Civil Guardsmen
From a field of grasses dried
by wind, two civil guardsmen stare
toward the sun for traffic
on the lonely road
they have been stationed to protect.
They are tall
against the burnt horizon,
still as the ground itself,
and one is the reflection of the other
as, side by side, they stand
in place. Should one
turn around,...
suicide
paula’s weak moment
leaving me early
sad lonely feeling
nightly she returns
softly whispering
her lost love
still in my heart
bliss
alone in library
empty used bookstore
roaming shelves
sacred experience
like attending church
feeling hopeful promise
quietly turning pages
becoming dreamer again
freedom
waking to birdsong
before first light
building small fire
boiling water from stream
instant coffee
oats in tin cup
ready for journey
picking way over deadfall
brushing aside cobwebs
escaping...
Deepayan Bhattacharjee
I hate the coffee they serve at Starbucks. But I like one of the baristas in our local shop. So I go to that terrible coffee shop almost every evening, stay there for two to three hours, read a little and study for a while and write some...
“The maker has no control. This is sortilege, the magic of inditing.”
Hello Sanjeevji! It’s a pleasure to be interviewing you. Let me tell you, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Nine Summers Later, and This Summer and That Summer, your latest release. I’ve also read a bunch of your newer poems among...
Distant Thunder
I. Monster Mash
My sister noticed first:
“You walk like an old lady.”
I was forty-six, but she was right.
I could not, would not, see.
One day on the beach in Hermosa,
walking along the shore,
I stopped and looked back.
The sea tried to hide the evidence
but I was too quick:
step slide, step slide,...
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
An airless pink balloon rested in the Ash tree by the lake all Spring. Every day I walked by it and wondered when a gust of wind would unseat it, but it was tenacious. I once saw a short Mexican man peering at it, as if he...
The Removal of Sin in a World Without Sin
Turning once again toward the sea,
strong arms move my head
to look at the land instead,
a desert landscape beige, bland
sand the monotonous menu
for my eyes that have seen it all before.
Defiant, I turn to feast on the wild water,
currents pushing the shore...
Writa Bhattacharjee
Fantasy fiction is one of the fastest growing genres in Indian popular culture today. Spurred by access to international books and media, as well as the rise of a new breed of authors, fantasy has been rising in popularity over the last couple of decades. But what exactly...
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...
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...
Jagari Mukherjee
The story of post-independence Indian English poetry can be traced to Nissim Ezekiel’s A Time To Change (1952). Since then, Indian English poetry has grown in leaps and bounds, with luminaries like Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawala, A.K. Ramanujan, Dilip Chitre, Keki Daruwala, and Jayanta Mahapatra dominating...
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...