Title: The Wild Essential
Writer: Claudine Nash
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Publishing Date: 2017
Language: English
Price: USD 14.00
Reviewed by: Melissa A. Chappell
The Wild Essential is Claudine Nash’s second full-length poetry collection. It is preceded by her poetry collection, Parts per Trillion (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a poetry chapbook, The Problem with Loving Ghosts...
The Fog of Pain
You told me not to worry. As many speakers would be along the way, entering through the different doors, could tell us about the stars’ songs, theories, and critical turns. But, do you know, in the rain-wet afternoon, among the full house audience, I was absent?...
Home
When the tree shed all
leaves under a blue
naked sky,
someone whispered: It’s spring.
I sat a crow on the barren tree
that melted down before
the black bird escaped
in to oblivion.
Pebbles strewn around
the pathway laughed
& walked straight
into my heart
When I found the gate
locked after a long journey,
the road announced:
You’re home.
Skeleton
Standing alone in front,
of...
Kushal Poddar
Hiss
Illias sat for hours on a bench that looked dusty but the cleaning stuff did his job as per his daily schedule. When he finally met the authority, the officer took his application, written like a summer river, and said nothing.
Illias went to the forest department. Went to...
MANNEQUIN
It wants to be alive, to know sense and have lucid dreams. However, the possibility of a lone storefront mannequin awakening is a dream. Frozen in the bright neon of the city lights, unable to motion her wants or needs, the mannequin remains silent.
Yet even the impossible things can...
Ankur Konar
Angshuman Kar is a well-known name in the map of Bengali poetry. The anthologies like Khelna Pistol (1998), Apel Saharer Samrat (2001), Nasho Square Feeter Jadukar (2006), Jehadi Tomake (2008) and Amar Sonar Harin (2012) have established Kar as a key figure in the world of contemporary Bengali...
Shikhandin
Sarvannan sat hunched on the front passenger seat. His forehead felt hot in spite of the cool air pouring out without a break from the A/C. His eyes darted about. Every time a bus or car came close, his left foot pressed down, as if to hit the brakes,...
Along the River
We point out the different birds to one another.
Like teenage boys showing off their knowledge of astronomy.
Find goldfinches and cedar waxwings in the trees along the river,
tiny redpolls and grosbeaks chasing gnats down below.
In the water, cormorants lurk, wings spread like vultures
night-herons stalk lumbering carp in slow...
Tongues
I don't care if Jesus died for my sins
I tell my Sunday School teacher after
class, He'll have to do better than that to
get me to come back next week and then I
leave her without saying goodbye atop
the two-by-four-and-plywood porch of our
trailer-classroom, or is that our classroom
-trailer, whatever it is it has...
Home
It was party time.
I went to a party
at a known place.
It was party time.
I went to the party
as their chief guest.
It was party time.
I went to a party
at a house
I used to live,
for some time.
Ode to a Graveyard
City of angels
tombed in silence.
A solemn stillness
is held in the air.
A hollow...
THE PARTY
Such a mix
at her party—
one worshiped
his own genius.
another was too flippant.
a third was
a freethinker,
a fourth, a savant.
The combination
could only be uncomfortable.
And throw in a hypocrite.
a born pessimist,
the usual boorish academics,
and even the weather
could not settle
on rain or sunshine.
Maybe
the party-giver
was asking too much,
relied on diversity
as a crutch.
ended with discordance...
Maria Hiers
“A lone wolf is a wolf that is searching, and what it seeks is another wolf. Everything in a wolf’s nature tells it to belong to something greater than itself: a pack.”
She came to me, colored in. Leslie’s first words to me: “Can you stay for a few...