By: Arthur Russell A pigeon pursued by a shadowshot the gap between buildingslike a fighter plane from the early suntoward my balcony.Its skull rang the double panewith a metal clang, and it fellto the concrete floor, its grey chest heaving….

By: Ethan Goffman I was in the doldrums, unable to write, unable to conceive anything fresh or profound, anything worth saying in the least. My mind was blank, the computer screen was blank, everything was frozen, frozen and I wondered…

By: Enda Boyle Mermaids Before the sightings came the radar pingsand the lovely songs on the whale sonarThen came the first fleeting glimpses.Rumours were passed among fishermenof flickering figures on the wave’s crest Eventually a mermaid was discoveredon a busy…

By: Aneri Upadhyay “a lover’s loneliness” Your soul lives in all that is life.Every raindrop, every snowflakeis a personification of you.I look outside,only to see the cul-de-sac wherewe learned how to ride our bikes.I turn on the radio,only to hear…

By: JLF Maikaho Upon a dying star You stare into the night skyHoping to find your place among the starsYou can’t see themBut you know they’re there Your eyes, fixed into the darknessbeg for light A spark of joy flickers…

By: Dominic Tramontana. The heat of the desert was a harsh reality for the squad. Cuts and abrasions covered the men’s faces while the sand scraped against them in the sandstorm. Private Gilliard struggled through the loose sand behind his…

By: Sukrita Paul Kumar Preoccupation The passageto my mindisdark and long. Lost,I often remainat the world’s endstitching the holes in my memoryliving in the past tenseand cooking thenext meal ### A Borrowed Existence The still-born worldtrembles out of its stillnesswhen…

By: Ramlal Agarwal  Why does Hamlet dilly-dally in avenging the murder of his father? His father’s ghost clearly exhorts him to do it. He knows it is his duty and he must do it though he does not like it…

By: Ramlal Agarwal In the 1940s and the 1950s there was one novel the students and scholars of English literature in India were taken up with and that was E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India. It was essentially prescribed in all…

By: Carl Papa Palmer At the restaurant a cell phone rings. Those around the table jumpas if receiving an electric shock,reach for their pocketslike some saloon gun slingerhollered, Draw! I continue to eat, untethered.I’m retired.