By: Zunayet Ahammed I’ve seen you in silence Your presence, love and tenderness Quiver at my heart with splendid touch And I feel comfortable. I’ve seen you in the first rays of sunlight Beauty streaming from your clothes and hair…
By: Zunayet Ahammed I beheld you here last evening In an autumn dress full of juice Like white clouds of the sky To chuckle at me quietly Like a girl of 17 who feels woozy Looking inside and outside Not…
By: Neeraja Mani (for Madhu who was killed for “a loaf of bread”) Muddy skin of yours said that you are untouchable. Tarry-Torn dress of yours showed that You are lunatic Sparse hairs showed you are no where to richness…
By: Prathap Kamath Everyday my window opens into a little patch of paddy laid to waste. Some later owner had grown coconut trees there. All of them turned out to be barren with mournful, drooping, long, yellowish green leaves. They all…
By: Prathap Kamath As the fourth one I always smelt victory, mouth watering standing close to the third, but never had it. The victory stand had room only for three. I lived in the middle land between the wanted and…
By: Emily Strauss woolen wraps, down quilts piles of dry leaves a tent tethered in a desert wash bowed against a lashing storm a sail tearing from a small mast. a lone figure inside, fighting to breathe against the wind ripping…
By: Emily Strauss Black tire marks on the pavement— high school toughs with their cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon challenged each other to drag races in their Chevy hot-rods, peeling out, tires screeching down the cold empty streets late at night…
By: Milton P. Ehrlich Hurt pricks like a thorn, waiting when waiting pains. Routines of humiliation and kindness shape the changes in your heart. The wail of Minarets reminds us to weep. Infidels in a foreign land reside in an Indian…
By: Milton P. Ehrlich My old lady is now an old lady. She used to cut a rug as a jitterbug at the USO back in the 1940’s. These days she sashays across a kitchen floor in a sedate but sensuous…
By: Milton P. Ehrlich Casualties of agreed-upon lies fuel their guts with fire and smoke, in a rage that cannot be quelled. They feast on glassy-eyed fish heads that even the seagulls throw away. Buckets of bumblebees sooth the palate. Like…