FEELING OUT OF SIGHT Versatile love in life Arrange feelings with emotions Raise your love for me State it, even when times are darkest How we suffer despite this And let me count the ways Before the sun rises Reasonably I have to make you mine And when you’re with me Joys that seem to boggle the mind Equal by its tears, and clear Sweet feelings of true love Has touched our lives, our souls forever.
Dr. Brajesh Kumar Gupta ‘Mewadev’, Banda (U.P. – India)
Dr. Brajesh Kumar Gupta, also known as “Mewadev,” has been recognized on several prestigious platforms for his contributions to literature and the arts. Notably, the state of Birland commemorated him with a special edition postage stamp. He is the recipient of the Presidency of the International Prize De Finibus Terrae (IV edition), awarded in memory of Maria Monteduro in Italy. Dr. Gupta has been honoured with an honorary Doctorate of Literature (Doctor Honoris Causa) by both The Institute of the European Roma Studies and Research into Crimes Against Humanity and International Law in Belgrade, Republic of Serbia, and the Brazil International Council CONIPA and ITMUT Institute.
In addition to his literary achievements, Dr. Gupta was awarded the Uttar Pradesh Gaurav Samman in 2019, further solidifying his impact on regional and international platforms. Currently, he holds the position of the 3rd Secretary-General of the World Union of Poets, serving from December 30, 2017, through December 31, 2024. His role in this organization is pivotal, reflecting his commitment to advancing the global literary community.
Dr. Gupta is an accomplished author of eight books and the editor of twenty-seven volumes, showcasing his extensive contribution to literary scholarship. Beyond his literary pursuits, he serves as the principal of S.K. Mahavidyalaya, Jaitpur, Mahoba (U.P.), and resides in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India. For further engagement, he can be reached via his social media profiles at facebook.com/brajeshg1, or through email at dr.mewadevrain@gmail.com. His work and legacy are also featured on www.mewadev.com.
tethered to the whims and folly of the men who came before me.
Then they set me loose
and called me a free woman.
My mother taught me how to live in ignorance
to pretend my anklets were made of gold,
and the chime of their trailing chain
nothing but the sound of love.
For what else, if not love,
would ground a bird
whose wings ache
only to soar?
My mother
she is a time traveller
with no particular destination.
She carved time capsules
out of the living flesh of her daughters
and bid them stay in place
With muffled shrouds of her love.
Her daughters held her chains still.
She forgot her need to wander.
My mothers’ anklets were not made of surrender
My mothers mother
linked her daughters chains with memories
and the resonance of duty
She did not teach her ignorance.
For my mothers mother was a placid lake with deep burrows.
she buried calmly any hints of dissonance In the music of her anklets.
Her chains were long
Buried deep she thought them nonexistent
But my mothers chains They were shorter
Her generation was adorned with brighter lengths that shimmered
Lengthens and shortens at the whims
Of a man’s fickle heart
So they taught themselves the art of forgetting
My mother told me I was born with anklets
Gaudy beautiful things forged to sing the world into order
But here they lay unpolished
Their bells broken at birth
Their song stilled
Only their chains stretching at the whims of unchained monsters.
Calling Home
after all the years away
Mother calls from the deeps,
curled at the edge of that land’s healing cracks where now, the trees shed fruit with no prompting,
where Sister’s bloodied feet once painted love between the cloaking robes of monsters.
Where, beneath Mother’s watchful eyes, she spun over broken bones called Father.
She calls, she calls, says,“Come home, daughter.”
Home, to the taste of smoke on Grandmama’s soup,
the sweat that beads on her hilltop forehead, the smile that stains that craggy hard face when Father brings his broken laughs home.
Home
that belonged to a girl who saw monsters not beneath the bed but spinning past in Sister’s tear-soaked skin,
bloodied feet piercing the bones of Father’s love and care.
Home
that flows between nausea and nostalgia, the feel of stone and sand between toes.
Stone is stone and sand always sand but the sands of home, they hold the imprint of memory,
Of a 5-year-old palm pressed beneath the scorching red of a termite’s home, a 5-year-old tongue tasting what remains of the ancient one’s hold, learning the difference between concrete and clay.
Home smells of Mother’s miyan kuka, no fish or meat to wash the stickiness down,
only Mother’s voice carrying the dark away with tales of Bayajidda, Zulke, and Alhaji Imam in the light of a single candle on a bed in a mud house built on memories.
Memories of Brother, who once carried water for Mother on his back, the same way he hauled years of Father’s dreams to a country where faces stared at his melanin-spiked tone and learned to call it home.
To crank the heat up to 40, 45, inhale deeply when the new snow falls and try to remember when snow used to be red and winter was harmattan.
Now Brother plucks cherries from fruit stands, cherry that held no memory of sour hands or wild trees
Cherry that is too sweet, too soft, and smiles, swallows, and calls on Sister.
Sister who dances now on waves, where the sea salt sweeps the blood from her soles and seals into the wounds the broken bones of Father.
Her stamping feet screams over the waves and cover the thousand voices of Mother rising from the deeps,
the crags from that once crumbling pit at the edges of what used to be home for a cared soul who loved Mother.
Calling, Calling, Come home, daughter.
The Hive
I want to learn this world like a beloved book
Seek its every hidden crevice between the eyes of mother
The hands of daughter
Between a wife’s parted thighs that form the gateway to God’s greatest gift
I want to write this world into paper
Soak it in waters pulled from the hope that lives
In a first time mother
The hope that presses her hands against a swollen belly
Shares her body with alien life that could
take and take and take
swallow her whole and from her body to her mind
Take every inch every piece
drink it down and know
Know the meaning of love
And the love of meaning
Of knowing
Of letting go
Of your self
Of every part that makes you
Of becoming Maman amra
Matar Ahmad
Your being subsumed within the hive mind
That is wife Mother
I want to take the tears of daughter
Roll it within the black threads of duty
To create the blackest ink
That drips with expectations
I’ll call it Yar fari
Use it to draw this world to paper
Draw the blurring line that separates
Mother from daughter
That entrusts a child between frail arms
And calls it love
That cradles fear like newly found clay in a children’s playground
Rolls it between the fingers of an overeager child
And name it art
Lets it twist and fall in on itself
Try to mould its little wet handles into works of art
To make itself into art
Use Yar fari to paint art across the stained face of this world
Let daughter be daughter
Then sister
Before she subsumed into the hive
And become one with wife
With mother
I want to learn this funny world
That breaks before it ends you in all the wrong places
Chew it softly between clenched teeth
Like a
delicious soup spiced with maggots
Roll it under my tongue
Taste its fragrance
And spits it out
At your feet
And cook a better meal
To feed my cravings.
Habiba Malumfashi is a writer, podcaster, project manager and curator. She is the programs Officer and coordinator of the open arts development foundation, a creative hub for artists and writers in Kaduna. Her work revolves around womanhood, resilience and the inherent feminist ethos of northern Nigerian cultures. Her writings can be found on The Kalahari review, Beittle Paper, Ayamba Litcast among others.
Behind the curtains Ayyiri was a sound of the drum of joy, but it is not same as the sound of mosquitoes wings moving around in the dark? Was it not same as the wails of the sirens from a far?
Was it not……. Was it not?. I regret the very first day i heard it, you’re his they said. I was overjoyed not knowing i was tied Not with those three strong ropes but with pain, They said ” marriage is form of worship” but didn’t told me i was going to the sanctuary, I didn’t know i was going back in time to the time of my forefathers that lived in slavery. Resistance in that place is seen as rebellion not as a form of bravery. ”You are now not only bonded by love, but patience and perseverance.
Love was for courtship ” my mother whispered to my ears, It made me wonder how love will end before it even starts? But it was the very last i shine this my 32 to the rising sun and the falling moon. The hands that i think would hold and caresses now grasp my neck and confines me The voice that was one my favourite now screams and defines, send shivers of fear to my spine He was the apple of these eyes that once shone with light, now dim with tears like he was a third layer of an onion. A heart that once beat with love now is suffering from tachycardia. I complained and they said ”a woman pride is in her husband’s house”
But where’s the pride when it was no longer her husband’s house but a dungeon in the early European empire As if living with a monster was better than a homeless shelter. As if the bruises he left on me didn’t go deeper than skin. How could you tell me ” the patient dog eat the fattest bone” when the water has dried and the stone either burst or burn and emit heat rays that send water raining down my cheeks? I was taught in geography class about earthquakes and erosion, but not heartquake and bloody eruption in the lumen of my Aorta?
Tell me my people how could you tell me ” stay for your children if you leave where do you want them to go” when i was dying every single day, that you are seeing me not seeing me. You said i should endure it but won’t want to walk with me even for a second when i embark on endurance trek? You said i can change him to be the man i want but this is a pendulum bulb A cycle that repeats like TCA cycle, a vicious spin like a wheel of fate yana gararamba a kan titi. It is a dance of dominance, that he enjoyed as if he’s at Davido’s show in O2 arena, it is like an athletic game–an olympic that has a medal to win I thought love should uplift, not tear apart.
I said I’m not staying you started calling me names, yes you belong to the same specie of monster. I left you said i wasn’t religious as if it wasn’t the religion that says ” a finger shouldn’t be lift on a woman to beat her”. It is not the religion that gave me freedom? Haaa? Abi i no read it well ne? Then you said i should remember culture, the one that said i wasn’t entitled to leave even when i was going through hell? The one that said man should carry his wrong doings like grace? Or the one that says woman was born to be caged? Who made the culture then?
You see these words ehn? They were not just arranged in lines But it carries the weight of a thousand cuts The silence screaming in my chest, i swallow my heart in my guts It carries the story of every woman shut down behind the curtains of GBV. A story of hearts that lives but still yearns for life…………. Deejasmah
Khadija Ismail is a student of Medical lab science, a Hausa novelist, writer, poet, essayist and content writer. Her works centres on society and romance, she uses words to address issues like GBV, Mental and public health. She is the writer of Nisfu Deeniy and Wani rabo. Her work will be published in Yanar gizo anthology.You can connect with her on Facebook as Khadija Bint Ismail and Deejasmah writer on Instagram and Tiktok.
