Inaugural Issue

We are the angry men
We are the confused men
Confronting each other
Our heads filled with rage.
When we shout at each other
Our voices are loud and meaningless...

'I'm one of fourteen siblings,
 I found out all of my siblings have the same birthday,’ my father said.
Some of them were qawwali singers
Others were magicians;
Specialized in curing grief, and agony.
‘I loved all of them –...

The most abstract mountain
Out there, amidst the clouds
Is in fact the most grounded,
the most concrete
Just like my sorrow that is
masked with joyful dancing...

I thought I heard a soft thud
At the door
I opened it, but there was no one there
The street was empty as if the people
Had with one accord
Sought hibernation...

Hanging between two towers –
a swimming pool clasped
within the Infinity Loop –
floating web - a wire mesh
called the cloud – Deya –
causes architectural shivers..

Aliens are seated in the metro rail.
With their eyes glued to their smartphones,
and their headphones plugged into their ears, 
they have shut out the earth's reality around them.
Their faces are robotic and restless, being totally
commanded by the signals of the virtual world...

Always
my sister will repeat in anger
what Amma says more subtly: that I am to blame
for all that goes wrong
in the bedroom.
Everyday, in the bedroom...

you look so good when you smile; I remember
those moonlit winter nights -
it is not that they resemble you, but
it is just that I like them a lot! oh, I know
I do know that these
are all metaphors, words upon words...

I have seen these lines being used in love letters. I know how dear these lines are to the young lovers, in particular. But whenever I read these lines, I feel that I hear the voice of poetry. Poetry, as if, whispers in the ears of a poet, words which are intimate, seductive and smell of the aroma of new birth.

FROM THE DESK OF ETHOS LITERARY JOURNAL

We are proud to launch Poetry India: Contemporary Poetry in English and Translation, a project that aims at curating poetry by Indian poets or poets of Indian origin. Although India claims to be the world's second-largest English-speaking country, according to the 2011 Census,...

I stay on the seventeenth floor.
The moon can see my solitude.
But I cannot touch her sky.
I can see the sea below.
Inside it too there is a sky.
Behind me is a sea of slums...

sit on the banks of Benares 
with Sant Kabir in my lap 
breathing the ancient scriptures.
The air settles in moist colours 
of marigold desires.
My soul is smeared with sindoor...