Essay from Maftuna Yusupboyeva

Central Asian teen girl with long straight dark hair, brown eyes, and a ruffly pink blouse.
Karakalpak folk poet Berdak

Through this article, I would like to provide information about the life and work of the great poet of the Karakalpak people. Berdak is a poet, the founder of Karakalpak literature. 

First, he studied at a village school, then at a madrasa. Alisher deeply read the works of Navoi, Fuzuli, Makhtumquli and the Karakalpak poet Kunkhoja, and learned from them. He knew history and folklore well. The social life of the Karakalpak people in the 18th and 19th centuries was expressed in Berdak's lyrical poems and epics. He evaluates the events and social relations of his time as an intelligent poet. 

The ideas of equality, humanity, justice and patriotism are put forward in his works. In Berdak's works, the condition of the working people is the main theme ("It didn't happen", "Tax", "This year", "My life", etc.). The poet dreams of selfless fighters for the truth, for the happiness and future of the working masses ("For the people", "I need", etc.). 

The poet proudly sings about the heroes of the people in his historical works "Avlodlar", "Omongeldi", "Azadosbiy", "Ernazarbiy". Berdak's work "Generations" is a chronicle of historical events, the common events in the lives of the Karakalpak people and other Turkic peoples are recorded, and the legends about the origin of tribes and peoples are described. Berdak exposes the lies of some corrupt clergymen ("Better", "Like", etc.), defends women's rights, calls on young people to love their country, reach the heights of enlightenment ("To my son", "Don't be a fool", etc.).

 In his poetic observations and struggles for life, Berdaq dreamed of a happy life for working people. While thinking about making the people happy, Berdak asks God for help ("Help"), thinks about happiness ("I searched"), dreams of a just king ("Need"), hopes for the construction of a happy society. Berdak's work is close to the traditions of folk literature. He occupies the main position in the history of Karakalpak literature with the richness of his creativity and the ideological and artistic height of his works. 

Many of his works have been translated into Uzbek and other languages. The 170th anniversary of Berdak's birth was widely celebrated in Uzbekistan and Karakalpakstan (1998). One of the avenues in the city of Tashkent was named "Berdaq" and a bust was installed. A bust of the poet was also installed in Bozatov, the birthplace of the poet (1998). In the city of Nukus, a statue was dedicated to him, a musical drama theater, a street and a school were named after Berdak.

AUTHOR: MAFTUNA YUSUPBOYEVA, UZBEKISTAN.


Poetry from Ilhomova Mohichehra

Now you know…

You wrote poems called “mother”,

“Father” is the only word in your heart.

I think you’re calling me “father”

You know the value of your father now.

Who is the person who did your thankless work,

Ayamai gave his love quietly.

If you don’t tell me that you gave me love,

You don’t appreciate your father.

You are jealous of someone else,

You are happy in your imagination.

You are in pain, not happiness.

You know the value of your father now.

Essay from Z.I. Mahmud

(Two story stone cottage in the country near a small creek and a bunch of rocks and trees)

Enough of the news bulletin headline storming a bombardment of purgatorial catharsis aftermath of watching netflix documentary fiction broadcast television dramas of Sherlock Holmes and Margaret Atwood. Benjamin, the newbie Anglo American diplomat, is preparing a disquisition in view of being a reader of the post America future programme to be aired this eventide.

This is a frantically finicky aspect in pertinence to havoc wreckage bogging down the bay of heareth -the newfoundland of treasure wonderland and a fantastic holyland. “Honey, my dear prince of heart harken to my tidings of the latest trending breaking news. Another future glorious brighter year shall lead you to your progressive destination in acquisition of a graduate degree. What indulgences have you besotted upon ooms and gusto of twilight sitcoms? Modern Family! A revolutionary Grownish season heraldry of evolutionary Blackish !”

Readers might be awe spelled wonderment or hair splitting nirvana in the brunt of the transfiguration of maverick solipsist and transformation of iconoclastic free-spirited individualist except fanboys chrisoms canopied traits of Tom Cruise or Richard Burton. Hilary’s outspokenness from the backyard porch exterminates the brutes of mushroom in trailblazing threats of excommunication and deracination. Mary as usual couched by the bloom of Springfield is a hard nut to crack in the abyss of her arms. “Literally these flummoxing allergic gossamery flabbergast the haveli of the multi diasporic and ethnic racial community. I want to shred the colonization of these pester deterrence.  

Advisory alerts from the high commissions, embassies and consulates awakening envoys and ambassadors of the missions in the diplomatic enclave brewing a blizzard of thunderous lightning alongwith the emergency evacuation by the disaster relief, crisis management and order departure rehabilitation by marines. In this cataclysmic upheaval indigenous locale employee Bhansali interrupts, “Madam my Mehdi, he wishes to enroll himself in the medical sciences and aeronautical engineering but I admonish my financial impecuniosity.”

Ahm, see what your Lord has to chant in this verdict. Believe in yourself or else be doomed for better or worse! After all, Mehadi will be a laureate someday in upholding a fine kettle of fish. By these condolences of farewell exchange, first lady Sebastian marks her exeunt to her bed chamber.

Between the devil and the dead sea cannot alleviate the promontory of the beasts of apocalypse. At dinner’s dining hall of the banquet diplomatic channels have been catalyzing activation in sanctioning and counter sanctioning. In the meanwhile, Rossetti and Anne, their cousins from the Elysium, phone the dystopian family. “Do you feel safe amidst “The Second Coming?” That A.P. lit paper of halcyon staycation would have been mutated into a fastidious hypercriticism as a communique, memorializing the subconscious psyche of Sebastian. “Benjamin, please pick your sis-in-laws’ telephone. I’m having ants in my pocket!”

The microcosm of Westerners with pernickety elfins succumbent dwarfs the existence of a flotsam jetsam jubilee. Brandon defrosts delicacy of apple pied crumblings and sugar puffs while his midgety blood sister, Mary, a teenager by now, redeems herself with oriental and continental cuisines. Brandon and Mary are not homogenous genders in dereliction of being united by blood and divided by ambition.

However, double helix of their distinctive visages endow them the fosterage of novelistic points of view. Brandon adheres to the philosophy of Hamletesque impersonality and naivete of shepherdism and contrastingly, chroniclers would be aware that Mary shall be self chosen dowager someday: “Whether you’re dating a potential gold digger or are surrounded by friends who are perennially asking for handouts, you’ll have to shield your money from those drains…” Truly a bed of roses thorns have been cognitively implanted in these Department of the State siblings artifacts and their tactical antics.

Brandon strikes the chord John Denver’s Annie’s Song in fulbright summer camp trip to educational and cultural exchange by the Commonwealth Agency stationing of Wuthering Heights landscapes ere his homecoming to Whitmanian realms. A justification for a dystopian apocalypse cremates ashen urn of desire and demasculinizes sempiternal bonding with Anne. Might be a cascade surrealistic reading by fooling around and messing about. Mutilated flair has invaded the catastrophic cli-fi- sci-fi and whatsoever.

Death of the imagination defenestrates carnation of those camping fire nights in a fantastical New England forests- woods swapping stories, myths, legends and ballads, mountaineering in springtime, picnicking to the valleys of the countryside and quintessential seasides beaches sunbathing and sandcastle fancy, leisurely aesthetic ecstasy of chilled frosty twilight drenched downpour walk, faraway casting sandstorm in the vessels of the dunes. Destructive wild Anglo American Nights is the brunt of somnambulism in shores of both Atlantic. “Lonely deserted black stone house, broken down clinging to the grief stricken eulogizing heart”.

War fictions memoiristic chronicles of holocaust tragedy and antisemitism, islamophobia, antichrist and puritanical revolutions upsurges as the dreadest Kafkaesque macabre. Brandon couldn’t implicate the fanciful chimera in prayer for being papaless and mamaless; their talisman of one’s stony amulet and another’s frond of hair to be preserved in his diary.

What happened of altruistic Bhansali’s fostered adoption of Mehdi… and of dear darlings coal fires glowed within dilapidated and derelict, ransacked and mobbed never-to-be-forgotten moon-blanched and moon-trenched deputation and deportment…I must bear a crystal clear decision making policy in terms of boarding time machine of Schengen passport and green card unlike being a hysteric daydreaming goosebumps of demagoguery and propaganda throughout darkened attics of hurricanes.

Annie’s lost connectivity and deadening orphanhood have stricken dissonance allusive to moonbeam from lightning and frost from fire. Life cannot be lived as a furor of a harlequin romance with the closure of being happily ever after and then everybody’s death since millennial promises have to be appreciated and endorsed in this emulative field of sojourning jouney. Appropriation and credibility of being a lovelorn Heathcliff and star crossed jilting of parents’ family home and spurned fairy like damsels or mermaids like sea girls ploughed into the barren flora and fauna; volcanically erupted through the genteelness of provincial pastoralism.

Anglo-American farmers’ harvest being disruptively cyber bogged by a posthuman apocalypse harbouring to the breakfast table doesn’t provide solace in the respite of appetite. Inevitability of this wrathful tirade infiltrates the skeptic lovelorn chameleon Brandon with megalomaniac extraditioning of angelic purity from British Easter silverware filled with sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and lamb barbecue and American Halloween food channel of pumpkin cupcakes, Haunted Graveyard Cakes, Witches Brews Pea and Bacon Chowder, and spider web chocolate fudge muffins.

Stardust oyster filled seashells coral barriers reefed seashore in and betwixt alchemical suburban villa of the castle aurora borealis, encamped within the gossamery of alumnus isles, adumbrated food banks of thought experiment. That restoration of this nostalgic spirit of crystallized dragon should be a future of tomorrow’s alternative scope of human behaviour stocked by GMOs and nuclear warfare.

Thank goodness! Good heavens! Good grief! Good gracious! I thank my lucky stars everyday for my gratitude journal, halcyon parents fosterage upheld through Benjamin and Sebastian, ordained divineness blessing my soul and the heritage drift house meadowed valle packed full of lambs and pelican pecking their own breasts and scooping fishes from lakes.

We get so lost that we ended up around Robin Hood’s barn to get to the new quarters of Bhansali. To be in Mehdi’s shoes equates that half a loaf is better than none. Bhansali like a crystal gazer envisages the aural enchantment of woods lurking tigress dim lit glare and lioness camouflaged outfit in dusky outskirts of the branches and twigs; fuel wood shed. Laconically jaguars like wolverine beasts trespassing. “Papa! Papa!” Cadaver of my emaciated dad gives me hollowed cheeks and hollowed eyes, jittery jaws and gaunt personae as if a wizarding leprechaun invades me.

Last of all, you might say, “All’s well that ends well” but for me that isn’t over because gnomes and goblins have not’ at all estranged their communion in pestering and tormenting. Housekeeping and spadework define the errands of Mehdi unlike genteelness that Brandon ascribes. However, my orphanhood has been at the helm throughout the funebrial crisis and I just don’t appreciate swapping horses in midstream through a wedlock. After all Brandon’s living death is figuratively enamored with the chivalrous quest of looking for a compassionate and empathic Jeckyl and Hyde hoor. 

(Large college lecture hall with various students)

In backstairs and back alley memoirs anticipating readers by now have garnered their repertoire of childhood phantasmal escape whence wherein sleeping beauty cloaked and daggered to be the fairy Godmother warning us not to venture into the barranca and quebrada lest we are befallen as vulnerable victims and scapegoat traps of whangdoodle.

Benjamin’s mother’s recital of Wordsworthian and Whitmanian verses is without a shred of doubt the best poetry readings ever since betide past or perhaps even decades of future. By these memorabilia talismanic afterlife to the dead resurrects the attic of sweetened chambers. That lovey dovey arm in arm of fairy tales princes’ and princesses’ legacy transporting to otherworldly cruising to Saint Martins Lane of Great Expectations.

After all, as meat is crucial for human health today proven by scientists’ zealotry, analogously eulogizes breeding for the existence of species survival by disavowal of peremptory purgatory and drowning vision of life clinging to the wreckage of veganism or celibacy. In the proclamation of straw snow field underneath potatoes and orchard apples of the verandah, Brandon’s figment of the imagination is dispelled to the heraldry of harvest season.

Nonetheless Brandon’s epiphanic visitation to the mausoleum tombstone graveyard is symbolically metamorphosed into an elegiac deluge of saturnine funebrial jaded snowlit light. Ferrying in the snow alone like a bohemian boatman of here today and gone tomorrow studio and reading Frost at Midnight…What a suicidal sacrifice for future generation breeders and caretakers of the post apocalypse in lullabying to the sweetheart angel…

And furthermore the chronicles of Mehdi would be salvageous in the caricaturization and veiled imagoes of Healthcliff like Brandon hauling into the underworld to recover his doomed Anne…

Convalescing from the chasm of the abysmal purgatory broaches a calamitous crusade with whangdoodles and wodwos. That  stupor of ethereal imaginaries would have bolstered the altar of the chapel with crematorial gothicism and mortuary macabre. Bhansali’s errands of wreathed bouquets and eglantine carnations of half-smile and half-wave farewell to the exodus of diplomatic aficionados expatriate family bruisemarked by fragmentation and shrunk clays.

It was all sea and islands now with great continents sunken like Atlantis somehow echoes the literary legend of beyond Narnia and Secret Lives and Loves. The romantic feeling of yearning and longing forever lost would be reconnected with the nadir of heaven’s apocalypse.

Feminine fantasy of mermaids and sea girls heroic voices audacity recast: “Do you think I am an automaton—–a machine without feelings and can bear to have the morsel of my bread snatched from my lips and the last drop of living water dashed from my cups? Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, little I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong—-I have as much soul as you have and full as much heart. And if God had gifted me some beauty and much wealth I would have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of customs, conventionalities nor even of mortal flesh, it is my soul that addresses your spirit and just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God’s feet equal as we are.”

Afterwards Gabriel-like manifesto reveals a treaty with reality ensconced within treasured chambered wardrobe espousal of the electrifying erudition: “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be the blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”

Antlers and hide from the reindeers stocking denim dungaree cast Brandon with the stance of a lion in liberating the slough of despond frontliner bizzaro harboured by bravado and stardom of ariel sylphs, country bumpkins, cowboys, philistines, pariah, aliens, minions, sextons and grave-diggers and hobgoblins. Appreciating the lives of struggling survivalists fellow comrades hailing from the heartland of Nebuchadnezzar, Brendon employed the stakeholding partisanship of Bhansali and Mehdi with the novel academy.

The world has become schizophrenic overnight, fretted by dementia and alzheimers’ diseases. With Bhansale and Mehdi as acolytes of medieval and renaissance hallmark postage to ameliorate etherization of disappearance cases. Brendon, the hero of the hour, think tank and watchdog of the dinosaur intelligentsia, frightened of his own shadow, prompts hymnal prayers to work over territorial drears.

Broadcasts and podcasts, radio dramas and televisions screens, theatres and cinemas, films and concerts, poetry readings and seminaries, banquet-halls festivities and silver platinum jubilee celebrations, meteorites and asteroids have been entrenched with arched overnice championing stewardship of aesthete’s sovereign romanticism. Grief of fear on the brink of iconoclastism plunging to despair is that hideous plaint of bleak overshadowed loathsome spectres.

Marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasure either. Anne and Brendan in commonwealth fulbrighters chapter wore hedgehog effect wooing and lovemaking. Brendon entraptures dame Hellenistic paragon of paramour, sneaking into the boudoir of hideaway. Audacious, forthright, strong willed child and giant mother Anne contrasts hilarious, flippant, sarcastic and cheeky Brenden—the hybridity of Englishness and Americanlike closet of shadowlands.

The vision from the sea of dawn cloistered by the labyrinthine alien islands of  antler dreams and honeysuckle bumble bees entrusts the hermitage of solitudinal reclusiveness to Brendan or Brenden: The Prince or King of The Hill of gorse. Caressing voice and mercury mind of epic heroines’ temptation drive the prince towards a game of thrones. Riverine canoeing and seafaring cruise brings back the remembrance of deer parkland. Bhansali entrusted as the deck charge d affairs unlocks the treasure chest of vaulted alleyways in the moon castle freight drift house that harbours gothic pumpkin sistine hedges banking in accord to homestead Newfoundland Science Barge laboratory propelling and shuttling amidst the sublime Iceland is a serene photographic and picturesque venue for surrealist naturalists.

A laughing stock for the hue and cry of the Hudson Valley with polar bears in predatory expeditious voyaging northwestern terrace. Bhansali came huffing and puffing at this sinisterish innuendo while brooding and boorish Chronicler has been engrossed into immersive episodic autobiographical stark black-and-white mise-en-scenes of posthumous ouster mirrored life: Englishness of the Siberian adventuring in the apocalypse of a sheer theatricality afield a fire and brimstone sermons. “My master, these emergent seal predators have auspicated your holyland to fight the mercurial dragons from edgier terrains in vengeance for forging ties with your Gentle Lake District celestial attache unicorns from the repository of inheritance.”

Mermaidian fantasy and phantasmal escapism serenades in furor of these fogged mystic cematose renegades with the spell of brouhaha from the turf to the surf.  “Heart of heart my Prince you have seen better days on the brink of the world being your oyster!”

Upon infernal snowfall Newfoundland barges with a mausoleum of snowflakes from yester halcyon nirvana and then and there Bhansali redeemed heroic the stature of dreamland quester. Along with a spanish acoustic guitar beside the portmanteau, Bhansali’s swarga booth proclamation to the receiver thus reads: “That the abode of the saints and the abode of the angels today have united in the fled of tears falling down through rolling landscapes.”

Ominous dark clouds gathering overheads afterwards of the sinistrous voice clip banging from the attache case. Brenden cannot but be lachrymose by this sinisterishly pugnacious declarative from Abraham’s bosom re-enchanting the glorification of an unpromising death tirade. Deceasement and bereavement are heartbreakingly shock- shatter thunderbolt divined by the tumult of the heavenly kingdom and thus the New Jerusalem.

Out of the blue and on the spur of the moment, Uncle Dan’s trembling voice reminds in declamatory speeches: “The Island of the Blessed and the woodland springs shall soon cater to transport you dearest sweetheart nephew to shed funebrial tears commemorating upon a flash of the Angel of Death’s decree.” I wanted to earth bury you with my heart and soul but the despondency of the wrathful cupids have enervated me.

My Iowa Creative Writing dreamland aviator fantasia backstabbed my homecoming. “Alas my lad’s disheartn’d and I’d forlorn you unobscure and inoblivious with the Bible of Dreams and the Song of Songs: “My star dust material have expanded from being a supernova explosion and collapsed to a black dwarf and it is the Beneficent Lord and Munificent Cosmologist who has ordained incalcitrant destiny and smoothed out the earth for me, so I have been atoning about in his refugee train and buffeting from the banquet feast and laterly cardiac arrest resurrects me to my Elysium Fields.”

Uncle Dan’s last words to me thusly were dimestore of treasure hunt: “I have coordinated to the telegraphic dragon slayers in espousal of a billfold vouchsafed talismanic mantra in salvaging your impetuosity and purging of your exculpation.” I won’t be shipwrecked as long as and as far as I uphold the revelations that there is none worthy of worship in Literature besides Shakespeare. Shakespeare is far exalted and above all weaknesses. Surely I wouldn’t be baptized with heretics coming into being formulation and heresies from among the wrongdoers.

Fairest flowers from the ever prolific advisory guru gifts me nightmarish goose-bumps in slumbersome sobriety of heart awakening, parting that in the end we all become stories of lion’s share engendered by heart, the nature, the dream and the imagination throughout rockets, space capsules and nuclear power stations.

P.S. Dedicating this dystopian speculative mystery science fiction to my late guardian angel and my father’s bosom friend alma mater of English Department University of Dhaka, Prof. Kamrul Hasan of Syed Abul Hossain College, Madaripur. Both my father and uncle have worked as local receptionist at the US Embassy in Dhaka. 

Essay from Rukhshona Toxirova

Young Central Asian woman with curly dark hair and a small necklace and earrings and a black top.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS IN PEDIATRICS

Head of the Department,” 2nd year student of the Andijan State

Medical Institute.

Annotation:

In this article, the doctor’s vigilance towards the patient, the medical worker’s treatment of the patient, being humble. The competence of the doctor in communicating with loved ones of the patient and explaining to them the condition of the patient. It has always been said that medical personnel improve their skills.

Keyword: doctor, patient, disease, communication, correct diagnosis, qualification.

Ethics occupies an important place in the emergence and formation of society. Ethics comes from the Greek word meaning “behavior, morality.” Ethics are closely related and important to the entire industry. One of these areas is medicine.

Pediatrics is considered one of the most important branches of medicine. Pediatrics also has its own ethics. The pediatric department includes the treatment of children aged 1 month to 16 years. The children’s hospital occupies a special place in the system of children’s medical institutions. Of course, the therapeutic and preventive work of a children’s hospital is of paramount importance.

Because the condition in which the children’s hospital is being repaired and made, the specific equipment of the doctor’s office, affects the mood of sick children. That is why, when repairing the hospital, the environment and all rooms of the department should be furnished with happy paintings and accessories that will cheer up various children.

First of all, the first attention should be paid to the structure of the hospital. Another important point in the treatment of sick children is the ethics of our pediatricians. The ethics of a doctor is very important. The ethics of a pediatrician is the behavior of a doctor in his activities aimed at improving the health of a child.

The ethics of the doctor brings him closer to the patient. This means that pediatricians should be able to gain the patient’s trust in the child through his or her ethical behavior and behavior. The doctor’s office and his ethics in clothing should also attract the child’s attention and relieve the child of a sense of fear. The task of the most important doctors is to ensure that the patient, having found a way to the childrens’ heart, enters into their trust.

Doctors who are well versed in child psychology have no difficulty in treating children. Pediatricians mainly communicate with the parents and relatives of a sick child about the patient’s condition. In the process of communication, the doctor should be humble and sweet. The patient must correctly explain the condition and the degree of the disease. A good doctor’s relationship with the patient’s loved ones is important for making a correct diagnosis. In the process of communication, the doctor learns the origin of the disease and the history of its development from the patient’s relatives.

Modern medical workers should be not only qualified specialists but also propagators of medical and psychological knowledge.

Conclusion. Thus, the qualification of doctors occupies an important place in the treatment of patients. Every doctor should have a holistic approach to the patient’s condition and work harder on himself to give patients the right diagnosis. The use of modern technologies in the diagnostic process can help in a deeper study of the disease. 

Our pediatricians, first of all, contribute to the upbringing of a healthy generation of children.

Literature used

M.X. Tilavoldieva, Sh. Kholmatova / / ethics, aesthetics and Logic// Tashkent

2014yil pp. 16- 7

https://uz.m. Wikipedia.org.

https://nuu.uz

Ruxshona Izzatbekovna Toxirova was born on July 25, 2004, in the Oltinkoʻl district of Andijan region. She is Uzbek by nationality. From 2011 to 2022, she studied at the 48th general secondary school in the Oltinkoʻl district. Currently, she is a second-year student at the Faculty of Pediatrics at Andijan State Medical Institute. She graduated from school with excellent grades and achleved numerous successes, actively participating in subject Olympiads. She is the coordinator of the Girls’ Club. She participated in the conference “INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO CURRENT ISSUES IN MEDICINE” held on March 29, 2024. She is also the author of many articles.

Poetry from Abigail George

God, why are You, the Creator of the known universe, letting Palestine die

Virgil, please look at me

my sad face that was once full of

love for you is now empty, made up

of lonely nights, Palestinian-Israeli

conflict, the ball found in a refugee

camp. I wake, get out of bed. Barefoot,

I  walk to the kitchen. I boil manifestos

in the kettle. I eat leftover egg mayonnaise

on bread. I map out pain but I don’t have

to do that now, not yet. The silence is waiting

for me. My bathwater is getting cold. The

horse impatient, but, instead, I then map out

pain with these hands. My pain. This

pain that tastes bittersweet. It tastes like

dark chocolate and rain and sweet like a

banana. I drink in this pain like I drink in

Palestine. I get lost in the clouds above

the refugee camp. The clouds made of

a fallen empire, cities of night. The clouds

made of children’s faces. I see the man’s

face again. I am holding it in my hands. The

leaf falls and it’s buried in the ocean. The

ocean that I am swimming in is filled with

orphans. Look at me! I am swimming in

ketchup and grease, fish fingers, hot chips,

blue wrists, lifeless wildflowers. I’m writing

a letter to God. Look at the sadness in my eyes.

Let the sun and grass grow in every soldier’s

heart. Let every soldier on both sides hear a

child’s laughter in the barrel of the gun. Let

them remember their mothers’ eyes and

childhood for Palestine’s sake.

And let them remember the words of this poem.

So Now What

(for Charles Bukowski)

During war,

milk is the colour of blood, honey

the colour of bone

The skulls here are bored

They want a new life, not this tragedy

I’m listing all your war crimes

I remember being happy

But I don’t want to remember

I don’t want to remember the man

I remember bombs and Gaza instead

Amputated limbs like branches

Here, everything tastes like seawater

I hope I’ll wake up from this dream soon

And that the man will return to me

in the morning and to numb the pain

I take the pills one by one

and a fog descends upon me

I wish you had decided to stay

so that we could make things work

but you never did and the truth is

I must accept that as fact and choose to live

For some time I breathed easier

in this world because of you

Because you had become all my reasons

I have questions and they trouble me

Do I still live inside your heart and

inside your life as a passing thought?

I write a letter to God and put it inside a poem.

At night I pray for Israel too, because in war nobody wins.

I pray for soldiers on both sides.

That their blood will turn into flowers.

Antigone, there are no more trees in Palestine, or, salt found in earth (in Palestine)

I found a child’s body lying in

the dust of what was once a mosque

I told the child I would write a letter

That I would write a letter to my

Christian God who abhors brutality of this

kind. Maybe my God could do

something about this kind of pain

and suffering. I’ll put it in a poem,

I said to the child’s soul

I buried the child’s body in that street

where the mosque used to exist,

have its own universe. There are

no more trees in Gaza. There are

only refugees in Palestine and dead

children lying in unmarked graves

but there are unmarked graves everywhere.

Africa, for one, Europe, for another (because

of wars), and Israel, reason being

because of genocide.

Dear God,

Thank you for suffering

I’ve been through so much myself this year

Thank you for pain

my heart is a survivor

Thank you for the wildflowers

they provide happiness, a sense of self

Thank you for this rain

it offers me tranquility and comfort

Thank you for the fog

that hides my tears

Thank you for the children of Palestine

They give me hope

Thank for the man

who was briefly in my life

He loved me and made me

feel beautiful for a short while

Thank you for this year, however,

it was sad, long and exhausting

and I am glad it’s nearly over.

Refaat Alareer

There is hope born in death and death born in hope

These are not empty words, you said

I looked at the exhaustion on your face

I thought of the flowers in Gaza, the orange

and lemon trees, the last olive you ate,

the last shower you took, the last prayer

you said, the last time you boiled a

manifesto in the kettle, stirred coffee

and sugar into a mug, the last time you watched

an American film, the last newspaper you

read, the last dead body you saw, the

last book you opened, the last time you

saw your family, your wife and children.

I have stopped watching the updates of

the Palestinian genocide. They use to

call it the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but now

it is a genocide. It’s become to much

for me to take. My tears can fill an ocean

and carry the orphans in an ark until

this war is over but there’s no end to a war

like this. Perhaps when we reach the end

of the world the war will end. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Where are all the wildflowers, what happened to the books

You walk like the trees, you will

always walk like the trees from the

river to the sea, Palestine. I offer

you gifts. Oranges, tea, flowers, life.

You do not beg, you do not steal,

you do not say anything at all when

they say they have to amputate

I listen to two poems by Ali Sobh

I make spaghetti and watch the fine

sticks that I can so easily snap into

two with my fingers turn into noodles

Noodles not dead bodies. Not heads

I have something to eat and I’m grateful

for that but Palestine is hungry. How

she longs for the sweetness of milk, the

kindness of honey, the protein that

chicken provides. By now, the river

has turned to blood and the children into

angels and the mosques and hospitals

into dust. I cry me a river. My eyes are red.

My tears, the memory of blood.

I know what it feels like to be broken,

heart shattered, body in pieces

So do you, Palestine. So do you.

Flowers for Palestine, forgiveness in this time of war

It’s late. I should be asleep but I’m not.

Instead, I’m watching a 60 minute interview

with Colson Whitehead, he won the Pulitzer

back-to-back, John Updike being the only

other writer to win consecutively. I sleep-

walk walk-slouch to the kitchen and make a hot

cup of tea. I listen to a reading of

Yevtushenko’s Babi Yar. It is read in Russian

and I cannot understand a word. Then it is

read in English and I understand every word

but not everything. I know I will forget these

poems by the time I wake up in the morning.

I will forget writing this poem in response

to Yevtushenko’s Babi Yar poem. No tears

fall but something creeps into my heart and

my heart drops. There is something I cannot

escape in this life. Having bipolar. Bipolar

comes with rejection from family, isolation,

the label of the outsider and the writing of

 these poems. Very soon, I will take a pill to

fall asleep. I will wake up with a brain fog. In

war, as in psychosis, there is a price to pay

for both sides. The poet lives with truth, and his

poetry contains life just as much life as that

which seeps out of a dead body in the snow.

The rain falls and washes the blood away

purely to keep the streets pure and clean.

In the hospital, the sick body recovers.

Lux

The skin, thunder, her skin is perfect. It is milk, it is

pale, it is privileged. I talk about this in

romantic undertones. I write a novella about

it. I mask my envy, live in my house, and live.

 My skin is the colour of a green sea. It is

orange peel and stretchmarks. It is a tapestry. Stars are to

be found there, the universe, a tribe of singing

angels. No woman is proud of cellulite, of the scarring on her

heart that she has carried into middle-age.

She bathes in light and this privilege I want

so badly. This author bathes with bath salts and Pears

soap, lavender Vinolia bath oil. Fenjal is on the

bathroom windowsill.  The blood washes over me.

I taste blood in my mouth. The bullet. I can’t

get the stain out. I turn the bullet into a rose.

It’s futile. You can’t turn bullets into roses.

My mute paternal grandfather taught me that.

I expose Palestine’s smoke to the light. The

light turns the air strikes on Gaza into a pilot.

The bombs are sent to a storage holder on the moon.

The war is abandoned and peace reigns but

then I woke up and I realised I was dreaming

and that today was Palestine’s funeral.

Poetry from Ozodbek Narzullayev

Young Central Asian man with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a white collared shirt out in a sunny day in front of blue sky.
My classmates

We remember to call,
We miss you, but the heart trembles,
I miss you, classmates.
Let's get together, my classmates.

A dream goes to you from afar,
Tomar, thank you for what you said.
Let me ask you how you are doing today.
Let's get together, my classmates.

I know we miss you so much
We remember Shokh Youth with pain,
We didn't forget to call
Let's get together, my classmates.

Don't be fooled by the world
Without imagining the consequences,
I don't feel love in our mold,
Let's get together, my classmates.

Every time we remembered,
I miss you, my friends.
Do not let the consequences disappear,
Let's get together, my classmates.

It's been so long,
How many letters did I say to you?
Just don't forget our friendship
Let's get together, my classmates.

Ozodbek Narzullayev was born on December 20, 2006 in the village of Rahimsofi, Koson District, Kashkadarya Region, in the village of Boston, which belongs to the MFY. He started writing poems since 2023. Currently, his poems are published in international anthologies and magazines.