Subramanian Shankar
I first read Naipaul in Malaysia as a teenager. I would check out his books from the library of the club to which my family belonged. I recognized the world that Naipaul described in early books like A House for Mr. Biswas and Miguel Street, though I had...
POTPOURRI
1.
The other day
When we became very political,
We flagged our posts;
After the sabbath,
We put hashtags
On our souls.
2.
We survived like tramlines in the city,
Some parts remained,
Some tracks gone,
Some lines forgotten,
Some kept like tradition.
3.
That plectrum which you held
Between your fingers
And with which you awakened
Fire and ice,
Found that under the mattress,
And you told...
In Pains
Like a mighty wind, it came
Infant memories of joy defamed
The punctured hearts on the slings
of torment catapulted to the strings
to sign the hymns of bitterness
Those heavy hearts in battered souls
Becoming numb to the pangs of death
Stealing the love of nature to their hub
Staring the ocean of forgetfulness never...
TO SEE
To see
as I see you,
through beetle eyes—
mosaic percussion
of hundred incarnations,
to see,
as I see you
through strange beetle eyes—
like
strange art
on cryptic flowers,
strange streaks
at strange places.
TO THINK
Like the one
who sits cowered
in the haunt
of the anticipated halt,
mind riveting
like a forced swing,
head synchronized
with the ejaculating bus,
the light of creatures
and things,
passing
in and out
as it...
Sandalwood
Some foundation, concealer
a little rouge
a subtle lipstick
her reflection disappoints
lines, hard earned, unwanted
her reflection smiles
it helps
She dusts and tidies
arranges
rearranges
old photographs
of ghosts
She lights a candle
sandalwood
she vacuums
and sweeps
she polishes
and primps
her home
herself
just in case
Two Scientists
I should be in work
instead, I sit in a Dublin café
tightly clutching a cup of tea
as if it might...
Malini Mukherjee
Dear Maliwan,
I was wondering if I should write ‘Dear’ against your name. It is, in our culture, customary to write Dear only to someone who is endeared to you. I don’t even know you. You don’t know me either. Yet I am writing this letter because we had...
MOTHER COURAGE
I was not strong, rather meek and shy,
Saw my mother catching wind between palms,
Trying to hold me
while lighting the dusk lamp,
The mellow sun greeted her resilience, her bravery,
Stroking at the edge of her Bengal cotton sari,
Not knew,
the reason of sadness flooding her body.
Her voice then dropped to a...
J. Ross Archer
The blinking red, white, and blue lights I saw in my rear-view mirror startled me. Daydreaming, I must have not been paying attention to how fast I was driving. I pulled over and waited for the officer to approach my car. I knew to be aware of...
STEPHEN MCQUIGGAN
The voice from the intercom froze Tina in the act of adjusting her garter belt. It wasn’t the information the voice relayed, for in truth she had been checking the digital readout (half concealed by condom packets, jars of lube, whips and furry handcuffs) every few minutes and...
EMILY AS THE FIELD IS STILL A FIELD
Even if Emily is naked in the field
the worth of that dirt is determined
by the season. Though that
has never stopped me from referring
to her as the bloom, as the crop,
as the reason why all of Ohio’s two-lane
highways have been built. I know...
Checkmate
This is how it rains.
A cloudburst
when you laugh and compete
with the spattering droplets
and I
harvest a silence
in a pair of pretentious shades
tears have long muted
consoled and labelled.
Everything has a cure
but no one knows or recalls
what heals first
pain or time?
We possess disintegrated memories
petals, showers, ice pellets, leaves, dust, debris, gust, silence
scattered
in...
BLACK IN GRAY AMERICA
(in memory of Sam Cornish)
You recalled a city of stinks:
the shabby breath of yellow teeth,
filthy socks on crusty feet,
blood-spill dried on the sidewalk.
The dirt-floor basement room
your mother tried to sweep clean
rustled all night as rodents
named and renamed you in dreams.
The sorry carcass of Baltimore
coughed up feverish...