BREATH

 
I go through from inside to the outside deck via the automatic doors of an impossibly large ship. Just beyond handsome wooden slats beige that meet white painted wrought iron dividers topped with a teak rail, are nothing but waves, the waves of the salt sea. I sit down and watch the horizon line. Some birds appear birds that are tropical and that follow the ship. I wonder then where and when they rest, and it puzzles me. I sit in a chair with faded orange cushions. A woman comes out and her dress is long and is a print decorative and unapologetic.

 

 

 The wind makes it to dance.

 

 

I wish I had a camera, she says, because I would get you take a picture of me. My dress is part of the wind and I look like a bird. Can I sit next to you? I don’t want to bother you.

 

 

Sure.

 

 

The woman says she is from the Carolinas now, but lived most of her life in New York City. I am no Southern Belle. Her intonation denotes that she is not below such, but rather more expansive, even cosmopolitan.

 

 

She remains on my left. A man approaches from the right but I don’t see him. She does. She says to him, You are one fine man. I have had my eye on you. And what a head of hair. Every time I lay my eyes on you I can’t take them off. Other men just don’t compare.

 

 

I look over, turning my head right to a forty five degree angle. He is a bit shy. He has flyers in his hand and is smoking a cigarette. I handed out these flyers advertising a party and I put the wrong information and now I have to go around and hand out the new ones. A pain. But I’ll get it done.

 

 

He takes a long drag of smoke into his lungs and exhales. The woman and I look at him and then glance out to the sea. By the way, he says to me, pointing to a table messy with wine glasses and beer bottles, an industrial strength ashtray with half its metal lid missing, I don’t know you but wanted to mention that you handled yourself really well in the midst of that fiasco last night. My husband and I were watching the whole thing. Bravo. Admirable.

 

 

I have no idea what he is talking about because he has mistaken me for someone else, which is a pattern, which is something that happens often.

 

 

Thanks but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t even near here.

 

 

He is surprised. I breathe in smoke. The woman breathes in smoke. He breathes in smoke again. We are all thinking.

 

 

Say, I say, What was it all about anyway? Sounds intense.

 

 

Abortion.

 

 

Abortion?

 

 

Ya. There is a group of women here that think the new anti abortion laws are great. I could hardly believe it from anyone, but from women makes it worse in my mind. I was so angry.

 

 

He is political. The non-Southern Belle with the beautiful dress nevertheless says something but I can’t make it out for a gust of wind, wind somehow like a breath exhaled by the sea skies. I am generally apolitical, though I have a few ideas here and there that lean left. I let them talk.

 

 

He listens to her and is upset about something and then voices his disagreement... They continue on though and are friendly but there is still some problem. Yet, they seem to find common ground on other things, more than not. Their voices fade out. I am thinking. I wonder what will happen if someone mistakes me for a person other than one that had a gift of oratory in debate, or attended an information technology training weekend, or someone who worked construction in the north of towns for a company that I, in reality, had never even heard name of. I wonder some more, about other things similar that have also happened, like the man who identified me as the person who Did not deserve one bit what Lisa and them did to you…no way, not you, who is a good guy and they are wicked evil and I am sorry you had to go through that..

 

I don’t know any Lisa or group like that.

 

 

But so far the reviews of the persons that are not me but look like me are good reviews.

 

 

I wonder what would happen if some authorities approach and say simply, Can you come with us please, and though it is a question on paper, is not a question in real life but a statement, and I have been mistaken for someone who did something, well, bad, untoward.

 

Two men come out and sit beside me on the right. One is of German descent. He told me this before. He chews on his cigar. I am a fisherman, from California, he says, as if simply continuing a days old conversation.

 

There are many rules where I come from, about fishing, I offer. If you get caught out of season they can impound your car, your boat, basically anything.

 

That’s right. Where I go also it is the same. Your Canada country population can fit into my California by the way. And, he puts his hand in front of him to help his point, and makes a gesture of some sort, There are rules for a reason, and they should be obeyed. It’s to protect the poor fishies.

 

I laugh inwardly at hearing this big and otherwise tough guy, chewing on the thickest cigar I have ever seen, say, ‘fishies,’ instead of ‘fish’.

 

Beside him I see another man. His face and affect, clothing and something about his general aura remind me of an old friend who committed suicide. Joseph Campbell said that once you reach over thirty everyone you meet will remind you of someone else you already met. True enough. And then what about fifty? What happens then? Maybe unless you are an extrovert, you don’t want to meet anyone else.  This man looks like the suicide had he lived another decade or two. The man wears a collar shirt, a golf shirt or something close to one. Non-descript haircut, average height and weight if there are such things. I sense he is not an asshole though, but rather an okay guy. The suicide was also kind, especially as the world goes. Golf shirt is thoughtful but thinks about worldly things. He is talking to someone on his right about points, aero plan, miles, and he keeps glancing at his phone. This mediocrity consumes many people, perhaps the majority.

 

I breathe deeply, drawing the tropical air as if right to my stomach. Then I take a drag of nicotine and chemicals in smoke and bring them just as deeply in.  I don’t really want to talk to any of these people, one way or the other, but there is nowhere else to go to smoke. Its hard maintaining, to coin a phrase, ‘lonership,’ upon a ship. Someone apparently caused a fire on a balcony and there is no smoking any longer on such personal outdoor spaces. Everyone pays for the sins of one. Plus it’s gotten late, and alcohol is a strange thing, - it loosens the mind otherwise inhibited and lubricates the lips. People say things they otherwise would not. I don’t know that I want to see or hear or know what waits dormant in most peoples’ minds and behind their lips.

 

The ship continues at eighteen to twenty knots, but it feels much faster than that in my guts and blood and bones. Maybe I am too sensitive, empathic towards the immediate and not so immediate environment. Luckily, a song sounds, and it’s Fleetwood Mac. It’s somehow soothing, a calm against the cacophony. Almost everywhere I go, they play Fleetwood Mac, because there is something universal about it all. I listen. I listen then to Stevie Nicks as she sings Dreams,

 

Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining

Players only love you when they’re playing

 

The wind picks up. A storm is beginning but they don’t close the area. The man with the exemplary  hair excuses himself and goes inside. I am back with the bird-dress lady, who is kind and articulate, animated and eccentric and quite beautiful, statuesque. She speaks of many things seemingly at once. America. The Black experience. Diasporas. Education. Employment. Travel. Relationships. Even diet and nutrition. And hens, ‘Hens,’ which I sought clarification on, and was her designation for women that, as she put it,… talk gossip, talk cheap talk, talk nothing but shit and lies about others, people that spread darkness and not light, not realizing that their darkness is going to come back and visit them double-fold in time…

 

 

It begins raining hard.

 

 

That warm tropical rain.

 

 

The wind pushes it into the deck area.

 

 

We stand up together. She is tall by any metric. But I am taller.  She asks me if she can hold my arm to go inside, and it is windy, for the breath of nature has become much more pronounced.

 

 

I guide her inside at her request.

 

 

Where is the woman’s washroom, she asks.

 

 

I don’t know. I know the men’s is here. But I have never gone to the woman’s washroom. She walks with me to the stairs and I ask her if she will be okay to find one.

 

 

Yes.

 

 

I ascend the steps and she disappears down a hallway. I would normally offer to help her a bit more, to get there, but I have then begun worrying about many things, half formed fears, mistaken identities and the faulty perception of people, even of good people. I was thinking of storms, of politics and division, of life and no life, of health problems and health care, of alcohol, tobacco, and vessels that travel in the night through tropical storms strong.

 

 

At the top of the steps I was not out of breath, yet I paused and took a deep breath anyhow.

 

 

Then I began to make my way to my room, walking alone under one green electrical sign after another that illumined the way. I could feel the ship rocking back and forth more than usual, a ship perhaps five or seven stories high and housing more than three thousand people.

 

 

The night storm had gathered so much strength by then that I could hear the winds whistling even from the inner corridors of the boat.

 

 

They sounded like spirits calling out diatribes, rhetoric, pleas, strange joys plus metaphysical pains and warnings, all songs and long wild unabridged strange poems in the middle of a living dream. It all mixed together in my brain and spirit, and I thought of the sea and its vast expanse, of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, of how it rains, the sometimes pregnant sky birthing endlessly through time and cycle its own waters, and how the wind often takes these and places them everywhere, blows them with a breath, and they land sometimes in drips and drops like tears across and down windows, mostly never seen or noted, but having existed nevertheless.

 

There are spirits simply everywhere, and I think to myself then that many of the dead so-called are more alive than the living.


 

AUDRA

Audra was Lithuanian.
Her family escaped from behind the Iron Curtain.
She spoke little English 
but, with her parents and siblings, she took 
English classes twice a week.

I learned that, “Hello” in her language
was “sveiki” and that the name Audra
translated into “storm.”
While I nibbled on ham sandwiches,
she ate cold potato pancakes for lunch.

Her father was a nurse in Lithuania 
but a tradesman in Australia.
Her mother worked at a convenience store.
Her two older brothers and younger sister
also attended the school but made no friends. 

Audra did try to fit in
but her accent was a formidable barrier.
And her plainness was no help.
She was something of a whiz at math.
Her neatness of hand embarrassed my sloppiness.

Audra left the school after one year.
A job in nursing opened up for her father
and the family moved north. Her chair wasn’t 
vacant long. A boy from Hungary took her seat.
But he, like Audra, couldn’t sit in it for long.  




ARMAGEDDON SLEEP

In the bed beside me, she's a comfort.
Once again, I'm gently hugged off to sleep.
But then I dream of traveling through a land
destroyed by nuclear holocaust.
The ground is scorched, the air black with soot.
Smoke rises from holes in the earth,
slow, continuous farts of charcoal and charred flesh.

I stop to examine a badly burned man,
his skin like a plague victim's and still smoldering.
The explosion simmered down,
raw wind starts getting its own back,
swirls the ashes, the filth,
makes sure I breathe every last mote of it.

Do I dream of such vile endings
because I can't take, for company through my subconscious,
the other in bed with me?
Is sleep, instant amnesia?
A loss of contact with everything short of Armageddon?

A lizard crawls across the simmering ashes.
It's moves quickly, then stops when it sees me,
raises its head as if it's the more important now,
like it's been suddenly liberated from human rule.
I crawl under the rock that reptile has left behind,
discover it's the pillow my head is burrowed into.

Awake, at one a.m..,
I'm like a beggar on a lonely dark street,
starving and terrified.
Thankfully, she breathes some silver in my cup.



HIS TIME OF DYIN’

He performed that
old bines number
in an open tuning on D
with the capo on the fourth fret.

He' d seen Led Zeppelin play it
back in the mid-seventies
but his version was softer, more plaintive,
like gospel turned down a few notches.

You can imagine the chills
troubling my spine
knowing he had cancer
and that part of his gruffness
came from the corrosion in his throat.

D-A-D-F#-A-D -
that was the medicine
he prescribed himself.
It didn't cure him
but I know it healed somebody.


IN THE MOMENTS AFTER SEX

When it is done,
it doesn’t matter
that you roll your body over,
look away from him.

You’re drawn 
to the sight of yourself
strutting giddily down
some tree-lined avenue,
wind-blown hair,
bells chiming 
as you swing your arms,
legs doing just enough
to sway your hips
and keep you upright.

“Are you okay?”
he asks.
He doesn’t know
you’re out of earshot.



NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

I stop and stare into the non-eyes
of the rhinoceros that is not a rhinoceros.
From there, it’s to the African elephant 
or, mucho stuffing wrapped in chemically 
preserved skin, topped off with real tusks. 
Then it’s the un-monkeys, nailed to
branches in mid-frolic and the constrictor  
that won’t be constricting anything any time soon.
Meanwhile, the pseudo whale, suspended by strings,
swims in an ocean of glass-enclosed air.
It makes me think of how much money and time
it cost me to go on that unsuccessful whale watch 
out of Bar Harbor.
I could have just sent a dummy in my place, 
one dressed



NICOLE

She was a runner,
little weight, astonishing speed.
Someone made her face sit still for a photograph.
Amazing.

Her battle was lost on the fields of bedroom.
Her eyes raced miles ahead
but her body stopped at the oak tree
mincing words with her window.

Jet planes couldn't keep up with her pace.
Satellites had no chance.
Her vision was around the world twice
before a soul could whisper "Amen."

"Write it down, write it down."
they implored her.
But her hand wasn't part of the flight-plan.
The pen on paper was the first to die.

She was a pilot of great reach.
No stopping at the stars for her.
She settled for nothing less
than a thrilling dash to her own mind.

Too late, too late.
She was expecting thought, imagination.
But it was something else
when she got there.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing,

California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad..

World Vivek Aklima
 
Ankhi Morning is not good 
Even Noon and Night are the same. 
Who are chasing our goodness? 
Think,World Vivek knows it well! 
It is you who are the vigilant warden of it. 
Our voice echoes on the cosmological wall. 
See once — 
How is the present quaking by the past blankly? 
Then now scratch — 
Your conviction in the hands of the unborn.

Aklima Ankhi, poet, storyteller and translator from Cox'sbazar, Bangladesh. Born in Mymensingh, Bangladesh. She has a published poetry named "Guptokothar Shobdochabi" written in Bangla.She is a post graduate in English Literature. As a profession she is a Lecturer in English. 

Ochilova Nozima Alisher qizi

My grandmother 

It’s 7:35 a.m. It was time to go to school. Then suddenly my grandmother said to me: “Daughter, come make me some tea. Then you can go to your school.” Then I angrily shouted at the grandmother:

Grandma, I’m going to be late for school. Drink it yourself. I’ll make you some tea when I get there!

My poor grandmother has a soft voice, it’s okay, baby. Go to school, I’m the same without you. You should study and learn, I will see my day, they said.

Suddenly he reached me and shivered. While I still had time to go to school, I disappointed my grandmother. If there is still time, I will make you some tea. As for my grandmother, she sighed angrily: “I’ll drink it myself, you can go.”

Grandma, forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend you. I promise I will do everything you say. Please only forgive me!.. I am not angry with you, my daughter! – said my grandmother laughing.

Then I took my grandmother’s blessings and went to school. At school, we also wrote an essay on respecting elders and honoring children. I wrote down what happened today. And I got an excellent grade.

In fact, the more respect and honor we show to adults, the more it will be returned to us. After all, we must not forget that this world is another.

When winter's embrace arrives,
Softly stirring from slumber,
Like a hushed lullaby sung by gentle winds,
Yearning for the familiar path of old,
Guiding us towards the new.

Like the courageous battle of dawn against night,
I witnessed mama's presence, fierce and overpowering,
As she crushed the boy and his mother,
With a force that echoed through the air,
Sucking the light from their souls.
She attempted to bind the elusive breeze,
But all she saw was the breeze binding her,
Within the confines of her modest bamboo kitchen.
Moments passed by, yet the tangled threads above remained oblivious,
To the elusive vapor that perpetually emerged,
From mama's fiery stick that dances with flames.

But in the end,
That flammable liquid quelled her burdens,
And the threads warmly welcomed their companion,
Transforming the walls into a canvas of darkness.



Are you a soul, a being enraptured by melodies in this vast world? Yesterday, my mother's voice, like a bare tongue, unraveled a prophecy within me. It spoke of a looming day when those who cling to the insignificant beats will be drawn towards the allure of the most enchanting tones. On that last day, drums shall resound, reverberating throughout the realms for all to hear. Yet only a select few shall surrender to the rhythm's irresistible pull.

But I question if this day bears the weight of judgment's hand, a day where girls and boys, women and men, shall race swifter than a fleeting sparrow. I beseech not for our presence in witnessing such a day, but for our transcendence, away from its grasp. For this day is known as "Nafsi, Nafsi," a whispered call to depart, where no companions can remain. It is a mystery, where strangers move alongside one another, their true selves concealed.


In the depths of our hearts, we crave a tranquil oasis, where peace flows like a gentle river. Like the sweet embrace of a mother's love, unity is the tapestry that adorns our deepest desires. 

Our nation, once plagued with turbulence, yearns for the soothing balm of harmony. Fear shall not bind us, for we possess the courage of steadfast warriors. As we kneel in humble reverence, our prayers ascend like fragrant incense, seeking divine intervention for our heralds.

Together, we must forge an unbreakable bond of trust, as solid as the earth beneath our feet. For the lands we tread upon are vast, stretching infinitely towards the horizon, beckoning us to summon our leaders and beckon forth their unwavering support.

It's My Country

My country is Bangladesh
Filled with flowers and fruits
With folk songs and cottage industries
Green color and freshness
Spread the green glow across the fields
With its thousands of rivers and lakes
This is my country-Bangladesh.

29 October, 2023

Monira Mahbub is a student of grade 6 in Nawabganj Government Girls' High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh.