice, those

words that painted my stars against the shadows
on the blue walls: He is the right one.


Indian Oregon

I.

Summer rain, suburban, steady—
grey tar-sprung spray stains vision.
The garage doors open before I spot them.

Later, I run
knuckles taut,
four miles along the Willamette.
Thrashing, the log caught
in the nook of a split trunk
beats the water along a curve.

II.

The house with the two black horses,
front-facing, jumping roadwards,
looms ahead—
oblique magnificence.
At the French bakery, I see
the twisting of almond croissants
delicate, sticky, like a web
of throaty café voices swirling.
My wallet lies forgotten in the car
under the damp seat.


III.

In the morning
as the rain beats against the window,
I wake up to omelets
Indian style—
onions, capsicums, and cumin powdered,
frying matter-of-factly
to the steady stream of scratchy Sanskrit
chants on old, beige colored cassettes.
The lisping little boy strapped in the high chair
does not know that I
am not American. He calls
my aunt mah-mmy.


RANJANI MURALI graduated with an MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she was a reader for So to Speak. Her poetry, translations and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in in elimae, Indefinite Space, Kartika Review, Phoebe and Cricket Online Review. She was recently awarded a fellowship for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center.

22 February 2011

Lunch

She eats lunch
spread out on a table of rough stones,
this frail stone-breaker.
The lunch consists of dried chappatis
and mango-pickle
carefully wrapped in
yesterday’s daily paper.

The dust
of breaking stones blows and mixes
with her thin wheat-chappatis dear.
Unmindful of the din,
under the frugal shadow of a dusty
tamarind tree,
she sits, holds lunch in her thin hands
and eats slowly,
surrounded by hard stones everywhere.
Morsels swallowed hard,
washed down later with
polluted water
from a plastic crumpled bottle.

Rest of the meal she carefully folds
in the old newspaper,
for her sweating sinewy husband
working along with the other stone-breakers
while my obese teenage son,
plugged into his i-Pod,
complains again of less variety
on a well-laid
rosewood
shining
dining table.


SUNIL SHARMA is a bilingual critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. Some of his short stories and poems have already appeared in prestigious journals like: Munyori, the Bicycle Review , Muse India, Kritya, the Seva Bharati Journal of English Studies, Indian Literature, Indian Journal of Post-colonial Literatures, and Prosopisia; and have been anthologized in national and international collections. His debut novel—The Minotaur—dealing with dominant ideologies and sociopolitical realities of the 20th century was published from Jaipur (India) in 2009. He has edited, along with Dr Jaydeep Sarangi, an anthology of shorts, The Editors’ Chioce: Contemporary Short Stories in Indian English, published by Gnosis Publications, New Delhi, 2010. He is one of the editors for the NFJ (New Fiction Journal). Contact him through email at: drsharma.sunil@gmail.com

19 February 2011

Mr. Desouza's Daughter

the road lay forever
cascading down
from geology

and climbing up
geography
as playful prose

he'd never let his
childish words
meander in

they could only ever
peek out through the
little windows of the poem—

house he built
and lived in with his
wife and twins—

a son and a lovely daughter.
i would write playful
prose

and i sought her
that pretty little thing
but i suppose

he knew better,
Poet Mr. Desouza,
all about a nonchalant pose

of a seventeen year old
down the street
leaning at the side wall

one knee jutting out
rhyming with the cigarette
smoke and doubly again

with the playful line of
auburn hair
and a whimsy in the wind

an a-b-c-b rhymer
he wouldn't let
his daughter

come near
for some deep
primal fear


Gravity

grandma said gravity was
the name of her cat that
died when she was young

she said she knew better
than to bother with poets
albeit grandpa'd read Neruda

and think otherwise— he said
he was a sphinx but grandma
would say he's simply a poet's pun

gone wrong, is more a gryphon
they'd fight over it, omg to
see 'em fight was so much fun—

i often think neruda said it—
when he said we are in all
our lives, at once

and that's it— the real
mystery— like waking
in the morning—

like many overcoats
worn together on a
cold, December evening


KUSH ARORA was born and raised in the Indian city of Lucknow and always yearned for a creative vent. He is twenty-four and has been dabbling with verse for more than four years. He is now learning the grammar of graphite - to sketch portraits, which he finds becomes him as much as any of his (better) poems. He loves experimenting with new forms with the spirit of rebellion.

18 February 2011

Awakened

Sliced in a quarter,
the moon bled silver.

The naked tree,
well bathed,
gleamed upon the hill that was
black with night.

The tongue-tied wind
shied away from talk, but
the flickering distant lights,
now bright, now dim,
talked of ebbs and flows.

Time spun.
The moon slipped out of life
and in that death,
I heard words for
the soul astir was talkative.

Compelled, I listened to the
sky in the throngs of pain,
bloodied with birth.
Life sprang forth.


Suman Singh is an English teacher based in Nainital. She writes short stories and poetry in her free time and has been published in Hindustan Times, Reader’s Digest, and Children’s World. Her poetry has been published in Quest, Brown Critique (online), and also in an anthology titled, Rendezvous. She has been awarded first prize for poetry in a competition organized by www.poetsindia.com.

13 February 2011

Movements

It is a pause
as winter mists
unfurl on hills
little alleys and greens.
Trees wither into mellowed
blues, and escapades are nostalgia.
Past glows into feather beds (of sorrow).
Miniscule moments, hiatus.
I breathe freely, poetry happens
and the day swerves into future.
Sunshine is autonomy, cloudy seas
another episode. Movements capture
into happenings, the soiled wet earth
asks for a clammy pause.
Fruit sellers jingle coins, so do shop keepers.
The sun is now busily eating out of remnants.
Work should end soon, and a poem.





Ananya S. Guha lives in Shillong in North East India and works in the Indira Gandhi National Open University. He has four collections of poetry to his credit. In addition, his poems have appeared in four anthologies of poetry, and several print/online magazines such as Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Chandrabhaga, The Telegraph, Femina, New Quest, Journal Of Indian Writing In English, The Statesman, Poesis, Poetry Chronicle, New Welsh Review, Glasgow Review, Osprey Journal, Gloom Cupboard, Muse India, etc. He also writes for newspapers and magazines on education and subjects of general interest.

26 November 2010

Divination

You told me that the runes were vague
And even the lines in the palm of my hands
Were not enough to ascertain
My destiny, so we moved on
To more arcane tools and methods.
You chuckled when I asked
About crystal balls and visceral castings.
While you lighted your sacred
Candles,
The Feng Shui of your room
Demands we heed the flow of Chi
On your inviting bed.
You must slowly map the moles
In my body with a far more
Efficient hands, than eyes
That won't do well in darkness.
It was not kissing.
It was labiomancy.
As the heat surges
It was obvious we
Needed to go Kirilian.
Now we alternate to Reiki
With your gifted palms.
Clamancy in our choral moans and groans
Or were we speaking in tongues?
Tongues, yes, of course,
Tongues and dowsing rods.
Bumpology for the bumps on my bodies
Or plainly bumping, humping pumping?
At this point I forget whether we're moving into
Kabbalah, or are we approximating the Kama Sutra?
It doesn't matter as long as
I'm moving into you.
Thus we invented
Sodomancy.
Now we debate if I explode within you
Or if we need the fluids for drimimancy.
Later as we sip coffee and smoke.
We realized that we could have had
Tea instead, for teacup scrying.
Then again, we can always
Go back to your room
And survey the sheets.
There must be omens there.
Or if we feel Karmically bound
To repeat history
Again and again.
We both took out
Our Tarot
Decks.


Marcel L. Milliam (Luis Batchoy) is a writer in Hiligaynon from Iloilo City, Philippines. His works have been published in various publications in the country and he has enjoyed numerous writing workshop fellowships. He has received awards for his writings including the International Meritage Press Prize for his poetry and a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for his short story in Hiligaynon. He is a member of writing groups in the region, including the Dagyang Pulong Writer's Group, and is a founding Chairman of the Yanggaw: The Capiz Writer's Circle, also sitting as the Chair for the Committee on Literary Arts of the Capiz Council for Culture and Arts. He is a freelance theater actor and an LGBT Advocate. On off times, he likes sipping brewed coffee and puffing cigarettes with or without the company of his good friends.

08 November 2010

Staying Alive

Staying alive
is not in big things
but in small details:
the sex provoking smell
of the fat jasmine,
my eyes’ travelogue
on her slip of a hip
and firm, flaunting breasts,
the aroma of fish-curry
from my mother’s kitchen,
the oxygenated blood
after a jogging run,
a phrase from a poem
stapled to my mind,
a last ball win,
the resultant euphoria
after a riot of sex,
the squadron of geese
on a rainy day.

Feeling them,
my mind gets
an erection and
telegraphs a message
to the rest of my body:
we are staying alive.


The Song of a Radical

I must address myself
to the material need - like
hunger, pain and torture,
and learn to feel the bullet’s
geometric race through the body.

The wind that plays
upon my beard,
the knife that draws
a line of blood
are important beyond
all the rants of the saints.

Every tongue of flame,
each round pebble,
is more material
than Marx himself.

If narrate I must
a tale of the spirit
it must’ve the hard contours
of a basic desire:
like lust or thirst.


M.Nazir Ali is an Associate Professor of English working in Tagore Arts College Puducherry, India. Kavya Bharati and Differsense will bring forth two of his poems each, and though not a prolific writer, Nazir’s writing has an unmistakable sting and bite which happen to be his thumb prints. Economical in expression, sharp in imagery, Nazir wants readability and enjoyment brought back to poetry.

31 October 2010

Best of the Web and Best of the Net are two different anthologies that showcase the best poems and short stories that have appeared in online literary journals. Best of the Web is published in book form by Dzanc Books, while Best of the Net appears on Sundress Publications' website.

In the previous months, we announced our nominated poems and short stories (selected by Professor Lee Upton and Ms. Susan Abraham) for Best of the Net. This time, we would like to present to you our selected works to be nominated for inclusion in the Best of the Web 2010 anthology that seeks to "promote and expand the reach and prestige of online literature."

Our esteemed judge - poet, editor, translator, and teacher Chad Sweeney

Chad Sweeney’s third book of poems, Parable of Hide and Seek, was recently published by Alice James Books. Poems from the book appeared in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior, Verse, New American Writing and Best American Poetry 2008, and the poem “The Methodist and His Method” was read by Garrison Keillor on the NPR radio show The Writer’s Almanac. Chad’s co-translations of the Selected Poems of Iranian poet H.E. Sayeh will appear next year from White Pine Press, and his fourth book of poems, a bilingual Spanish/English edition is forthcoming from Forklift Books, Wolf Milk: Lost Poems of Juan Sweeney. Chad teaches poetry and is a Ph.D. candidate at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where he lives with his wife, poet Jennifer K. Sweeney, and their baby son, Liam.

Nominated works
(This is in no particular order. Please click on the title to read the poem.)

1. Personal History by Ching-In Chen

Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press). Daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is a Kundiman, Macondo and Lambda Fellow. A community organizer, she has worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside and Boston. She can be found at www.chinginchen.com

Chad Sweeney's review: “Personal History” is at once casual and graceful, unwinding its images the way thought itself moves, when unhurried, toward recognition. The poem is honest, unsentimental, yet from its traceries of the ordinary artifacts of two lives, it develops a rich emotional texture, haunted by the mystery of ancestry, both intimate and distant, the unknown “other” from which our lives spring, the old cultures, the old bodies, whose very disappearances somehow issue into who we are.

2. Scratch by Sharanya Manivannan

Sharanya Manivannan's first book of poems, Witchcraft, was published in 2008 to critical acclaim, and was described by Singapore Literature Prize winner Ng Yi-Sheng as being “sensuous and spiritual, delicate and dangerous and as full as the moon reflected in a knife” in The Straits Times. Sharanya’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Drunken Boat, Softblow, White Whale Review, Kritya, Clementine, Istanbul Literary Review, Danse Macabre, A Café In Space and Pratilipi. A personal column, The Venus Flytrap, appears biweekly in The New Indian Express. She was the recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship for 2008-2009. She is working on a novel and a second book of poetry, and more of her work can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.

Chad Sweeney's review: “Scratch” drops us into the intrigues of an international relationship. Its lines are artfully shaky, hurried, a little disoriented, like a taxi ride home at dawn in a foreign country. The speaker’s subliminal anxiety asks if the self may survive exile for the sake of love, if the monsoon remains in the blood when the woman has left her home, and if the sacrifice (of rabbit blood, its gift of fertility) has been received with equal elan. The poem explores how two lovers may negotiate without the inherited codes of courtship, and offers no easy answers, even as blood becomes a kind of shared currency—and language.

3. First Person Indefinite by Sonam Kachru

Sonam Kachru is a Kashmiri and was last seen working towards a PhD at the University of Chicago as an international student. This poem is from a collection he has tentatively titled: The Unbearable Likeness of Unbecoming Splendor. Kachru is at present completing a book-length project, Make Humans Again: Voices From Kashmir, an illustrated book of contemporary poetry translated into English from Kashmiri. Initial work from this project has been accepted for publication in Another Chicago Magazine, Greater Kashmir, and Words Without Borders.

Chad Sweeney's review: “First Person Indefinite” is either a murder mystery or a parable of figuration, which are probably one and the same after all. Its images teeter dangerously between the real and the figurative, precise as a knife edge and yet as ambiguous as a shape in shallow water—which may be a branch, a water bird, or the ghost of someone’s childhood. The poem is drenched in love and menace, and its ambiguity, its “resistance to closure,” would be a weakness, if it weren’t so pleasurable to dwell in its cold, watery spaces.

Chad Sweeney's shortlist included:

1. "Tales of Winter & Exile" by Michael Caylo-Baradi
2. "The Irishman in my backyard" by Trisha Bora
3. "Talk" by Cathy Linh Che
4. "Walking home with groceries" by Iris Law
5. "KUMPI (THE WORK OF THE ORACLE)" by Sharanya Manivannan
6. "before the word" by Janice Pariat

We would like to thank Mr. Chad Sweeney who had to find time in his busy schedule (being a poet, editor, translator, and teacher) to review our featured works. We recommend that you check out his books, Parable of Hide and Seek, Arranging the Blaze, and An Architecture, which are available at Amazon and elsewhere. Some of his latest works can be found on the Serving House Journal.

By the end of November, we will announce our nominations for Pushcart. Another award-winning writer will help us in selecting works. Congratulations to all the nominated writers.

Note:

Submissions to Asia Writes are open year round and works are eligible for nomination to the three anthologies (Best of the Net, Best of the Web, Pushcart Prize). If you would like to contribute, please read our submission guidelines. Previously featured writers are most welcome to submit new works.

20 September 2010

Deadline: open

About us:

Writing for human rights

protestpoems.org is a poetry journal entirely devoted to, and fully committed to, new poetry that tackles human rights issues worldwide.

The journal strives to present the best poems of protest written to promote freedom of speech and human rights. It is updated ‘relentlessly’. We publish a maximum six poems a month to keep a steady flow of relevant protests. Although we update the journal often, we are very selective. We are looking for edge.

The website and mailing lists provide information about persecuted writers, along with letters of protest ready for our subscribers to cut and paste. To receive emails (once a month, on average) with protest information focused on a specific persecuted writer, send an email to write(at)protestpoems.org. Please write SUBSCRIBE in your subject line.

Submission guidelines

It’s simple.

We’re not looking for partisan propganda. We’re not looking for party-political mouthings. We’re not looking for sentimental depictions of what you see on the TV. We’re not looking for rhyming greetings card verses.

We want you to champion, not yourselves, but human rights; the rights of those who don’t have the freedom to write and speak as we do. Rage. Celebrate. Mourn. Demand. Scream. Dance.

Formal complaints are especially exciting. There’s something wonderfully subversive about a villanelle that attacks a government deliberately making the same mistake over and over again.

If you need to be inspired, read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then check out any objective newsfeed or news site.

Paste your poems (a maximum of 3 one-page poems), into the body of an email and send to write(at)protestpoems.org. If necessary, you can email a single .doc or .rtf file containing all the poems you are submitting.

Include a brief bio.

We will accept poems previously published on paper, as long as you hold the copyright. We will not accept poems which are already (or have previously been) published online (including blogs).

If your poem deals with a specific call for action, or commemorates a specific person, please let us know.

We look forward to reading your poems.

More information here.

17 September 2010

Deadline: 11 January 2011

Call for Submissions! I am now accepting submissions for Anointed: A Devotional Anthology for the Deities of the Near and Middle East, to be published by Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

I am interested in prayers (old and new) and recitations; chants, reflections and guided meditations; nonfiction essays, poems and short fiction; rituals for solitaries and groups; mini-dramas for rituals; music and musical notation; art and photography; recipes (for foods, scented oils, incense, et cetera); devotional craft ideas (prayer beads, votive holders, et cetera); and more.

The cultures and regions covered by Anointed include (but are not limited to): Anatolia (including the Hittites and Mittani), Assyria, Canaan, Carthage, Crete (including the Minoan civilization), Cyprus, Israel and the Levant (including the Philistines), all of Mesopotamia (including the Babylonians and Sumerians), Palmyra and Petra, Persia, Phrygia, Phoenicia, the Sabeans, Ugarit and many others.

I am particularly interested in such Deities and beings of legend as Al'Lat, 'Anat (Anath), Apsu, Atargatis, Athirat (Asherah), Astarte, Ba'al, Chokmah (Wisdom), Dagan, Ea, Enki, Ereshkigal, Horon, Ilu (El), Inanna, Ishtar, The Kathirat, Marduk, Rashap (Reshef), Shapsh (Shapshu), Shekhina, Tiamat, Yamm, and many, many others. Since Anointed covers such a vast region, this is a far from complete list. Contact me if you have any questions.

I am *not* interested in Lovecraft and Cthuluverse pieces. Anything involving aliens, Sitchin or Von Daniken. Anything about Lilith. Anything having to do with demonology.

Submissions must be original, and your own work. All proceeds from the sale of Anointed are donated to a worthy charity; I therefore cannot offer any payment. All submissions are offerings to the gods, and therefore voluntary.

For more information check

http://www.neosalexandria.org/BAguidelines/pdf
http://www.neosalexandria.org/publishing.htm

Submissions open now and close on 'Ashuru Shamni (11 January 2011). Send all submissions, comments and questions to me at contact@canaanitepath.com or find me on FaceBook at http://www.facebook.com/canaanite.tess.dawson

More information here.

04 September 2010

Two poets from Bombay, Jeet Thayil and Arundhathi Subramaniam, are featured in the Levantine Center website as part of the September LR Poetry Selection.

Jeet Thayil (in photo), a poet, novelist and musician, is the author of four books of poems including These Errors Are Correct, and the editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. He lives in Bombay.

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet, editor and cultural curator. She is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent being Where I Live: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Publishers, UK, 2009). She has co-edited an anthology of Indian love poems in English (Confronting Love, Penguin, 2005) and has written a prose work, The Book of Buddha (Penguin India, 2005). She divides her time between Bombay and a yoga centre in south India.

Read their poems here.

25 August 2010

Deadline: 31 August 2010
Eligibility: no restrictions
Reading Fee: $18
Accepts (genre): one prose poem, micro-essay, short story
Prize/Payment: $1,000

The third annual Donald Barthelme Prize is now open! This year's prize will award $1,000 and publication to one prose poem, micro-essay, or short story of five hundred words or less. Our judge this year will be poet and essayist Joe Bonomo, author of the 2007 National Poetry Series winner Installations, as well as numerous nonfiction books. Entries will be open until August 31st.

You can read last year's winner (Matthew Yeager's "Property of Alvin Flover") and honorable mentions (Tracy Guzeman's "Einstein" and Joseph Holt's "Your Nightmare") in Gulf Coast issue 22.2.

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING:

To enter online (preferred), visit the online submissions manager and be sure to choose "Barthelme Prize for Short Prose" as your genre. Upload up to three previously unpublished prose poems, short stories, or micro-essays, each no more than five hundred words in length, all together in a single file. Do not include a cover letter, your name, or contact info of any kind in your uploaded document; please put this information in the "comments" field.

Once you've clicked "submit," you will be redirected to PayPal to authorize your $18 online reading fee, which also gets you a one-year subscription. You won't need a PayPal account, only a credit card. Multiple submissions are acceptable, but you must pay the fee for each entry, and you will only receive a single one-year subscription or renewal regardless of how many entries you submit. All entries will be considered for publication, though only one will receive our $1,000 prize. We'll contact you if there are any problems with your payment; please do not email us to confirm whether payment was received.

To enter by mail, send up to three previously unpublished prose poems, short stories, or micro-essays, each no more than five hundred words in length. Your name and address should appear on the cover letter only. All entries will be considered for publication, though only one will receive our $1,000 prize. Include an SASE for results. Manuscripts will not be returned. Your $15 postal reading fee, payable to "Gulf Coast," will include a one-year subscription. Multiple submissions are acceptable, but you must pay the fee for each entry, and you will only receive a single one-year subscription or renewal regardless of how many entries you submit.

Send Postal Entries to:
Gulf Coast Donald Barthelme Prize
Department of English
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-3013

More information here.

26 July 2010

The Naxi Men

Naxi men smoke long pipes
In the cobbled streets of Lijiang,
Think about new tunes for their wailing instruments,
Dandle the grandchildren on their knees
In the cool stone shadows,
Watching the bright parrots
Swing on iron perches.

Naxi men are minding the house,
Writing long poems,
Stroking their philosopher’s beards.

Out of town, Jade Dragon
Ice Mountain sits with its
craggy head in the clouds.


Pey Pey Oh has been published in Magma, Chrysalis, In Earnest, Accordian Flyer, Neon Clouds, Malaysian Poetic Chronicles, Poetry Underground and various anthologies. Born in Malaysia and educated in the US, she now lives and works in the UK as a therapist with essential oils and traditional Chinese medicine. This poem comes from her experience backpacking on her own through China in the year of Tiananmen Square.

19 June 2010

An adamant fly that's me

"Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm's length...It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you."

She patted me on my knuckles,
(just as Ms. Lee did, eons ago
sans a ruler),
told it's time to leave,
felt like a breeze,
subtle, yet not absent,
knocking, not knocking, yet.
I found her on the mirror next,
an eagle-shaped scar on her yellow forehead,
whispering mishmash in a tone, resembling
nightingale's soul music.
She didn't have any blemishes then
and her skin shone through
like her conscience, clear
as running water.
A glistening cloud of doubt lingered
as I breathed out, vapors of shrouded despair
gathered, mist.
She patted me, firmly this time,
insisting it was time to leave.
I told her I wasn't finished
being a woman. I still have clear fingernails
and I've the leisure to chew on 'em.
No debate raging in chimneys of higher echelons,
carcinogenic effects still unknown.
Despicable, audacious, preoccupations, they declare.
Let me chew on, I mumble!
My grandmothers didn't. My mothers dreamed.
I've fire in my eyes and long to be a poet,
the mystical, mythological, ordinary one
with words that bleed
a heart that engraves, strawberry blood.
The rhythm lurks,
I exist, a feather in a sheep's haystack.
I've to find it.
It'll take time. Please bear
and give me some breather, I hushed.
She nodded again, calling me
an adamant fly.





Divya Rajan's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apparatus, Gloom Cupboard, Danse Macabre, Read This, The Times of India and Asian Cha, among others. She has been a recipient of All-Bombay Intercollegiate Creative Nonfiction Writing Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and recently, one of her poems won the Chicago Poetry Cram contest. Originally from Bombay, she now lives in Chicago area, where she co- edits the poetry pages of The Furnace Review. The above poem is from a manuscript she's currently working on, titled Chanting Silhouettes.

13 May 2010

Each Flower

Each flower opens like memory.
Each mind is holiness.
Life is no unkind imposter.
Mother, am I the tree
rattled by the wind,
the gnashing storm?
Can I be a rustic,
trampled by man, his hieroglyphics?
Let all infirmities remain transparent;
like memory, that flower.




Ananya Guha has 4 collections of poetry in English. His poems have appeared in various anthologies, the latest being in the collection of poetry from North East India titled Dancing Earth (Penguin India). You can also find his works in Glasgow Review, Osprey Journal, Other Voices Poetry, Kritya, Muse India, among others.

Ireland

I sat dreaming in the land of Belfast,
where Bobby and others became ten,
Who is to blame for the blasts when children were
passing on the way to school?
In my quest for peace, I just remember them in prayers,
as I unknot the scroll of famine of the 19th century
where an ounce of gold could buy a few potatoes,
where strong lines were written across the sandy shores.
One hundred thirty thousand lives were lost.
I sat there in the twilight zone honouring
the dead, the martyred souls. Now I am
at an advance party congratulating humanity,
accepting the Tipperary Peace Prize,
honouring the daughter of the East with bare hands.
Benazir Bhutto fought for democracy wiping
tears before the last moments of her life.
Three shots rang in the late afternoon and a blast.
Thank you for hearing it as far as Ireland.





Mohammed Bugi was born in Pakistan, lived in exiles most of the time, and settled in Holland finally.

25 April 2010

Writer in another town

With a mundane syllable choice, the mouth
ordered a cup of cappuccino—
no sugar, no cinnamon, non-fat milk. Nothing
out of the ordinary like pink
polka dots on Maya’s dress
stained with tomatoes.

But the clouds of tedium dissipated
once the beverage touched
my lips. The mind flooded
with a stream of downpour—

words sailed, pen swam, ideas fluttered,
like fireflies in a jar flying, through
sheets of paper, challenging
the blunt edges to cut through the day.

Same coffee, same recipe, same block.
But I forget, a writer is a different person
                                                             on a holiday.





Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com) is a multi-genre writer and marketing professional living in New York City. She is the author of upcoming chapbook of poetry from Modern History press titled “Kaleidoscope: An Asian Journey of Colors.” Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals and anthologies across the US, UK, Canada, and India. She is a graduate of Columbia University in New York.

14 April 2010

in our skies
an emasculated sun
borrows silver light
from leaden birds
while a forgotten wound
is reopened by
a concrete phallus
and it rains green mucous
on the earth
where a grey peacock
spreads its fan
to keep the sun
from our eyes

we cry but our cries cannot
wash away the sky's venom

we laugh and our laughter drowns
the cries of the peacock

(a poem from the book We Called the River Red: Poetry from a Violent Homeland)





Author of the poetry collection We Called the River Red: Poetry from a Violent Homeland, Uddipana Goswami is also a researcher and media consultant. Her area of expertise, both as writer and researcher is the Northeast region of India – often called India’s troubled periphery. She has been addressing issues like insurgency, conflicts, militarization, nationalism, migration, displacement and ethnic reconciliation in Northeast India through her writings. She has worked with some major media houses, like the India Today Group and National Geographic Channel (India), before turning to sociological research. Her academic writings, short stories and poetry and occasional translations have been published in print as well as online from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, South Africa, Bangladesh and India. She is Assamese literature editor of Muse India, a literary e-journal. She blogs at www.jajabori-mon.blogspot.com.

22 March 2010

On the Loft

When the mind
meditates, turns off all the taps,
and sits on the loft—
cross-legged, like a tank
full of water, it hears only
the single leaking drop,
trickling into the ears and
filling up the whole
ocean.


Water, Water

Who comes first?
Jamnaben or the water,
the water or Jamnaben?
Everyday we anxiously wait
for them to synchronise.
Then Moses like she
will split the water
in three buckets.
With one she scrubs out
yesterday’s crumbs from
the tawas and handis.
With the other she swabs the floors
and won’t let the dust settle down
on our footsteps.
From the third she
rinses out our body shapes
from crumpled clothes.
Then she pegs them on a line
for a waterless tomorrow.
With water in her hands
we are made timeless
we can now cross any sea.

Note:
Tawas/handis - utensils





Minal Sarosh has a post-graduate degree in English Literature from Gujarat University . She has recently finished working on her first book of fiction. A collection of her poems 'Mitosis and other poems' was published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta in 1992. Her poems have appeared in The Times of India, Ahmedabad, Femina, Journal of Poetry Society India, The Silken Web, Winners Vol. III Mosiac, I Me Myself (Unisun Publications), among others; and have won in various competitions including the All India Poetry Competition 2005 and Creative Writing Competition 2006 of Unisun Publications.

20 February 2010

Otherllo's Path

Butterflies dropped dead from branches
Where they never grew
Dewdrops of nights that stifled dawns
Lay on your path

Or were they tiny handkerchiefs
Outlining a long sorrowful track?
White of course
Black with guile

Wordsmiths called
It green, envy
But when the foliage died
No one was left to pry

So, don’t walk that path dear Othello
Don’t wipe your eyes with
Those thunderstruck fingers, they’ll teach
You rage and us a loss forever to linger.

(This poem was first published in LIT UP MAGAZINE, USA)





Nabina lives two lives, shuttling between USA and India. Her first novel “Footprints in the Bajra” is available from Cedar Books, India, while her poetry and short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies in North America, India and Australia. Selected as an Associate Fellow for the prestigious Sarai-CSDS Fellowship 2010 (New Delhi India), Nabina has won prizes in the poetry contests organized by Prakriti Foundation (Chennai, India) in 2009, and by HarperCollins-India and Open Space in 2008 (India). Nabina is also a 2007 Joan Jakobson fiction scholar from Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, and a 2007 Julio Lobo fiction scholar from Lesley Writers’ Conference. A journalist and media person in India and the US for about 10 years in all, Nabina blogs at http://fleuve-souterrain.blogspot.com/ when not writing. Formally trained in Indian classical music, she has performed in radio and TV programs and acted in street theater productions in India. A bilingual with a Linguistics Masters, Nabina writes in three languages and is an editor with the literary journal Danse Macabre (USA).

18 February 2010

DECEIVING THE WORLD

A man, a woman:
Rubric of a romance.

But deceive our biographers, if any:
Insert misleading remarks in our diaries.
Manipulate names, invent new multiple
Identities for us and don't get married.

Words are foolish, they signify nothing.
They sing.

A team of sign experts couldn't decipher
This suppressed but non-erasable love.
Hushed voices, repeated question
'Do you miss me?' over the phone or collar-bone,
Cryptic contacts of the lips, slammed doors
And unwritten letters. The way you dismiss
My tenderness is subtle, no one knows but I.
One hour we wrestle on the bed, another
On the floor. Four times a month

My bare feet feel the centre of your chest.
You know the rest.

The world might be deceived
But we're not.

(Deceiving the World was first published in Envoi )





Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, UK. She is a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. More at www.sighming.com.