First, here are a few announcements.

Jeff Rasley’s released a new book, Presbyterian vs Methodist Youth Group Rumble in Pokagon Park. This is a light-hearted satire of teen life and the heightened emotions of the age.

Jacques Fleury was also invited to the Boston Public Library’s Author Showcase to show off his title You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Accepting Your Authentic Self.

The National Storytelling Championship seeks online submissions from Indian nationals living in all parts of the world.

Now for our new issue, Revival and Rejuvenation.

Christopher Bernard celebrates the photography of urban chronicler Vivian Maier and the recent rediscovery of her work.

Gopal Lahiri’s poetry looks over varied landscapes – aging city infrastructure, a painted teatime scene, a rainstorm – with a painter’s thoughtful eye.

Wazed Abdullah draws on soft, childlike language to elegantly portray a monsoon rain in Bangladesh. Don Bormon writes in a similar style of the rain’s return in the region after a hot sunny summer. Tamoghna Due speaks to the strength and flexibility of water as a metaphor.

Eva Petropolou Lianou finds union with nature on her daily walk, taking inspiration from its diversity and authenticity. David Sapp’s poetry highlights our human connection to the rest of nature through musings on barns, fields, and a dead cat.

Chimezie Ihekuna revels in the beauty of nature and the intricate ways in which its systems work and creatures survive, but warns of its destruction. Graciela Noemi Villaverde also urges care for the natural world and highlights how natural systems can self-heal and regenerate.

Sayani Mukherjee revels in the passage of seasons in nature as Kylian Cubilla Gomez explores the hidden world of snails, centering the small mollusk in his photos. Sara Hunt-Flores reflects on the sun lighting her path, helping her distinguish illusion from reality.

Svetlana Rostova uses nature metaphors to convey the breadth and intensity of her past experiences. Mahbub Alam compares falling in love to the wonder of seeing a firefly. Shamsiya Khudoynazarova Turumnova illuminates the way love can revive a person and rejuvenate their life. Dr. Prasanna Kumar Dalai evokes memory and the ecstasy of falling in love. Mesfakus Salahin pleads with a lover to take him back as a response to his enduring feelings.

Stephen Jarrell Williams reflects on the poignancy and power of stories: those in books and those of family love and passing generations. Kassandra Aguilera’s poetry expresses love that remains despite troubled parental relationships. Bill Tope’s short story addresses a platonic and artistic friendship between a man and a woman and the tragic social disapproval that drives them apart.

Scott C. Holstad probes various sorts of physical and emotional desire. Duane Vorhees speaks to birth and death, love and war, then turns to a personal blues poem about feeling disillusioned by faith.

Gordana Saric offers up a prayer for personal compassion and global peace. Brian Barbeito shares daily musings on meaning and ethics and and speculates on our individual lives’ effects on the universe. Inayatullah encourages us all to look inward and heal our inner wounds and forgive each other in order to change the world on a larger scale.

Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa shares the hope and strength and healing she finds through her faith. K. Sayyid Mubashir Hadhi explicates the spiritual and cultural significance of Eid Al-Adha. Timothee Bordenave’s old-style pieces express his spiritual faith and desire for universal oneness. Bruce Mundhenke expresses how faith and wisdom can outlast our technologies and our inhumanity to each other. R.K. Singh calls us to ethnic and religious tolerance based on the world’s complex history and celebrates physical and spiritual love.

Dr. Jernail Singh speculates on how literature and drama, religious or not, can inspire moral development as well as catharsis, when villainy and evil are stopped. Matthew Kinlin interviews Kenneth M. Cale about the inspirations and creative process behind his book Midnight Double Feature: Director’s Cut, a stand against the growing darkness he sees in the world.

Lidia Popa describes the power of writing to transmute ideas and feelings into a mode of communication from one soul to another. Haroon Rashid outlines the role of silence, observation, and empty space for thoughtful writing in his ars poetica.

Xadjiyeva Nodira studies idioms and whether the phrases can take on different meanings within the same language. Kaljanova Gulmira’s paper outlines the benefits of having a language learner “shadow” a native speaker. Shahnoza Ochildiyeva’s essay explicates the complex task of translation and how, as of now, translation requires a human being with cultural awareness.

Isabel Gomes de Diego’s photography celebrates human and natural creativity in various forms: origami, sewing, typing. Bahora Mansurova turns to the craft of medicine, discussing ways to treat periodontal diseases. Linda S. Gunther reviews Kristina McMorris’ suspense novel of the newsroom, Sold on a Monday.

Nozima Gofurova describes an educational visit to Tashkent’s Mirzo Hotel, where she learned about Central Asian art and history. Joseph Ogbonna highlights the majesty and historical influence of ancient Egyptian civilization. Maja Milojkovic’s ekphrastic work draws inspiration from the strength of ancient Herakles.

Z.I. Mahmud explores feminist speculative literature in India and the works of Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein. Bhagirath Choudhary, in a piece translated by Eva Petropolou Lianou, advocates for respect for women and for society to celebrate positive traits traditionally associated with the nurturing feminine.

Eva Petropolou Lianou speaks of her intimate and demanding relationship with her female poetic muse. Isaac Dominion Aju reflects on the artistic inspiration he received from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose work helped him to find his own voice. Donna Dallas’ poetic speakers find writing inspiration from a quiet morning, a busy urban city full of desire, and the throes of drug addiction. Hauwa’u Naseer Mukhtar evokes the peace and creative source of solitude as Chloe Schoenfeld resolutely affirms her claim to her own soul.

Kelly Moyer’s asemic poetry invites us to the experience of appreciating writing and art, even without literal meaning. Ric Carfagna’s poetry touches on perception, how we experience and make sense of our world.

Loki Nounou reflects on life’s unpredictability, as S. Afrose exposes existence’s slippery nature, complex and hard to pin down and define. Utso Bhattacharyya’s short story involves an ordinary man’s visit to a surreal reality existing alongside and within our own.

Alex S. Johnson’s horror tale probes the insidious way oppression works not only through violence, but also through individual and social gaslighting. Mark Young’s poetry crafts off-kilter scenes where people and other creatures adjust to their settings.

J.J. Campbell turns to poignant nostalgia while experiencing slow trauma. John Angelo Camomot’s verse speaks to the grief of losing a loved one and the comfort of memories.

Sean Meggeson’s humorous tales probe our relationships with authority and failures of communication. On the theme of authority, Taylor Dibbert observes wryly that leaders who are least affected by policies are often the first to advocate for them.

Mykyta Ryzhykh’s short story depicts war as an unwelcome trespasser, refusing to communicate its intentions or ask permission to occupy someone’s basement. Ahmed Miqdad laments the suffering of civilians in Gaza while expressing hope for the region. Combat veteran Steven Croft speculates on goals for a possible return to United States military intervention in Afghanistan and hopes they will finally get girls back to school.

Sadoqat Qahramonovna To’rayeva reflects on pursuing education as a child and teen in his humble farming village. Marjona Baxtiyorovna sends out a tribute to education and graduating students.

We hope this issue is educational, inspiring, and enjoyable!

LION’S SHADOW

(Translated from Serbian)

Clad in lion’s skin, he stands in stillness,

his gaze — a fire burning through the ages.

Within his grasp, the world trembles,

yet his heart speaks only in silence.

Not a hero, but a shadow of defiance,

neither god, nor man without a road.

In every sinew — a hidden wound,

in his smile — the dusk of old.

He bore the burden the world bestowed,

but never let his dreams corrode.

For Heracles is not just force —

he is the flame that walks the darkened course.

LAVLJA SENKA

U lavljoj koži ćutke stoji,

pogled mu kroz vekove gori.

U pesnici svet se lomi,

a srce — u tišini zbori.

Ne junak, već senka bunta,

ni bog ni čovek bez puta.

U svakom mišiću rana,

u osmehu — večna tama.

Nosio breme što svet mu dade,

al’ nikad snove da mu ukrade.

Jer Herakle nije samo snaga —

on je plamen što gori iz mraka.

Maja Milojkovic

Serbia

Poem based on the sketch of

Artist

Κωνσταντίνος Φάης 

Ιδρυτής του πολιτιστικού εγχειρήματος

Ηρακλής ως πυλώνας Πολιτισμού

My latest book is a lighthearted story about two rival groups of small-town teenagers set in 1968. At a deeper level it is about what makes and breaks community. It can be viewed at

Anyone who has survived the challenges of adolescent society and its cliques will be able to relate to this story about a failed teenage romance and a rivalry between church youth groups from different towns.

Jeff Rasley is a writer, Himalayan expedition leader, lawyer, president of the Basa Village Foundation USA and the Scientech Foundation of Indiana, and is a director of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center. Jeff has authored over 90 feature articles in law, travel, spirituality, politics,

The Purity of Vivian Maier


Vivian D. Maier (1926–2009) was an American photographer whose work was discovered and recognized only after her death. During her lifetime she took more than 150,000 photographs. She is not known ever to have shown them to anyone.

No hail to fame, not even a shy
nod to sharing, it would seem.
Just her own small delight;
the tough love of light.

A photograph? 
Not a serious thing
when she was young and taking,
as they say, pictures:
mere proof of fact,
magnet for fashion magazines,
hook on the local newspaper stand,
damning piece of evidence,
tool for advertising,
and glamour’s sinuous liar;
captive in a web of shadows,
bare, brutal, impossible
almost to deny.

The only one invisible,
the photographer,
capturing reality
in a little black box.	

Maybe that was why
Vivian Maier, governess,
lover of children, 
caregiver, one of the
perpetually invisible,
slightly awkward
with her black magic box,
took all those photographs—
the crowds, the streets, the mansions,
the disillusioned sidewalks,
the phantoms of the alleys,
the secrets blazoned to every sun,
the hands, the faces, the entire world—
in secrecy and stealth even
the shadow of herself;
the ephemeral caught 
in amber—
to capture, to master,
in pure little rectangles of joy
with her invisible eye.

_____

Christopher Bernard’s book The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was named one of the “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews.

Women Studies and Women Writings: Sultana’s Dream

Examine Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s feminist speculative utopian fiction “Sultana’s Dream” with textual references and critical perspectives.

Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream is a hallmark experimentalist avant-garde Bengali Renaissance story-telling of magical fantasy and surrealistic utopian fiction, chronicling the documentary testament of women’s revolutionary envisionings toward salvation from patriarchal misogyny within the cosmos of western colonialism. Sister Sara’s acquaintanceship is a blessing of that silver lining foretelling of women’s rights’ movement awareness campaignings throughout the post-futility of egalitarian feminist microcosmic world in Ladyland. As a pioneering forerunner of womens’ literature, the then authorial narratorial personae is considered as a heretic, heathen, pagan, agnostic and sceptic idolatress for her groundbreaking canonical narrative, “Sultana’s Dream”.

Sultana’s exploratory adventure of the utopian wonderland of a promised land of New Jerusalem unravels the audacity and resoluteness of Her Royal Highness’s sovereignty and integrity. The Queen of the swargiya’s boldness, fierceness and aggressive traits are lionized for emerging triumphant victor transcending predatory perpetrators in the visages, masques, personages and imagoes of imperialistic masculine feuding lords. Banishment of zenanas and patronage of mardanas satirically extrapolates the decline of male authoritarian dominance and subsequent uprising of the female reign to throne. This subversion of power polity is a swashbuckling spectacle and furthermore witnesses dilapidation of crumbling hierarchies upheld by traditional conventions of the then milieu. For instance, the domiciling of police commissioners and magistrates into the boudoirs underscores the core essence of female utopian officialdom that doesn’t peremptorily trials lawsuits at the expense of innocent residents of the city of naivety and gullibility. Hence, Sara’s repartee to Sultana’s conspicuous persiflage entails transcendental philosophic humility and altruism, “It is our religious duty to love one another and to be absolutely truthful.”

Despite veiling purdaah of pardanashin culture, women of aristocracy and elitism exhibit unsurpassing charisma in juxtaposition to their countervailing counterparts as showcased by the stalwart public intellectualism/educationalism and iconoclastic socio political treatises of the authoress. Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s memorial engraving of Sultana’s Dream enmeshes her modernistic and realistic perspectives of femininity to meteoritic and nebulous phenomenological transformation in the era of scientific revolution and technological progress. This is starkly evident in the embellishments of the accolades and laurels achieved by the Headmistresses and her legion of distinctive comradely school girls in establishing the hall of fame solar and hydroelectric power projects energy schemes. Collective welfarism of the cooperative society is fostered by the solidarity and fraternity of the utilitarian feminist utopia. Restoration and reformation policies abolishing stereotypical obsolete gendered expectations limelights the contributory significance behind the crusade of the wave of feminism that was published in the then The Indian Ladies Magazine Madras (1905).

In this fairyland masculinity is emasculated because of the castration threat [penis effect] and commodification of femininity by the male gaze is thus dismantled. Hence voyeuristic perspectives of masculinity are inverted aftermath of fetishization and libidinization of the masculine objects of feminine subjectivity. The extradition of male in the mardanas have secluded them in a mirror image of the traditional culture of purdah. Effeminacy of men have transformed the role of the women as lionesses and tigresses captivators of “veteran mannish” through male enclosure enchantment. The male characters are deprived of their autonomy and agency through demasculinization and the female characters are overpowered with their calibre and intellect. “Solar ovens, rainwater harvesters, water balloons and pollution free hydrogen aircrafts” are exemplary facets of the ecocritical feminism harboured by the clairvoyance of the Queen of Ladyland: “We dive deep into the ocean of knowledge and try to find out the precious gems, which nature has kept in store for us. We enjoy nature’s gifts as much as we can.” Koh-i-Noor and the Peacock Throne are prospects of metaphorical power relations, power polity and power dynamics that the Ladyland’s Queen disavowed but avowed passive resistance and peace mongering with a consortium of mardanas.    

Further Reading, References, Podcasts and Endnotes

Chapter Title: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), Women’s Political and Social Thought, An Anthology, Hilda L. Smith and Berenice A. Caroll, Indiana University Press 2000.

Wikipedia Reading

A Brief Textual Analysis of Sultana’s Dream, Sudeshna Majumdar, Assistant Professor of English, Rampurhat College 

Behind the Scenes – Sultana’s Dream

Fabian&Fred

56 subscribers

Lazy Cat

Lazy cat, you’re napping

In the sun again as if its June,

But in the center of the road,

Playfully flopped over the yellow line.

I can tell you’re a nice cat, black,

White paws and throat, pink nose.

I’m sure you rub legs, curl on laps,

Beg for a string, a fish, a saucer of cream.

You belong to the old woman in this house

Or the little girl in that house.

At first, I pass by: “That’s too bad.”

A neighbor’s car swerves;

A truck straddles your repose.

I pick you up and you’re not

Stiff yet. Blood on my gloves,

I set you on the curb, hoping

Loved ones will discover you,

Knowing someone will grieve

And surely give you a proper

Burial in their backyard.

The Granary

The granary stood

Leaning unassuming apart

From the barn and dairy

Painted the same red

As the machinery shed

Now fading more

Wood than pigment

Each a singular

Pungent redolence

Hay milk grease

The granary aroma

Was autumn and burlap

Plowing planting

Worry fruition

In its polished ribs

Boards slippery with chaff

The way the wheat

Sifted sliding over

Your palms was soothing

Familiar and primordial

An instinctual assurance

Sojourn Scenes

There was a series of balloons, three, that the wind blew in. They were black balloons w/the number seven on each. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but felt they were auspicious and on the side of positivity. Then I saw three number nines and felt the same way. But, I couldn’t tell for certain what the repeating numbers meant as I wasn’t a numerologist or highly into numbers to begin with. 

I saw a lady that reminded me of another lady I had once made fun of unfairly. I was immature and words had hurt the lady’s feelings but the lady either forgot or forgave me or buried it as she didn’t act as if it happened when I heard from her much later. That and one other thing were the only two things I worried about karmically. The other was that I had injured a hockey player and he was taken away in an ambulance. But it wasn’t done intentionally though several people thought it was. I hit him, which was allowed, but it the other injury was not done on purpose as he just fell on a bad angle. He turned out to be alright. I was glad for this. Those two things had happened practically another life ago as they say, yet they had bothered me. Other than those two events I felt clean, but like the numbers, it wasn’t possible from where I was standing to know for sure. 

You can’t always see the spiritual ledger. It is interesting that ledger also means a demarcation stone upon a grave because perhaps it not until we have a stone ledger that we can in the life review according to the canon of such experiences, see more accurately how our actions and words really affected others and the universe. 

I was low monetarily. The group in front of me was affluent and just exuded it. You can tell through intuition and life experience those who try to come off that way versus the actual.  When they left they forgot a purse leather green, the same colour as the jade some of them wore. Nobody noticed and they weren’t doubling back the way some people do when they realize they forgot something. There is about a five to ten second window you have to remember something is amiss before you have officially forgotten something. They were definitely leaving. I picked up the purse and went out the same door and called them back as they were getting into what looked like a new and definitely a tricked-up-decked-out high end SUV vehicle. 

‘Someone forgot their purse,’ I said, ‘holding it up.’ 

They came over and thanked me and took the purse. I returned it because it was the right thing to do. I went back to my seat in a booth, for booths are perhaps one of the greatest things ever created, and looked up through the adjacent window watching them leave. 

At a field there were streams cutting through like a water swath. I paused and stared at them, admiring the movement of water. I thought of Herman Hesse and his book. I had two copies of the famous work, but had given away the better, newer one. My old one was tattered and torn, plus coffee got spilled on it at some point. I didn’t know what that meant either. A large woodpecker that had been alighted in a nearby tree took off and I was frustrated that I had not had my camera out. Yet, I still admired its flight and the silhouette it made against the afternoon winter sunlight. 

I kept going around there. In the distance were train tracks but a train rarely as far as I could tell went by. There were large holes in the wall, the hillside, for the water to go under. It was a fine juxtaposition of water that appeared black against the snowy white sides. And then distant parts of the stream tumbled down a few feet in two places, bragging up its bits like cold clear and white flames and also many spark look a likes as if from a some giant sparkler. 

I went by a bookstore, an old used bookstore that I used to patronize. Proper gems could be found there and for inexpensive prices. Books were like treasures. But the store was gone, replaced by a work-wear store. The vests and coveralls mostly beige and black, stood looking back at me from the windows. It was as if the bookstore had never existed. Though on the outskirts of town, the perimeter purlieu, it had been a wealthy town, but didn’t have a new or used bookstore. I guess the world had changed.

So I headed back home and did chores, prosaic, mundane things, sometimes glancing out the windows as I moved about. There was nothing besides a puzzle on a dining room table, an old piano, and a painting on the wall. Also a bookshelf and coffee table by the couches beyond. The hardwood floor was weathered by time but had character and was still passable. I had never been a huge fan of the neighborhood or its dwellings, but it was clean and quiet and that counts for a lot. It was better than many other places. That view to outdoors didn’t hold a lot. A fence handsome that I had stained with a brush and roller, a good privacy fence as they called it, with lattice work up top that was not too plain and not too gaudy either. Snow was on the ground. It had been a long and cold snowy winter. I hoped the earth and sky really were pregnant with spring. A shed storing summer chairs and a table. On its door, there were two Ontario license plates and two Virginia ones. The first couple were from 1973, the year and place I was born, and the second set 1972, the year and place my beloved was born. Other than that, mostly just old barren branches waited out there, stoic and alone. 

One day with some luck, spring would finally start for myself and for them. 

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