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Literary Contributions
The Uncommon Man
by Srinjay Chakravarti
Circa 2000 A.D.
India's Deputy Prime Minister
looks like him,
and seems quite proud of the fact.
So does the head office clerk,
the babu in the insurance company
who lives next door but one,
and the bemused milkman in Burra Bazaar.
He never speaks a word,
but his silence
is more than eloquent.
Laxman lets the pictures
do all the talking.
A bristling white moustache,
a shiny pate,
extra-large glasses
and a quizzical look
that makes us chuckle
every morning at breakfast.
Prices corkscrew through the roof
and his garrulous wife hits the ceiling
at his inscrutable silence.
A coalition government
survives starvation deaths
in the land of milk and honey,
leaving him speechless.
He is at a loss for words
as the ship of state
has its electoral sails
rigged out by history-sheeters.
And he can only watch dumbfounded
as students gherao professors
and teach them a lesson or two.
Politicians get in on the Defection Act,
jockeying for position
to trade horses in Parliament.
He can only hold his peace.
Bandhs, hartals, dharnas:
for fifty-odd years
he has been a mute witness
to the decline and fall
of the Indian Republic,
clad in the same check coat
and white dhoti,
the common man
with uncommon sense.
Notes:
The Common Man is the unnamed protagonist of the YOU SAID IT political
cartoons by R.K. Laxman that appear on the front page of an Indian newspaper.
Novelist R.K. Narayan, his brother, described the Common Man as a prototypical
middle-class Indian, "in a check coat, an umbrella under his arm
and a slippery pair of spectacles".
history-sheeters: criminals with long police records
gherao: a form of coercion in which employers are surrounded by workers
and prevented from leaving
bandh: shutdown as a mark of protest
hartal: strike, lockout
dharna: sit-in demonstration
Srinjay Chakravarti is
a 34-year-old journalist, economist and poet based in Salt Lake City,
Calcutta, India. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications
in nearly 30 countries. His first book of poems has received an award
from Australia.
Gate of Heaven
by Doug Broadhead
God steps lightly
in and out of time
as though it were His playground,
disrupts the senses,
like He had a better plan
distrust your very thoughts
unless defined by Him
they bear you heavenward
small worlds need to be turned
upside down,
shaking little gods
from clay pots;
but then,
mercy is an ocean you wake in
when the earthquake's done
and vision floods the soul
love goes on forever,
past the fragile moments we can hold;
breathes on beyond our hearing
until the heart
excludes all other sound
Doug Broadhead is a poet residing in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Day is Born
of Night
by Uzeyir Lokman CAYCI
In the same places crocodiles frequent
Peacocks are also found to live.
Red poppies are strewn
About the forest paths.
The sun is born
in our dreams.
Poetic reflections
Of stars
Never flare out.
All our accumulated joys
always stay with us, within sustained.
At its own inimitable level
The warmth of our relationships spreads out.
Tiffs arising out of introversion
Have no place in our lives.
Friendships,
Multifaceted like diamonds,
Shine over the Nations' borders.
All that is beautiful breathes.
Our own Age's worth is on the mend.
Let's not waste our time talking in
Hypothetical riddles
Every place is distinct, and
we should not confuse it with another.
We can overcome the nuances of differences.
We run the race
By effacing doubts
In our thoughts.
Poetry from October 2007
I'm a Riverboat Boy:
Poem on Halsted Street
By Michael Lee Johnson
As sure as church bells
Sunday morning, ringing
on Halsted and State Street,
Chicago,
these memories will
be soon forgotten.
I stumble in my life with these words
like broken sentences.
I hear and denounce myself in the distance,
mumbling chatter off my lips.
Fragments and chips.
Swearing at the parts of me I can't see;
walking away rapidly from the spiritual thoughts of you.
I am disjointed, separated from my Christian belief.
I feel like I'm at the bottom of sinner's hill
playing with my fiddle, flat fisted and busted.
So you sing in the gospel choir; sang in Holland,
sang in Belgium, from top to bottom,
the maps, continents, atlas are all yours.
I detach myself from these love affairs
drive straight, swiftly,
to Hollywood Casino Aurora.
Fragments and chips.
I guess we gamble in different casinos,
in different corners of God's world,
you with church bingo; and I'm a riverboat boy.
No matter how spiritual I'm once a week,
I can't take you where my poems don't follow me.
Church poems don't cry.
Mr. Michael Lee Johnson
lives in Chicago, IL after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada
during the Vietnam War era. He is a freelance writer, and poet. He has
been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Fuji,
Nigeria Africa, India, United Kingdom. He is the author of: The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom.
Out They Come
By Matthew Wylie
From the nascent crescendo
of high
summer poplars
and my gypsy heart,
I beg for peasant wolves
who cry before wounded
and
run riotously across
the iris lust
I have collected behind dreams and
wet mornings.
A collection of nocturnes and songs
From
your homeland
To
accompany your
lazy prayers.
Songs of old, esoteric poets
Sung when holy things
Are let loose to
Haunt and hug our opal eyes,
Our
nights,
Our
obsolete
But
looked for
Labyrinths
Even the seraph sky
Bears witness to this
Eternal Happening.
We
know
Because we can see
It heard in our Nomadic
Whispers,
And through our exposed
hands that successfully
resist both nightmare and angel.
The way little girls
Smoke and smolder inside
Little boys.
The way the gleaner
Rejoices in her work
And holds onto both
the ceremony and the labor
of
her olive womb.
But survival is not green,
It
is turquoise, black, and red.
Like the space between these words
And your hot mouth.
This, the narrative
Of blood turned dust and
Dispersed among the lily fields.
is so that
the
same intimate
Moments
can exist
Between
our wondering
and wandering.
Like
they do before our
Gods and the ancient songs
We
are singing now.
Not a word of this
Would I be content
Without.
Matthew Wylie emigrated to Canada from the United States last year.
He has taught literature / writing at universities, colleges, and private
schools in both the U.S. and Canada. He has been published in various
scholarly / writing journals, such as The Toronto Slavic Quarterly,
Cinetext: Film and Philosophy, and other like-minded journals. He
currently lives with his wife in Toronto.
Chalkboards
By Allen Glines
Millions of black chalkboards stood before me,
Displaying every name in bright white lines.
Death sweeps through our lives like a violent wind.
Its breeze blows erasers across each name.
Nothing is left but smudges of nonsense,
And another life is quickly put out.
New names will be scratched in to replace them,
But with each one comes another smudge mark.
How can we mourn when time doesn't allow
A chance to shed single tears surviving
Losing everything we used to hold dear?
We're too busy focusing on fresh names.
I want to take those names off the chalkboard,
And put them on something more permanent.
Life should be priceless rather than worthless.
Are we meager marks on a black chalkboard,
Or beautiful beings full of meaning?
Give me a hatchet; I'll destroy them all.
Millions of black chalkboards stood before me,
Except they didn't stand quite as proudly.
Black splinters sat in chaotic ruins.
Names were etched into our genetic code.
We can't forget those who blazed trails we walk.
Apathy is free from our condition.
Allen Glines is a student in the English Department at Weber State University
in Ogden, Utah. He has graduated with an Associates degree in Creative
Writing, and next year will have finished my Bachelors degree in the
same specialty. He has published in several journals over the past five
years.
Poetry from September 2007
Love
By Gu Xie
1. Let’s Cherish this World
Let’s cherish this world
For only within human beneficent creation
Can it have a sort of
Eternity of peace
Let’s cherish all time
For years, just like flowers
Only under our careful attendance
Can it in our heart
Send forth unfading freshness
Let’s cherish love filled with hope
If you have a lifetime dream
Not lonely you will be
If you regard happiness as an itinerary of destiny
Life will never have darkness
2. Mother
A sort of peace
The moonlight illuminating all things
Stars far
Yet still watching us growing
The air giving us infinite warmth
A sort of lofty memory
In our mind
With each one’s childhood still in reserve
The footsteps to never head for a stage
That teach humans how to be strong
When you give your life
To another
All of you then become a blessing
And your nurture then brightens the eyes of the world
3. Rainbow
This is not a brief smile
This is very much likely a magnificence for the land
Seldom awake
This is not a satisfaction of your fantasy
Freedom, will always burn in a dreamland
Even if past is its brilliance
A sort of conviction
Will still rise and fall in your imagination
This is not simply praises for things
Voice of soul, sometimes
Will into gorgeousness change
If you believe in brightness
You will then own
Rainbow-like enthusiasm to change things
4. Love
Friend of enmity
Power of the unfortunate
Dance void of spectators
God with hope for no payment
Like vagabond music
All along with the never exhausted beauty
Like night roses with their prettiness not distinctly made out
That can yet through fragrance comfort your
No resting breath
Being everywhere
Her life is but out of your sight
With her blood always irrigating the land
Mature people thus comes to realize
What’s called a sacred power
5. If you Believe in Eternity
If you believe in eternity
You will know that pain
A forgettable secret
If you believe in eternity
Destiny will come out with wings
Prayers could guide life
Flying towards another spiritual earth
If you believe in eternit
You will step out of the homeland of time
Hope will another sort of creation become
Only youth may mankind forever have
While death will probably be
No more remembered
6. Destiny
Know where I am
Just in the travel you start your life
Know where I am
Just in the expression you start your travel
Know where I am
Just in the direction you start your expression
Know where I am
Just in the endlessness
You start your direction
7. The World
A flower four seasons that pierces
From your rich sparkle
I sight your
Broadness mature
A flower for the blue sky that yearn
From your rhythm moving
I cannot imagine
What fault would come with beauty
A flower that needs harmony forever
From your lonely desire
How can I help you
Out of the endless noise of mankind
8. Freedom
For hundreds of thousands of years
A sort of fruit life looks most forward to
For hundreds of thousands of years
A sort of fruit that fails to up grow
The fruit for hundreds of thousands of years
Entangled all day with war and peace
A sort of fruit, for hundreds of thousands of years
That has not for a short moment
Had any momentary peace
But for imagination to breed
9. Hope
Just like a tree in a wind
All the wait, is to
Greet lifelong greenery
Just like roots deep in earth
An expanse of pureness in a cloud
Will be the beauty they want to look up at
All creations always cheer this
Rhythm of conviction
All human efforts are no better than
The intimacy with this sacredness
If yearning could sprout
Trees would then get all magnificent graces
So would roots in solitude dream about forests
Gu Xie, member of Chinese
Writers Association, born in Shanghai in 1960s, started his literary
creation at the age of 14. After graduation, he worked successively
as a road builder, warehouse keeper, journalist, literary editor, editorial
director and chief editor. He is the author of six collections of solo
poetry: Selected Poetry of Gu Xie, Tai Ji,( the Supreme Ultimate),
State Symphony, Steps of Guangzhou, Pudong Symphony and etc. with over
twenty long poems published. Gu Xie has won many poetry awards like
Guangdong Government Literary Award for Poetry in 1996, Guangzhou Government
Literature and Art Award for Poetry in 2002, Guangdong Government Literature
and Art Award for Broadcast & Television Poetry in 2004. His poems
have appeared in various well-known large-scale literary magazines like
Lotus, Flower City, Muse, Hunan Literature, Guangzhou Literature and
Art and some others, and in numerous anthologies like People Literature
Press Triennium Anthology, Chinese Writers Press Collection of Poetry,
Flower City Selected Works for the 50th Anniversary of Guangdong Writers
Association, Chinese Literature Press Panda Books issued overseas (Gu
Xie was the fourth contemporary poet introduced abroad by this press
till then after the three others outstanding : Ai Qing Xu Zhimo and
Shu Ting since the founding of the Republic.). Before the issue of the
collection Tai Ji (a long epic poem), a bilingual one, the author unexpectedly
received a letter from the White House with the signature of Mr. Bill
Clinton, American President at the time expressing his appreciations
and regards. Now this work in English version still available in North
America, Australia and Europe is collected by both American Library
of Congress and Chinese National Library,Still some works of Gu Xie
are gathered in Chinese National Library, Modern Chinese Literature
Library & Hong Kong Central Library. The poet also writes fiction,
poetics, prose, song lyrics, essays, travel notes and other types of
work. In 2001, as one 0f the few chosen representatives nationwide,
Gu Xie attended the 5th National Youth Writers Conference held in Beijing.
In 2000 and 2003, as a member of Chinese Writers Delegation, Gu Xie
went on visits to Japan and Pakistan respectively for literary exchange,
where he gave a lecture Opening & Literature in Pen Tokyo Centre,
and improvised a short verse Pakistan Pakistan, which was read aloud
at an official party Islamabad. In 2000, Gu Xie was invited to serve
as College Writer at Guangdong Arts College for three years. Since 2003
he has been working as faculty in Guangzhou Writing and Research Centre.
He has also served on the board of the Poetry Society in Guangdong Writers
Association. As Vice-president of Guangzhou Writers Association, he
continues to teach poetry as well as work on his own creative writing.
Currently Gu Xie plans to produce a long epic poem.
A GURKHA MOTHER
(Death of a Precious Jewel)
by Satis Shroff
The gurkha with a khukri
But no enemy
Works for the United Nations
And yet gets shot at
In missions he doesn't comprehend.
Order is hukum, hukum is life
Johnny Gurkha still dies under foreign skies.
He never asks why
Politics isn't his style
He's fought against all and sundry:
Turks, Tibetans, Italians and Indians
Germans, Japanese, Chinese
Argentenians and Vietnamese.
Indonesians and Iraqis.
Loyalty to the utmost
Never fearing a loss.
The loss of a mother's son
From the mountains of Nepal.
Her grandpa died in Burma
For the glory of the British.
Her husband in Mesopotemia
She knows not against whom
No one did tell her.
Her brother fell in France,
Against the Teutonic hordes.
She prays to Shiva of the Snows for peace
And her son's safety.
Her joy and her hope
Farming on a terraced slope.
A son who helped wipe her tears
And ease the pain in her mother's heart.
A frugal mother who lives by the seasons
And peers down to the valleys
Year in and year out
In expectation of her soldier son.
A smart Gurkha is underway
Heard from across the hill with a shout
'It's an officer from his battalion.
A letter with a seal and a poker-face
"Your son died on duty", he says,
"Keeping peace for the country
And the United Nations".
A world crumbles down
The Nepalese mother cannot utter a word
Gone is her son,
Her precious jewel.
Her only insurance and sunshine
In the craggy hills of Nepal.
And with him her dreams
A spartan life that kills.
gurkha: soldier from Nepal
khukri: curved knife used in hand-to-hand combat
hukum: Befehl/command/order
shiva: a god in Hinduism
OH, ARCHANA
by Satis Shroff
Archana came from Kirtipur,
The hill of the noseless and earless.
She was a Vajracharya woman
Of the priest caste.
She spoke a language
Full of sweet monosyllables.
A young woman with fine features,
She could stare at one
And see through to the depths of one's heart.
Raj was a Chettri from the Eastern hills,
With a sacred thread on his neck,
From the warrior and noble caste.
They loved each other in the Nepalese way,
Talking with their eyes and hearts.
Never in physical ecstasy,
Always platonic and united in dreams.
No rumbas, no slow fox.
Just the sweet odour of her hair and neck
In moments of stolen darkness
In a movie hall,
With two hundred curious eyes,
Focused on the Bollywood silver screen.
Or was it on their necks?
In the Shadow of the Himalayas
by Satis Shroff
My Nepal, what has become of you?
Your features have changed with time.
The innocent face of the Kumari
Has changed to the blood-thirsty countenance of Kal Bhairab,
From development to destruction,
You're no longer the same.
There's insurrection and turmoil
Against the government and the police.
Your sons and daughters are at war,
With the Gurkhas again.
Ideologies that have been discredited elsewhere,
Flourish in the Himalayas.
With brazen, bloody attacks
Fighting for their communist rights,
And the rights of the bewildered common man.
The Nepalese child-soldier gets orders from grown-ups
And the hapless souls open fire.
The child-soldier cannot reason,
Shedding precious human blood.
Ach, this massacre in the shadow of the Himalayas.
We can only hope for peace.
Om shanti,
Om.
Satis Shroff has been a journalist since 1973 and has worked with The
Rising Nepal, an English daily in Kathmandu, as a features editor, and
knows the media and politics in Nepal as an insider. He is a writer
and poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) who also writes
on ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology
and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Science in Germany, and Creative
Writing in Freiburg & Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator
between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer
and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.
Orange Like That
By Shannon J. Prince
At the first eighth of the orange we are back in Mexico and for a moment
it’s
peaceful, the fields look like
a verdant sea and she can pretend her life is not vendable, her
health and her hands have no price attached. I, unborn, am watching her
as she hands the orange to me and I pry seeds from the messy flesh that
stings my papercuts. This is before they spray the DDT.
At the second eighth we are reminded
about the colors of a huipil, her sister in
Guatemala who breathed poison
so others could eat bananas, Josefina, Ofelia, Heriberto, the names
of children poison will never allow her to conceive.
The third eighth she rips from the fruit
reminds her of live-in days in San Diego,
(the lovely zoo where she took
her three young charges). Back home, she wasn’t allowed to eat la jefa’s
fruit, its too expensive she said, even for the woman who loved her
children by proxy, but never as much as she would come to love me.
At the fourth eighth we veer towards
father whom she met at Mass in a horrid
orange suit, (but oh, weren’t
those the times, and he remains so beautiful.) He made her fearful not
as men are rumored to do but because she feared for his heart, so soft
it could be pulled apart at any dueno’s whim like the tenuous eights
of an orange.
Now my father can speak, we are at the
fifth eighth and how his heart survived its
sale under overpasses and in
the backs of trucks on the way to pick the orchards of the people who
persecuted him for being illegal. Though he believed La Virgin would
appear next to him one day in the boughs to give him a blessing, she
didn’t, yet she sent her daughter, my mother.
The sixth eighth makes us silent, we
have said nearly everything we can bear to
say about the metronome of chores,
and we do not wish to speak about the cancer that spreads through her
body like a spring of orange blossoms. All the beauty in her life, save
me and Papi has been for someone else, her nightmares ensured the viability
of other peoples dreams.
On the seventh eighth I think how I will
not let them put roses on her grave, roses
grown in Ecuador by women so
full of pesticide their limbless children fall prematurely from their
wombs and no one can afford flowers for the graves.
Now the ignominious “eighth,” bulging
freakishly from the sphere, pesticide born
ninth eighth, strange like how
Mayan women don’t know how to not wear bright colors, even when being
sacrificed, strange like El Negro, el padre, from Georgia who says his
people used to sing in the cotton fields because black people didn’t
know how to quiet their song. Strange like how Mayans, Blacks don’t
know how to give up even when being given up, he says, they harbor freakish
hope among horror.
I eat the last eighth, the sun flesh
salty with tears.
Shannon Prince is a creative writing
major and junior at Dartmouth College. In addition to writing, she is
an activist for indigenous and African issues, a ceramics maker, and
a travel addict. Her favorite activity is dancing the salsa with the
elderly people she serves at a local Salvation Army community center.
She writes poetry, creative non-fiction, and fiction that covers everything
from nature and love poems, retellings of fairy tales, and the oral
histories of marginalized peoples. She have been published in Frodo's
Notebook, Falcon Wings, KUHF magazine, Imprint, and Rice University's
Writers in the Schools Magazine.
The Immigrant Experience
by Nyla Obaid
The longer I am away
The more I remember
The trivial details
...of home.
Immigrant
by Nyla Obaid
Bengali eyes, Bengali smile, and most importantly, Bengali skin.
This curse of the chocolate colour- that hold me back
From being purely Canadian.
Canadian morals, Canadian tastes, Canadian English.
This unfamiliarity with Bangladesh- that hold me back
From being purely Bengali.
I'm just an immigrant
A Canadian with a Bengali appearance.
A Bengali with Canadian values.
Style, Intellect and most importantly, Education.
These and other qualities- that hold me back
From fitting in with the working class.
Low living, blue collared jobs and most importantly- Blue collared wages.
These conditions imposed upon our family- that hold me back
From fitting in with the elite.
I'm just an immigrant
An upper class family in a blue collared situation.
A working class family with upper class values.
Just an immigrant.
From neither here, not there.
Bangladesh
by Nyla Obaid
At a family dinner
Inevitably, the conversation led to Bangladesh.
Inevitably, that led to the problems.
We have the 8th largest labour force,
Yet we are the most corrupted.
I want to be that lawmaker, police the people of Bangladesh.
We have a beautiful democracy,
Yet no true leadership.
I want to be that leader, be the strength of Bangladesh.
We have acres of undeveloped farmland,
Yet the cities are overcrowded.
I want to be that architect, plan the structure of Bangladesh.
We have strong international relations,
Yet not enough export partners.
I want to be that diplomat, bring you all to Bangladesh.
We have the some of the richest paddy fields,
Yet some of the worst floods in the world.
I want to be God, change all of Bangladesh.
But i am none of that.
All i am is a mere writer,
Writing, hoping to inspire the people of Bangladesh.
Nyla Obaid lives in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada.
Poetry from Volume 1
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