Letter from the Editor. Darcie Friesen Hossack
There is not a particle of life that does not bear poetry within it. -Gustave Flaubert
Like the spring wildflowers (which are still a month away where I live), this spring edition of WordCity is bursting with colour.
One of the living things now making its way into the world is a new book of poetry by our own Sue Burge, who curates and creates each issue’s offerings of Literary News and Writing Advice.
In this month’s Book Reviews section, Geraldine and I have created a page full of books that celebrate all of our editors. Sue is there with another of her titles, but I want to use my space here to say how proud I am of her for this spectacular accomplishment! As this is our official Spring issue, with threads of the season, including Passover, Easter and Ramadan running through it, this book feels like the first flower to push its way up through the soil.
Here are a few words about Sue from Julia Webb:
In the 1980s Sue Burge worked at the Royal Academy of Dancing and witnessed the effect of AIDS on the world of dance. Confetti Dancers investigates her memories of this era. It begins with a mythic, psycho-geographic journey to Russia and Eastern Europe where dancers feature amidst a wider cast of brides, witches, film-makers and lovers before moving to a very different poetic landscape to explore the intimacy and universality of loss.
“The mythological and the very real collide in this startling and profoundly moving collection by Sue Burge. Subjects as diverse as modern Russia, the AIDS epidemic among ballet dancers in the eighties, family history and lockdown are skilfully woven together – managing to walk a delicate line between the profoundly personal and the worldly. This is a collection that reaches inside you and twists you up. These poems spoke to me and changed me a little – which is what a good collection should do. Burge does not shy away from the difficult stuff, but there is an optimism here too, that shines through and left me with an overarching sense of hope.” Julia Webb
So check out this link to Confetti Dancers, then be sure to visit our page of books. Also, don’t miss Sue’s writing advice for this month, which is to create a Writer in Residency program right where you are, with or without permission.
Thanks to Sue, I’m going outside to pin a poem to a tree!
Podcast with Jane Spokenword
In this month’s podcast we introduce you to Australian author Sylvia Petter. “More of a sharer than a teacher” she writes short, long, serious, sexy and fun. Her stories, poetry, articles, and book reviews appear online, in magazines and anthologies, at Ether Books and on her blog website. ~ Jane Spokenword
More on Sylvia Petter
and Jane Spokenword
Fiction
Edited by Sylvia Petter
The fiction this month connects Europe and the USA and represents a spring awakening of sorts to a variety of modes and impulses.
First there are some “Miniatures” by the Austrian writer Günther Kaip, translated into English by Hillary Keel, who used to live in Vienna and is now back in the US. Hillary has a poem in this issue.
Then there is an excerpt from American-born Swiss writer DL Nelson´s, Triple Decker, a novel about how the individual members of a three-generation Irish-Catholic family living in a triple decker on Mission Hill, Boston, experience the effects of the Iraq War.
Finally, I trace the steps of American Nathan Horowitz from Vienna back to the USA, and discover that he is well into his quadrilogy called Nighttime Daydreams on the Adventures of another gringo who wanted to be a shaman of which the first two volumes contain “in-flight magazines” and two chapters of the second volume are also audios. ~Sylvia Petter
Günther Kaip, Translated by Hillary Keel
Take The Feather from The Ox
Take the feather from the ox to stroke the crescent moon in your lap. Try not to tickle it as things are imaginably bad : rocks break off from the mountains and fill up the valleys, trees die off and the rivers drown in the seas. Do you hear that subtle grinding? It’s the sand grating the air until it’s sore. Then there’s the taunting howl of the winds—the choir should sing of your ending.
The pea underneath your skin is no longer useful. The crow’s nest in your lung offers no protection and the abused confession in your spleen is blessed by a dung beetle in search of its shoes. Here! Catch the house flying by as its inhabitants lie awake in their beds and refuse to fill the night with their dreams. They don’t care and many hope they will no longer wake up, they’ve become so numb.
Let the flies out of your breast, let them span threads in the air and climb up them higher and higher and shake up the clouds floating by. Wave to the crescent moon, assure it you will return and that it will always have a place in your lap. Wave to the crying rooster standing all alone on the dung pile, wave until your arm hurts. Then glide down the flies’ threads, lay the crescent moon back in your lap, take the shadow from your arm and spread it flat on the floor in order to throw him over any passers-by, to warm or cool it according to the weather, and from the crescent moon you will pull an umbrella embellished with shells and bright corals. Don’t be shocked if this includes dead fish.
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D-L Nelson
Triple Decker
Chapter 31 – Jason’s Funeral
The first limousine held Peggy, her parents Patrick and Bridget, her surviving son Sean, her niece Jess, and her brother the priest Desmond. The rest of the family were in the second. Friends, neighbors and the press followed. The cars, their headlights lit, crawled through the cemetery gates.
The snowstorms that had battered Boston repeatedly in the last two weeks hid the gravestones. The cemetery looked like an open white field dotted with rocks, but the rocks were the top of the grave markers. At least today the skies decided to hold their snow, but the rippled grey sky made everything bleak.
“Is everything ready?” Peggy whispered to Jess as the car stopped. Her hands shook until her niece covered them with hers.
“My friends arranged everything.” Jess looked closely at Peggy. “Don’t chicken out.”
The funeral director and driver Ed got out of the hearse. He tapped on the window, which Patrick lowered. “Wait here until we get the coffin in place, please.”
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Nathan Horowitz
Adventures of another gringo who wanted to be a shaman
I was going to do a Q/A with Nathan Horowitz on his writing, but then I saw that everything I wanted to know was all there on his website at https://nathandhorowitz.com
I first met Nathan in Vienna at the open mic sessions at Café Kafka in 2006. I´ll never forget when he read a super “poem” which turned out to be nothing more or less than his Visa bill. This could have been the first hermit crab piece I had ever heard.
I lost touch with Nathan and then bumped into him here and there when he was teaching Business English at the University of Vienna. He was going to return to the US and his wife and daughter who I’d bump into at readings were soon to join him.
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Non-Fiction
Edited by Olga Stein
Passover Reflections: On Taking Oppression Personally
Each year, during the Passover seder, we are asked to reflect on the enslavement and oppression of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt, which is estimated to have taken place around the 13th century BCE, as a condition that is relevant to our own lives. Thus prompted, each year I begin with a survey of my own life and experiences, looking for anything to which something like oppression or enslavement applies. Well, then, broadly speaking, who am I? I am a woman in her 50s, one who is in the early stages of a career as as university and college instructor. I was born to Jewish parents in Russia, and emigrated from there with my parents in 1971. This personal history is not unique, and I’m no one exceptional. I do feel exceedingly fortunate, however, in being well acquainted with many people—writers, poets, scholars, artists—who are. Also, crucially, I’m a mother, partner, and close friend to people I care about deeply. What I know comes from the books I read, the places I’ve been to, my lived experience, and what I learn from the lives of others, especially people I’m close to. I know enough to understand the challenges I’ve faced and the reasons for them, and I’ve done enough reading and observing to grasp that racialized communities were and continue to struggle against oppression and race-based violence that is real and, too often, fatal. Pharaoh is the white supremacist and his enablers. Likewise, Pharaoh is the person in charge of hiring, who refuses to acknowledge an applicant’s qualification for a job because they are female, or not white, or no longer 30 something, or an immigrant. Sadly, I’ve encountered Pharaohs in many places, and among different people—including my own.
Furthermore, as someone who delves into various ideologies as an academic, I also know that we, as members of western nation-states, are in thrall to values and beliefs that have us buying things we don’t need, always to prove something to people who don’t care. Our fixation with having and achieving more than others is a state of mind. We’ve given in to ideology, and as with many of capitalism’s unsavoury and destructive features, it shackles us. We have all been turned into Olympic contenders—except that the training for some unspecified event never ceases, and we never get to bring home a medal. Nor do we get recognized or rewarded for helping others cross the finish line. To use yet another figure of speech, we are still in Egypt.
All of this has already been said by others, but it bears repeating during Passover. It’s an exercise in consciousness-raising, after all—the kind I’m assuming we’re encouraged to try by the Book of Exodus. Since we’re at it, allow me to suggest another exercise which I deem essential to present-day seder gatherings. I’m speaking of making a conscious effort to host friends who aren’t Jewish. Nowadays, the non-Jew may be a member of one’s family, someone whose presence wouldn’t be questioned, and whose ‘otherness’ would hardly be noticed. In that case, we should invite a man or woman who isn’t a member of our family, but at the seder, we must treat them as if they were. Almost everyone we know has endured hardship or is part of group or community that has suffered. Let that individual remind us to assist, not oppress, others, and let their presence encourage us to join them in the fight against all remaining Pharaohs. For me these are the essential aims of understanding and learning from the story of Passover.
We are very pleased to offer reflections on Passover in this issue of WordCity Monthly by Tomasz Herzog and Lesley Simpson, as well as an excerpt from an original Haggadah, the sort referred to by Simpson in her lively depiction of this tradition. We hope that J Stein’s “Escape from New York” will give readers an inkling of how the original narrative of escape has been reimagined to entertain youngsters in every generation, as well as raise awareness, as Herzog does, of contemporary forms of oppression. We thank these contributors! ~OStein
Lesley Simpson
Passover Essay
I remember the Seders at the home of my uncle Jack and Aunt Joy in Brantford, Ontario when I was a child. My aunt made a lineup of gravity-defying sponge cakes, lined up like trophies on cake plates. Their dining room was set with a pressed white cloth, fine china, and crystal wine glasses. I remember red carpet and heavy drapery along the tall windows, a dining room that radiated formal, and the unspoken be careful not to spill your juice. My uncle Jack Brown, my mother’s brother, used to say each Jew should regard himself or herself as if he/she/they had personally come out of Egypt. In the story, Egypt is the place where the Jews were oppressed as slaves and cry out. This idea was something embedded into the book itself, the book called The Hagaddah. What that meant was that this story about civil disobedience was one that you were supposed to take personally. I didn’t know then that there was an ancient papyrus document that told the story of slaves fleeing from a palace, which is now housed at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. My uncle made this comment, but he did not elaborate about how he understood taking it personally. I didn’t ask. I was shy.
My question remained unanswered for decades. What exactly did it mean to feel as if you had left Egypt? What did it mean to be free?
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Jacob Stein
Passover Story, Part Two: Escape From New York
We pick up in medias res, which, for those who don’t know their Aristotle, means in the middle of the action. It was an unholy hour, around 5AM, and not a ray of sunshine was yet in sight. All the Jewish people of the Upper West Side were being pursued through the shadowy streets by the elite commando forces of Pharaoh Corp, straight down Broadway through Times Square, and on into lower Manhattan. Schmoses’s people had enlisted hundreds if not thousands of taxicabs to flee the evil henchmen to whom Thutmose had paid blood money in order to capture the fleeing tenants and force austerity and other punishments on them.
A sea of yellow cabs rushed through the streets followed by jeeps and military vehicles that were painted black and camo. There was Thutmose, standing upright in a souped-up Jeep, in hot pursuit with binoculars dangling from his neck. The roads and side streets were eerily empty of everyone except our freedom-bound Jewish brothers and sisters fleeing from Thutmose’s hired guns. Thutmose raised the binoculars to his eyes and spied a yellow cab with a strange-looking flag planted on its trunk blowing in the air. The flag was white, but it wasn’t a flag of surrender. Thutmose couldn’t see it clearly, yet he noticed the flag contained crude blue geometric shapes and two horizontal lines at the top and bottom. Wouldn’t you know it? There was Schmoses in the backseat.
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Tomasz Herzog
Freedom is within our grasp
Pesach or Passover, one of the major Jewish holidays, fascinates, inspires, and instructs me about the world and myself. Some may wonder why this is so. I don’t have just one answer and those I do have are equally important to me. Before I try to explain it, I want to say that mine isn’t and can’t be viewed as any regular theological exegesis. I’m not a theologian.
When I think of Pesach, when I look at it, I do it through the lens of who I am and my own life experiences. I’m a Jew. I’m a Polish Jew living in America. Therefore, first and foremost, Pesach to me is the festival which commemorates the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, the foundation story of Jewish peoplehood. It is the first major festival instituted in the Torah that not only celebrates national liberation but dramatizes the critical belief, recurrent throughout the Bible, that God hears the cries of the oppressed.
Every year I look forward to a Seder and to reading the Haggadah. The Passover Seder is full of unique and memorable rituals and traditions. However, the Maggid is the heart of the Seder. The Maggid is comprised of various biblical and rabbinical texts which recount and expound upon the Exodus from Egypt, the meaning of Passover, the value of freedom, the gift of divine providence, and the importance of Jewish tradition. It isn’t just a celebration of the past long gone, or a commemoration of the deeds and legacy of our forefathers. As Judaism teaches, that story didn’t end, it continues. As a Jew, I’m part of it too.
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Book Reviews
Edited by Geraldine Sinyuy
Gordon Phinn
Surviving The Family, Escaping The Culture
Despite their deserved reputation for exaggeration and artfully contrived deception, the memoir form has always intrigued me. If the author is sufficiently famous you can always trawl for the lies and obfuscations in later biographies, a rabbit hole I’ve sometimes fallen into over the years. Still, with the modern fashion of confessional memoir running rampant beyond the sober confines of print into the slash and burn of social media one is less inclined to enter the fray between righteous accuser and crew of bruised targets. Sometimes, however, the circus of saintly victimhood cannot be avoided.
Tara Westhover’s Educated, a searing account of an ultra-conservative, rural Mormon childhood in the Idaho of the 1980s, pulls out all the stops in its depiction of ignorance and abuse. Several reviewers trumpeted their personal outrage as well as utter absorption. Arriving in 2018, just two years after J.D. Vance’s equally shocking Hillbilly Elegy, it set the standard for the phoenix-like rise from the ashes of that brutal dysfunction in which America’s underclass seems to specialize. Westover’s version emphasizes the blinkered ignorance of rigid religiosity coupled with a survivalist paranoia—one that views schools and hospitals as no more than the creeping seductions of Satan’s kingdom. That same outlook advises that God ordained, generally through patriarchs patrolling the perimeter of their cowed families, that a woman’s place is in the home, that herbs alone are God’s pharmacy, and doctors are mere pawns of man’s impudent arrogance, steered by some magical conspiracy of socialism and, wait for it, the Illuminati.
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An Interview with Chad Norman
about Simona: A Celebration of the S.P.C.A.
Chad Norman’s poetry has been featured here in both Time of the Poet Republic with Mbizo Chrirasha, and in WordCity. This months, in honour of a book he published to support the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, we are talking to the poet and taking a look inside his collection.
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This month, Geraldine Sinyuy and Darcie Friesen Hossack decided to introduce you to a selection of titles from the editorial board members of WordCity Monthly! We are so proud of everyone’s accomplishments.
We’ve already visited Sue Burge’s latest offering (see letter from the editor), so by the throw of a dice, we’re starting here with Clara Burghelea, one of our poetry editors. Please click the link below to find the rest.
“The title of the collection is expressive of my preoccupation with the flavor of the other: the other home, the other self, the other geography, the other as a human being. One way of looking at our identity is from the perspective of belonging: to a place, a landscape, a culture, a language, another human being. How do we make sense of ourselves when suddenly deprived of access to these familiar spaces? How do we restore the bruised, lost self? Poetry is one of the answers. These poems pivot back and forth between the communist Romania of the 1980s and present-day New York, looking closely at love, loss, nostalgia, home, and the in-between spaces that we inhabit and allow to inhabit us.” ~Clara Burghelea
Continue to more books by WordCity’s editors…
Literary Spotlight and Writing Advice
by Sue Burge
JEAN ATKIN – THE UNCHAINED POET
This month I’m very excited to catch up (at a run!) with Jean Atkin, a poet I’ve always admired for her energy, optimism and unique way of looking at the world. For Jean, writing is not about sitting at a desk, it’s about engagement with the external environment in profound and far-reaching ways. Jean lives in a beautiful area of the UK and our conversation brought me a welcome breath of different country air (I live on the opposite side of the UK) in these locked down times where travel has become taboo.
Jean, I always associate you with quite quirky projects! I remember at a conference doing a falconry handling session followed by a poetry workshop on the experience with you. What is the most unusual workshop you have run to date?
I do love a bit of quirk, and I definitely remember the falconry experience! Nothing is quite like the thump of an owl landing on your writing arm. In the past, I’ve run a workshop on a beach and learned from some kids there how to creep up on a limpet; made and performed site-specific poetry to particular Shropshire trees; and made poems with a village community high on their local Iron Age hillfort. One of the weirdest and most curious was a series of public workshops I led in Ludlow Museum Resources Centre. I called it ‘Writing in the Museum Vaults’ and it involved unlocking, then exploring, the catalogued, bottled, and taxidermied past, all housed in padlocked basement climate-controlled stores. Perhaps the strangest and most downright unnerving was writing in the eerie Fluids Room, where pale creatures float in alcohol in glass jars in the half-light.
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Create Your Own Writer In Residency!
Inspired by Jean Atkin’s unusual use of place in her work I thought this month I would turn to the concept of Writer-in-Residence and see how that can help to freshen up our own writing. A residency is like being a Laureate for a particular place or organisation and can be loosely interpreted or come with quite a weight of responsibility. You might just be in this place to write and research in order to meet your own goals. Or you might be asked to run workshops, create a publication based on your residency, run a competition, interact with visitors and employees. You might have included these ideas in your initial proposal to a place you’ve had firmly in your sights for some time, or you might have been invited to be writer-in-residence because you have a special connection to this place.
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Poetry
Edited by Nancy Ndeke and Clara Burghelea
with Consulting Editor Lori D. Roadhouse
Hillary Keel
cooking risotto (or why i love my life) —a new recipe small pieces of asparagus & shrimp lemon juice prepared in separate pan & I think of G.—when did I last cook risotto when did I last eat asparagus in March of which year I am transported to Austrian spring crispy temperature a field of brooks where we pick birds’ lettuce we hike we cook there is sex there is spring & asparagus some cress & birds’ lettuce picked at the brook I stir risotto & think how this recipe diverges from G.’s—to place inch-sized asparagus pieces in bowl of ice water I’ll try but remember
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Masudul Hoq
The door Because I lost you On the first lunar line of the month of Shawwal Search the moon very well You are the full entity in our separation And I I start new one from imperfect water droplets In your worship, My free heart and self-awareness stays awaken ... After remembering you When everyone will be enjoying in the light of the festival, Then I will touch the door of your closed chapel with my hand. By reading my destiny, written in the palm of my hand, May make you mercy on me again I'm tired of people's fake love!
Continue to 2 more poems…
George Elliott Clarke
Inside the Nova Scotian Statistical Average (For Eric Trethewey) The Hants County gypsum mines— the white-dust, black-lung-disease quarries— is drill-pocked cadavers. Many cast-off miners could be saints if they didn’t gotta throttle bottles to try piss the disembowling grime out their throats, lungs, schnozzles, eh? Some retailiate for toxic gaspin by stabbin wives, stranglin small fry…. The daily poisonin triggers a hard squall of blood, a tsunami, eh? Ain’t not too bad money, right— dem pick-axe jobs down the mines! Every man says, “I need this, this, this, this, n this!” How else ya gonna get it? Too many can’t live like ya want, but wallow in jails: Take a swallow of med-sin, get embedded behind bars. Tons of hooch flood, much blood leaks. Pounds of blood! It keeps soakin through bandages like coffee through filters, eh?! Fights hourly! You bust yer hands; your face be raw hamburger! Teeth all jump out. The big shits just thunk and knock ya bout. (In the hoosegow, you’s so close, you get to tell exact the aroma of each other’s piss.) When yer freed, partyin is Bible—chapter n verse. Y’ain’t goin back in the quarry? Rather cut yer throat in a hurry!
Continue to 2 more poems…
Geraldine Sinyuy
The rains now softly fall And the fields jubilate. The eye beholds the beauty of low green fields, And the lilies smile. The white birds fly against the blue sky, The Risen Lord is here. Oh let mankind join the music of nature, That so freely praises and portrays, Without hesitation, The wonders of our God, The generous hand, For sure spring will never delay, The covenant He keeps. And the rain waters the dusty roads, And gives life to thirsty seeds. And now that Christ is Risen, Deep down to the grave He carried with him all pandemics, He arises with healing, Let the world be healed. Down to the grave, Buried with him Are COVID-19, Wars, Starvation, Strife. Now let the hills rejoice and man proclaim Love, Health, Peace. And the miracles of rabbits laying eggs, Yes, all things are possible. Easter is here, All is restored.
Continue to another poem…
Hongri Yuan, translated by Yuanbing Zhang
Golden Giant Who is sitting in the heavens and staring at me? Who is sitting in the golden palace of tomorrow? Who is smiling? Golden staff in his hand flashes a dazzling light. Ah, the flashes of lightning- interweave over my head... I walked into the crystalline corridor of the time- I want to open the doors of gold. Lines of words in the sun- Singing to me in the sky- I want to find the volumes of gold poems on the shores of the new century to build the city of gold. Laozi with rosy cheek and white hair- Smiles at me in the clouds, A phoenix dances trippingly and carries with it, a book of gold. Lines of mysterious words made my eyes drunken, countless giant figures came towards me from the clouds.
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Akshaya Pawaskar
As liberal as the air Air is a traitor. It entered the enemy. It reddened his blood. It filled his lungs, expanded his ribs Made him puff up his chest and then left to inform you, that you could have the blue blood that you would have to exhale all the hate you held in your thoracic cage. All the vitality sucked out of you as the air didn't see you as a mirror. Its eyes were none and several So it saw through you, the whole world, naked and didn't raise a finger. Its gaze didn’t waver. It didn't read the Bible, the Geeta or the Koran. It flowed freely and spied on all but never let a secret out as it sang its own tune, its own language. It dried your skin even as you shivered. Where all scampered to be segregated into varied families, It knew all were in the same boat, only looking on to different shores.
Continue to another poem…
Lori D. Roadhouse
TIME OF RENEWAL Spring is coming days are growing lighter brighter shadows are shorter in the middle of the day and the warm sun whispers promises of renewal You are leaving us just as we begin to hope again just as the earth reawakens from a long cold sleep We will miss you Miss the light and warmth you bring to these drab walls and dim hallways For you shine your light upon all you touch like the rays of springtime sun We honour you today for the lives you brighten with the gifts you share It is a time of renewal Time for you to go - refresh your spirit with new experiences refill your soul with wondrous sights replenish your body with the nourishment you take in on your journey Then just as winter approaches and the days begin to grow short and dark again just as the earth retreats into blinding whiteness harsh and stark and cruel just as doubt begins to set in You will return to us renewed and rejuvenated full of rich experience and cleansed from a season or two away You will return again to shine your light upon us to bless us with your warmth and sunny presence You will bring springtime again As winter approaches
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Jaa Jasril
BY THE BAY Breeze of the sea, smell of the sand, its been awhile. Since I last work on my tan, as thing divert, not according to plan, finding yourself, in no man’s land, all this time, I got away and ran then I questioned myself, until when? Feeling at lost, sitting by the bay, searching for WHY, under this hot midday, sound of crashing waves, coming my way, leaving to embrace, come what may, up to them, what ever they want to say, as we are all humans, made of clay Break the walls down, bring down the gate, time to rise up, above all the hate, a new song, in my mind it serenades, so be strong, to endure fate, tomorrow will be better, so don’t be afraid, pick yourself, its time to create. Danga Bay, 26/12/2020
Continue to 2 more poems…
Lucilla Trapazzo
Transhumance At the crossing of rivers intertwining scarves, people migrate and birds camels, elephants and jute sacks. Under harsh shadow of torn skies in baskets women carry the cries of fathers and knives in the eyes of children. Replicating traces of love in a different horizon on the route of far away delusions. History is a meandering vein, digging craters on the face. An offering of lotus flowers to extinguish the mark of angular horror, and we harvest dreams poured on sand. A wrinkle in the wind leaves no trace.
Continue to 2 more poems…
Mansour Noorbakhsh
Pandemic vs Utopia The cracked eggshell of your certainty spills Viruses, excuse me Plato we need social distancing and disinfecting the Forms and Ideas to pass the faith over. The destiny of humankind, now, puzzled, loses the intensity of an entire summer while people must keep their distances but flowers are blooming and fruits are ripening.
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Reinhold Stipsits
Nearby the poppies Anxious to open their core Suddenly they blush 16.5. 2020 Woodpecker´s delight Beetles sing: Here comes the sun There, out in the sticks 3.9. 2020
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Bhuwan Thapaliya
Reading a poem to my father One evening to ward off the inertia stemming out of current pandemic I read aloud to my father, one of my favorite poems from Yuyutsu Sharma’s The Lake Fewa and a Horse. A high blood pressure and a chronic diabetics patient, though he can read only the headlines of a newspaper, his glare can be as rigid as a row of commas on a page of my poems; he can hush us all by just clearing his throat. There is nothing lyrical about him. His emotions are packed full as the groceries on the supermarket shelves. Often it’s not easy to recite poems in front of him and my reading that lonely evening was scratchy as I was shaking from it.
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Sean Fredrick Ragoi
THE GREAT FOOLS Man, The great conqueror, And the great divider Dispersing power while dispersing nations Like a displaced union, at peace, but at war Time, The great construct of man A great myth that we follow like sheep And praised like a deity It scatters the masses
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Kenneth R. Jenkins
Sky Maybe Somewhere up there Skyward High Beyond the distant clouds And stars And moon Maybe Somewhere up there Where planets hang in place The Heavens above Where Earth meet sky And all in between Of what there is Sky.
About Kenneth R. Jenkins…
Anjum Wasim Dar
RAMZAN Night of power it holds Crescent to crescent, blessings Miraculous time. Ramzan world over Evil curbed, evil cleansed In thought, word and deed. Fast, pray, forgive, feed Purify soul, inculcate Gratitude, make peace. Duty fulfilled Solemn thanksgiving, as one We share treats on Eid.
Continue to Miracle in Ramzan…
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