Mashkhura Usmanova was born on May 16, 2006 in Gallaorol district, Jizzakh region. She has been practicing writing poetry since she was ten years old. She is a member of the international organizations “Creativity Forum for Culture, Arts and Peace” of Egypt, “AsihSasami” of Indonesia, “Iqra” of Pakistan, and “Juntospor las Letras” of Argentina.
Minerva at School
The phone rang and she picked it up, eyes still riveted on the news story she was watching about a school that was on lockdown due to an active shooting. Furious at yet another massacre and annoyed at the vibrating device, she turned away from the TV, immediately recognizing the voice on the other end.
“Mom!” it said. She heard, in the familiar voice, gut-wrenching fear and slowly, unravelling self-control. That was all she needed.
“It’s Minnie Me’s school, isn’t it?”, she questioned, coldness beginning to seep throughout her whole body and various scenarios beginning to run through her brain.
“Yes. We’re here now. Macy’s getting oxygen because she had an anxiety attack, and we just don’t know what to do. The authorities won’t give us any information. The shooter is still in there and we can’t find Gemma.” At this point, he could hold it in no longer. His hard, raspy, intakes of tortured breath were difficult to control as were the trembling shoulders and shaking hands that held the phone.
She couldn’t see any of that, but she felt it as only a mother can and so with the calming, silky, and soothing voice of a Mom but the coldest intentions of a killer, whose heart is covered in bonded steel, she said, “Sweet boy, don’t you worry one bit. I’ll take care of everything!”
Taken aback, her son exclaimed, “Mom! What do you mean, take care of everything? Mom! Mom?” but the line was already dead.
In seconds, she was out the door, having picked up her leather satchel, which contained everything she would need, disassembled repeater rifle, knives, a change of clothes, and other nasty implements of her trade. She did not bother to change from her house dress and fluffy slippers. She would need them, too. It took just a few minutes to hop into her Bentley and fly down the driveway and out to the street, speed limits be damned. About 3 blocks from the location of the shooting, she performed an expert 180 degree turn and ended up speeding to the scene, backwards. Everyone scrambled to get out of her way as she headed for the huge plate glass windowed entrance to the school.
“Sorry, sorry!” she cried to anyone who could take a moment to listen, as she ripped through wooden sawhorses and side swiped police cars. “I can’t control this car! Help!”
Bam! Boom! Screech! Then there was the tingling explosion of falling glass, but she had no time to notice the effects of the crash, the reaction of her body, or anything else. There was only the fierce hate for anyone who would endanger children, crazy or not, and her overriding anxiety for her granddaughter. If he had hurt her, he would not live. Those emotions raised her out of the damaged car easily before anyone could get to her, and into the building she ran, remembering to limp as if old age and injury had command.
She had no difficulty finding the correct room. The kids were screaming, and shots were being fired. She had her Black ops outfit on in no time, with only seconds before the SWAT team arrived.
She banged on the closed door. “Is this the hospital?” she questioned, in her best old lady voice. “My car just crashed and I’m hurt. I need a doctor. See? I’m bleeding!” and she held up a bleeding arm to the small window in the door. She continued to scream, “Help, help!” until the gunman, thinking he had another valuable hostage, turned toward the door. The bullet landed right between his eyes, and he fell to the floor with a flop.
Entering quickly, she told the kids, “Run! Run as fast as you can!” Out the door they went, clogging up the narrow hall, giving her a minute to hide her satchel and change back into her house dress and flipflops and cower in a far corner of the hallway. Now, she was screaming and crying for real, as adrenalin began to withdraw. SWAT and officers questioned her, but all she could do was respond in hiccups.
“That man pointed a gun at me! Those children were SO loud! All I wanted was to see a doctor!” and “Where am I?” The questioners gave up. It would have to wait until later. They turned her over to paramedics who took her to their ambo but soon deserted her for the more critically injured. This was the opportunity she needed to creep away, over to the waiting, black, window-tinted Suburban, just up the street. As she slid into the luxurious back seat, Darryl, her handler, looked at her as if to say, “Keep on doing this shit and your ass is cooked!”
She responded in kind, the eyes saying it all. “Mess with my family and die!” just as her phone rang.
“Mom, mom! We got her! Gemma’s fine. Macy’s happy as a clam and I am so relieved it’s over. Some old lady crashed into the building, and it was the breakthrough the cops needed to take over. Whew! Mom? What did you mean about take care of everything?"
Minerva did not answer but Darryl watched the smile of the century cross her face and the few wrinkles smooth out to reveal the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“Wow!” He said to himself.
albeggia appena –
diventare rugiada
senza saperlo
it barely dawns –
to become dew
without knowing it
*
luce da oriente –
nel pallido cammino
un papavero
light from the east –
along the pale path
a poppy
*
campi innevati –
un nodo di silenzio
chiude i pensieri
snowy fields –
a knot of silence
blocks my thoughts
*
novembre in petto –
tocco un nuovo silenzio
di seta grigia
November in my chest –
touching a new silence
of grey silk
*
acqua che scorre –
è più dolce la luce
di fine autunno
flowing water –
the late autumn light
is gentler
*
notte d’asfalto –
nel silenzio le voci
ruggine e vento
asphalt night –
voices in the silence
rust and wind
*
erbe selvatiche
fra le crepe dei muri –
senza una madre
wild plants
growing in the wall cracks –
motherless
*
veli caduti –
tramonti negli occhi
sul muro grigio
fallen veils –
sunsets in the eyes
on a gray wall
*
finestre accese
sulle vite degli altri –
la notte intorno
windows lit
on others' lives –
night all around
*
senza più cielo –
confondono il cuore
i prati d’asfalto
no more sky –
the heart confused by
asphalt meadows
*
occhi d’autunno –
lunghe strade di pioggia
senza una voce
autumn’s eyes –
long rain roads
without a voice
*
solo una rosa –
il profumo del cielo
in un bicchiere
just a rose –
scent of heaven
in a glass
*
cielo di pece –
tutta la luce dietro
aspetta il mattino
pitch sky –
all the light behind
waits for the morning
*
piccola luce –
raccoglie nella sera
falene perse
small light –
it collects lost moths
in the evening
*
foglie gialle –
sulla panchina cadono
piccoli addii
yellow leaves –
on the bench fall
little goodbyes
*
fra l’erba secca
i corvi a due a due –
ricordi perduti
among the dry grass
crows two by two –
lost memories
Laura Marino Trotta è nata a Roma, si è poi trasferita a Firenze per frequentare la Facoltà di Agraria e, successivamente, l’Accademia di Belle Arti e la Scuola Libera del Nudo.
Varie le attività lavorative che si sono succedute negli anni, mentre costante è rimasta nel tempo la sua ricerca attraverso molteplici possibilità espressive e l’impegno nel Terzo Settore.
Laura Marino Trotta was born in Rome, she then moved to Florence to attend the Faculty of Agriculture and, subsequently, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Free School of Nude.
Various work activities have followed one another over the years, while her search across multiple expressive possibilities and her commitment in the Third Sector have remained constant over time.
sleeping rough
on his lips salty taste...
dewdrops
dusk chorus--
peeking through neighbor's fence
setting sun
hospital visit
on her meal menu
"Happy Birthday"
sleep walking...
in the microwave
her mobile phone
Clowns.
All of my life, I have lived among stones.
These stones are not everywhere.
For me,
They are people around me
In the shape of stones.
They can’t be understood,
Perhaps I don’t want to!
Or I’m addicted to this life.
May be I’m colour blind;
I can’t see reality
Of being human Among stones.
It’s a difficult journey
To find a cure.
Difficult to find love.
I have to ask myself, “Is there hope?”
I believe there is—but where is it?
Is it among clowns?
Sunil Saroa is a short-story writer, a poet, and an essayist from Panjab, India. His works have been published by Livewire.in. and Tell Me Your Story.biz. Currently, he’s a fiction and poetry reader for Longleaf Review, Florida, USA. He likes to read all the time and write his works while sitting on a balcony early in the morning.His name on official documents is Sunil Kumar.
Wu Man performs with the Kronos Quartet (without cellist Paul Wiancko) (Photo by Stephen Kahn)
The Ghosts of Space and Time
Kronos Quartet and Wu Man (pipa)
Zellerbach Hall
Berkeley
After a winter of bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers, the Kronos Quartet – the legendary San Francisco ensemble that reinvented the string quartet for our time – gave one of its most satisfying concerts in memory on a blissfully rainless first of April at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley as part of Cal Performances. April Fool’s Day and the feast of Hilaria were soon forgotten in a concert that sent at least one person in the audience home wrapped in the mystery of other times and places.
It’s only fair to say that not all of the quartet’s many and various experiments in making the string quartet “relevant” come off. And sometimes my faith in new music has been tested. But tonight there were fewer distractions than revelations, all of the latter involving, and often led by, the quartet’s collaborator, Wu Man, a winsome, deeply gifted musician who makes difficulty seem as easy as dreaming.
Wu Man, it’s fair, if paradoxical, to say, is the world’s most renowned performer on an instrument almost nobody knows – the pipa. This lute-like instrument from China, with a long, thick neck and a pear-shaped belly, has a history going back two millennia. Both strummed and plucked, it added delicious bite and spice to the woody rosin and catgut of the western strings. Two of the concert’s revelations were composed Wu Man, working with American composer Danny Clay to transpose her musical inspirations into legible scores.
Glimpses of Muquam Chebiyat is adapted from the traditional Uyghur Muqam Chebiyat, which Wu Man discovered through the musicians Sanubar Tursun and Abdullah Majnun, members of this persecuted minority in China.
Awareness of the oppression of the Uyghur population makes the music even more poignant, but the political dimension is by no means needed to focus one’s attention. A soft and intensely lyrical melody, played with profound sensitivity by the quartet’s remarkable violist Hank Dutt, sets the tone for the first half of the piece and is passed and varied delicately between the five instruments. The second half is a dance, curiously in the classic western three-quarter’s meter, charged with the sharp plucking of the gleeful pipa.
Wu Man’s second piece was titled Two Chinese Paintings. The first short movement, called “Ancient Echo,” is graced with delicate arpeggios based on a pipa scale from ninth century China. The second is a variation of “Joy Song” (Huanlege) from a classic collection called “Silk and Bamboo” – a clattering, happy piece that, making few concessions to western scales and harmonies, drew out the most compelling, and totally unpredictable, joys.
The concert’s greatest revelation was saved for the second half, though perhaps I shouldn’t call it a revelation for myself, because I first heard it, with the same instrumentalists, many years ago in San Francisco, in a concert about which I now can say definitively that I will never forget it. And yet, seeing and hearing it again was, if anything, a new revelation – of the ghosts of time and space, which seemed almost to vanish as I felt as though I were reliving the remarkable experience I had then.
The piece was one of the earliest works presented to American audiences by a composer who has become, if not a household name, at least a name to conjure with in contemporary music: Tan Dun, winner of too many awards to mention, and a leading conductor as well as composer. For me, Ghost Opera is one of the unquestionable masterpieces of contemporary music – a work of profoundly satisfying audacity.
The work is fully, yet economically, produced, on a stage that is almost completely dark, for string quartet, pipa, water, stones, paper (including a long swooping drape-like scroll, brightly lit, like the broken piece of a Chinese ideogram), metallic instruments including Chinese cymbals, watergongs, and a large pendent gong, and Chinse vocalizations from the instrumentalists, like wailing cries of the dead, the living, and the unborn.
There is no story as such, except for a set of variations, begun on David Harrington’s haunting violin, of a melody from Bach that is rendered both malleable and ghostlike as it winds through a gamut of transformations based on both western and Chinese scales, harmonies, and rhythms as it passes from player to player.
The stage is, as mentioned, almost entirely dark throughout, with pools of light above large glass bowls of water, where the water is performed in rituals of the cleansing of hands, and elsewhere lighting individual players, later in groups, then returning to individuals as they disperse and disband back into darkness and silence, “under the rule of Heaven.”
A tall narrow, translucent scrim stands in front of a riser, where, first, the cellist (a fine Paul Wiancko) is shown in dramatic shadow cast by a brilliant light at the back of the stage, and, later, where Wu Man stands, like a ghost just visible as she performs, sometimes responding to, sometimes leading, the more-earthbound quartet.
There is much imaginative use of space both onstage and off – for instance, in the first of the five seamless movements, the violist performs in the audience in response to solo violinist and pipa player at different corners of the stage like distant stars in a moonless night.
Tan Dun has stated that his inspiration for the piece was the “ghost operas” of China, a 4,000-year-old tradition in which the living, the dead and the unborn speak to each other across the boundaries of time and space.
The result was, again, an experience, both dramatic and musical, of unique intensity and beauty and of a profundity that lies at the far end of words – though Tan Dun uses, along with Bach’s music, the words of Shakespeare (famous lines from The Tempest: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on. . . .”) – words that seemed almost unnecessarily specific, as the work as a whole both expresses them and contests them: if those works speak true, not even a ghost will survive – and yet we have just seen their power.
The concert began with a rousing work by the inventor of minimalism in music, Terry Riley: the first movement of The Cusp of Magic, where David Harrington plays a peyote rattle and second violinist John Sherpa plays pedal bass drum while grinding grandly away at his fiddle, and Wu Man keeps everyone sharp with her pipa. The piece was performed against a background of electronic music and sound sampling compiled by David Dvorin.
The first half of the program ended with the one piece in which Wu Man did not perform: Steve Reich’s Different Trains, a piece I felt overstayed its welcome and has not aged well, though the original concept was of interest.
The enthusiastic audience was provided a delightful encore after Tan Dun’s transcendent achievement: an arrangement for the evening’s ad-hoc quintet of Rahul Dev Burman’s Mehbooba Mehbooba (Beloved, O Beloved).
The audience left for home with the strange but striking sense of being deeply moved – and yet feeling very merry indeed.
_____
Christopher Bernard is a co-editor and founder of Caveat Lector. He is also a novelist, poet and critic as well as essayist. His books include the novels A Spy in the Ruins, Voyage to a Phantom City, and Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars’ Café, and the poetry collections Chien Lunatique, The Rose Shipwreck, and the award-winning The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, as well as collections of short fiction In the American Night and Dangerous Stories for Boys.
