murmuration

the delicate thrum, heartbeat through my bound chest,
my palm pressed there like a promise,
every breath stolen from me like a murmuration of living feeling seeing i’m living
in the stars like a superhero. only now.

only now does the murmuration of my heartbeat slow, the murmuration of birds slow their pace. i’ve
been taught to exist without realizing.. the gentle murmurs
of your heart have become a gift.

i didn’t realize i missed you until i stood
under the sky with the world opened up to me and i murmuredation, please come home. we are both home.

if we are both home then why do i feel lost?
when my mom told me it wasn’t a panic attack

all i wanted was you. your delicate murmuration thrumming through my bones. your comfort.
when i picture you i feel safe.
i watch birds and i feel like i’m floating away. i could
take off in search of them but i think you’d notice.

i hope so. i notice every murmuration, we are a murmuration, aren’t we? a flock of birds,
we rise, we fall, i missed you you you
it’s hard to realize i missed you until i see you

and you say you missed me and i say it back and i feel right again,
not just a stolen wish floating away to a star-ling.

Fogbound

The day we laid that cold crust of earth over your body, something in me went missing. I watched the people crying around the grave and couldn’t understand why they mourned someone they saw perhaps once a year. Then I looked at my mother. Silent, glittering in her overdressed elegance, as if she wanted you to envy her for still being alive. Perhaps it was her revenge for all those years spent chasing your approval and failing. After she divorced you, she drifted away from me too. I only wish it had happened sooner; her presence or absence never changed much.

Back home, the smell of grass and that fog-soaked cemetery settled in my mind. Objects lost themselves in that inner fog. I hunted for keys already in my pocket. In the narrow hallway between our two rooms, tasks slipped from my memory, and every cup of coffee went cold. Food tasted dull. I checked the stove, the doors, the water taps over and over. I fought life so hard that numbness wrapped itself around me. I went to bed exhausted and woke even more worn, my body nothing but bruised fatigue.

When the routine finally defeated me, the real battle began: the one inside. First came denial, the refusal to admit the weight of your absence. Then collapse. I cried, but the wound in my soul stayed hollow. And so, I began to write. The very work you never wanted for me. Not for you, who are gone and will remain gone, but for the version of you still living inside me.

I built stories about you, replayed memories. Then I realized the one inside me was not you at all. He was the father I had wanted. His face resembled yours through a softening veil of mist, but he was kind. He didn’t wait for me to fail. He didn’t frown or correct or sigh in disappointment. His small, cutting smiles were gone. I found memories that had never existed. In one, I had made a mistake, and the imagined you placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. You consoled me. Praised me. Forgave me. Touched me with a tenderness I had never known. Father.

Then, as if waking abruptly, another battle began.
The first fight was with you. I pictured your aged body in the garden, the small red trowel in your hand. I sat you across from me on a chair, just as you used to sit in silence tending your flowers. No words, no criticism, no energy for long arguments.

I asked the image of you whether you had ever loved me. I cast you as guilty, myself as righteous. Your head was bowed while I hurled my anger and sorrow at your face. Why had you never praised me, even when I was promoted in the job you had insisted, I pursue? I showed you every wound. The day you left home. My mother clutching the phone, crying as she whispered about your selfishness. Her words sank into me, the same way they had sunk into her years before. And the night someone burned all my childhood photos. I always thought it was you. But no. It was her.

I stared at the cup of cold coffee in my shaking hand. My dry mouth. My reflection glaring back at me from the porcelain. That face was terrifyingly familiar. Yours. You had lived inside me all along. Fear seized the cup and shattered it against the floor. For a moment, time perched on the broken shards. The sound cracked something in me. Shame replaced anger. I felt a sudden tenderness for the old, silent man in my memories. He wasn’t the one who had hurt me. The face that had wounded me was right there in the fragments: the knotted brows, the thin white strands at the temples, that smug, dismissive curl of the lips. It was me. I was you, and you were the small boy who kept his eyes on the ground.

When I could breathe again, the second battle began. The one with myself. Had I ever loved you? Ever understood you? Had I ever been brave enough to ask to be touched, even once?

There was only one way to find an answer. I went through the old photo albums, damp with the smell of mold. Each page a tether to the past. My ninth birthday: my mother cooking your favorite dish, not mine. I still don’t know whether she feared you or wanted to force her way into your heart. My graduation photos from the field you had chosen for me. The New Year’s pictures smiling over a buried argument.

Anger. Then grief. Then contempt. Then something softer. Until I reached thirty-five years back. The winter day I slipped on the ice. My cheeks numb, my hands cracked and burning from the cold. You lifted me up, brushed me off. I searched your eyes for disapproval. Instead, you knelt so I could climb onto your back. I still feel the warmth of your shoulders on my frozen skin. You put a bandage on my scraped palms. You told me growing up always hurts.

I framed that photo of my bandaged hand and placed it where the missing piece of me used to be. The hollow in my chest began to fill, building a fragile bridge of memories and faint smiles. I turned the pages again and looked at the child in those pictures. Why had I never seen all those small smiles before?

Father, I wish you could have freed yourself from the stern man you had chained yourself to.

Gratitude


under the bright tree

in its shadow we sip wine

listening to birdsongs 



not for the presents 

but for the muffled quiet

of fresh fallen snow



I set an extra plate 

the candlelight flickers twice

her presence or draft



grilled eel feast

the stray cat licks 

its empty bowl 



second helping 

on the plate

summer cuisine

In Front of the Qutub Minar

In the small days of my childhood,
whenever the bioscope man came,
a flood of children poured through the lanes.
And the moment the magic box opened,
the very first frame revealed
the Qutub Minar.

A slender reed of red and tawny stone, p
iercing the sky,
outstretching the tall areca palms,
conversing with clouds,
colliding with sandstorms and smoke
from half-burnt straw,
it has stood for centuries—
alert as a steadfast sentinel.

Even now it rises before me,
amidst ruins, half-built walls,
and rare architectures,
gathering memories
from the hour of its making
to the pulse of the present,
breathing the earth, the water,
the shifting air of locality.

It has watched Delhi’s endless cycle
of ruin and rebirth—
the swagger, the cruelty,
the dazzling pretence of rulers,
the choking sobs of common folk,
their cries, their restless anguish.
It has seen the chameleon steps
of power-hungry courtiers,
the sly manoeuvres of brokers of the throne.

From the flight of birds
circling its crown,
the Minar has witnessed
how the six hundred thousand villages of India
are slowly squeezed dry
by the ink-blot greed of Lutyens’ Delhi,
how the ever-swelling NCR,
like a many-mouthed demon,
swallows its neighbouring towns and fields,
chewing the green edges of farming villages,
its hunger endless,
its appetite like a rakshasa
grinding everything into its dark maw.

Migration, urban glitter,
the deceitful charms of “modernity”
spin their new web each day,
draining the stored lifeblood of the rural.
Foreign capital twirls like bar dancers,
and our new generation,
bedazzled by neon dreams,
wanders in this dazzle,
half-awake, half-lost.

These are not merely domes,
stones, arches, or stairways.
This monument—this Qutub Minar—
with its tiers, its windows,
its latticed balconies, its carved arches,
is not merely a shelter for pigeons.
In silent tones it tells
of the past, the trembling present,
and the secret spells of what is to come.
Even when epochs are erased,
it stands, unwavering—
like unburnt posts left whole
in a field of scorched harvest.

Lakshmi Kant Mukul is an Indian writer, poet, critic, rural historian and serious scholar of folk culture, born on 08 January 1973 in a rural family in Maira village, District Rohtas, Bihar province, India. His literary journey began in 1993 as a Hindi poet and since then, he has published three books in Hindi and has been published in more than two dozen anthologies and hundreds of journals. Apart from Hindi, he also writes extensively in Urdu and Bhojpuri and also translates them into English himself. His two published poetry collections are- “Lal Chonch Wale Panchhi” and “Ghis Raha Hai Dhan Ka Katora”. His published book on rural and local history is- “Yatrion Ke Najriye Mein Shahabad”. He has received many awards for his work, including Aarambh Samman for his poetry writing in Hindi language, the prestigious Hindi Sevi Samman of Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. His English poetry has been published in many international anthologies and translated into many languages. The notable achievements of his literary career are – recognition as a farmer poet and expertise on the changes taking place in the rural environment in the global era. Having studied law, he has adopted the modern style of farming. postal address -LAKSHMI KANT MUKUL Village _ Maira, PO _ Saisar, SO _ Dhansoi, Buxar, Bihar [ INDIA] Mob.no._6202077236 Postcode – 802117 Email – kvimukul12111@gmail.com

Someone To Speak For Me

 It is useless knowing a language anymore

when there are computers to know it for you.

I am forgetting the keyboard keys.

I am forgetting my name

and the name of the screen.

I do not need it. I do not need

to know what I do not know.

Query the word for words for my open mouth.

Hello I am leaving hello right

here on the inside of my

—

and thought I would give you an updated bio:

Noah Berlatsky (he/him) is a freelance writer in Chicago. You can find info on his poetry collections and chapbooks, as well as his writing on politics and culture, at his newsletter: Everything Is Horrible.

The Promise

Inspired by Wallace Stevens

The unholy frenzy of a three-week shopping spree

In single-minded pursuit of the consummate offering.

Some treasure that captivates my love, if only briefly,

Evoking blithe memories of Christmas past,

When Lionel trains, roller skates, and shiny Schwinn bicycles

Promised unadulterated pleasure.

But in this age of uncertainty and scrutiny,

The perfect gift feels like a seasonal illusion,

A practiced sleight of handThrough which we mime,

Hallmark-style,

The otherwise unspoken stirrings of the heart.

Undaunted, I set out in search of holiday treasure.

If such gifts exist at all, will they captivate again?

Clogged thoroughfares.

Rented Santas, rumpled and feigning cheer.

Perry Como jingles.

Nerves frayed by the discordant rhythms of the mall.

And my own insatiable Yuletide longings,

Coveting glittering bounty fit only for a king.

Seeking solace, solitary on Christmas night,

I retreat outdoors and lift my eyes to the heavens,

A shimmering veil of tears posing ancient questions:

Is it the star in the East that stirs my soul?

What did the traveling Wise Men divine in such stars?

I am reminded of a birth in Bethlehem, long ago,

A squalling mortal child, uniting God and Man,

Offering a glimmer of understanding.

Some Being, however intangible, delivered to us an idea,

An infinitude of love.

A mystery wholly reasoned through an infant form,

And through Him, a promise of divinity.

These are the gifts of the Wise Men:

Bequests of understanding, compassion, and grace,

Left for pagan pilgrims

In this most unholy season.

A spirit that returns each Yuletide,

Quietly, joyously.

As the miracle we call Christmas.

www.diannangel.com

Lemmy’s hotel bed: an altar, a stage, a throne. Lemmy Kilmister, high priest of the Church of Motörhead, placed me there as if I were a supplicant, a guest, a fellow conspirator in the endless liturgy of rock ’n’ roll. He pressed cigarettes on me—his communion wafers—and the gesture was both casual and ceremonial.

Later, I told Hollywood scenester and Lemmy associate Tequila Mockingbird about it. She hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the way Lemmy’s eyes carried both mischief and gravity, hadn’t felt the weight of his charisma pressing down like a bass riff. From the outside, she misjudged it, calling it seduction. But that was her projection, not the truth of the moment.

Because Lemmy’s seduction was not necessarily sexual. It was existential. It was about drawing you into his orbit, making you part of the mythos. He seduced everyone—men, women, journalists, fans—into the gravity well of Motörhead. To sit on that bed was to be baptized into his world, where the sacred texts were written in nicotine stains and the gospel was screamed through Marshall stacks.

At the time, I was Alex S. Johnson, rock journalist. I wasn’t out as transfemme yet. My identity was still a private constellation, a truth I carried but hadn’t named aloud. Lemmy didn’t know that part of me, and yet—looking back—I see how his gesture resonates differently through the lens of who I am now, as Kandy Fontaine.

Classic Lemmy: collapsing the distance between journalist and confidant, between interview and communion. He didn’t care about categories—man, woman, transfemme goddess, fan, or critic. He cared about whether you could hang, whether you could accept the offering, whether you could step into the myth without flinching.

The cigarettes were not just smokes. They were a bond, a way of saying: You’re one of us now. The bed was not an invitation to romance but to belonging. And in that moment, I understood the difference between being misjudged from the outside and being initiated from within.

Now, as Kandy Fontaine, transfemme goddess, I revisit that memory with new eyes. I see not just the ritual of inclusion but the radical acceptance embedded in it. Even though I wasn’t out, Lemmy’s gesture carried no judgment, no hesitation. He didn’t need me to explain myself. He simply welcomed me into the communion of rock ’n’ roll, and in retrospect, that welcome feels even more profound.