Thursday, March 28, 2024

November 2018

Prasenjit Dasgupta Decades back in our salad days, whenever we listened to the signature tunes of Doordarshan, AIR or the Military Band playing Sare jahan se accha, we were largely unaware of the genius behind the bliss those jingles offered. It was only later, as young men, did we learn...

Poems by Linda Ashok

MOLD When you left and I left When we both left our glasses to the loneliness that'll babysit our leaving the place that has seen us naked in each one of our eyes There were islands; green irises & black pupils they floated the way we buoyed in that moment of intimacy. INCENSE RIBS I am thinking of you. Don't move. Let the cars run over. Let people walk through. Let rain...

Glam & Glitz

Katacha Díaz Catching the last rays of sunshine on a lovely warm spring afternoon, Tim and I sat on our patio listening to the sounds of smooth Latin jazz floating through the air, and watched hummingbirds as they gracefully danced around bushes and wildflowers, sipping water from the fountain in...
Where Technocracy Ends The other day, since I couldn’t recall, I googled “What was I just thinking about?” and the computer would not give me the correct information to my inquiry. I asked it this question a million times over and every time it gave me the wrong answer. It felt good knowing there were still some...

Poems by Pitambar Naik

LONGING How can Kashmir be a hydrogen conspiracy? the passiveness, the aloofness—the longitude they search for their wriggled breathing abandoned history, stooped pride in city squares what is the DNA of their guillotined blood— Dalits they preserve solitariness in a ledge—Dalits they store pain in their barns—Dalits and then the masses of the holy land pray together for the...
Publisher: Red River (2018) ISBN-10: 8193613066 ISBN-13: 978-8193613061 Price: 300 INR Reviewed by: Koushik Sen Namrata Pathak’s book of poems, that’s how Mirai eats a pomegranate, although has myriad patterns, raises itself in a kind of impasto, that has the jump scare effect by a behemoth. Sometimes, this figure is invoked with an uncanny...
Jessica Bergquist I wonder how this looks, but I don’t wonder long enough to stop myself from walking in the door. I am faintly aware of the story that the tears in my black dress tells everyone around me, but I still open the door. It’s the first time I’ve...

Poems by Richa Sharma

CREATIVITY Excogitate a rainbow, The piebald mind breaks into, A woolgathering without rains, On furlough during emphasis, Precipitation and tedium. A breakthrough in a belfry, Is not a quantum of peerless words. A sockdolager of a man's oeuvre, Is also a renaissance of mirages. Scant advertency makes him think. DEATH Cessation is a penumbra of the foofaraw. The patina of sandalwood is...

Poems by Tissy Taylor

SHATTER Glass wall inside of me Looking to where I want to be How this widowed heart hides In plain sight, wishing to be seen False light is blinding me Until I can no longer breathe Quiet madness beguiles This raging fire, consuming Masked her wall of pretend Fettered anguish lingers within Imprisoned by the tides In murky depths a life...
Anthony Ilacqua The soda burned my nose a little. I took half the bottle in one swallow anyway. “I want to see the glass blowers,” Jill said. I pulled the soda bottle away from the face. “The air feels good here,” I said. The clouds over the ocean were rolling in...

Poems by Subir Sarkar

(translated from the original Bengali by Tuhin Sanyal) REMAKE The same old story of the hunter and the prey. Yet, no spine-chilling adventure. Coming out of the comfort zone. ‘Remake’ is a mockery-mixed dinner-table. DEPRESSION Wooden houses and continuous days of prose are sub-water swims and chairs laid near the fog, watching the depression of clouds forever is in itself a single scene. BIRD AND FEATHER One should know the...

Poems by Shernaz Wadia

RENDEZVOUS poems no longer emerge out of some verdant soil like lilies reflexively spreading their pink cheer they don’t happen as they did twisting out of a gnawing gut... glow worms on the screen shedding light in dark corners words tapping themselves out of their own accord have lost their easy fluidity stanched like blood from a wound they want me to...