Lost “again” in translation. I am adrift again. In this country The lilting accent of a brook wrapped around my mahogany skin. My idioms tumble down like unruly roots. Dormant in the taciturn stillness of phantom dreams. A meditation upon love People walk through a haboob to get past it. “Humongous”, my child’s sibilant whisper hangs in the air for someone to retrieve it and carry in their pocket. The hawkers screech like birds trapped in walls. I put my fingers in my dead ears. Once I had dipped my feet in gelid marble, my blush filled the sky with tones of lilac. The sealed silence of the tomb had echoed so loud. Mouth Agape, knees trembling, I listened. I share a birthday with an empress. I had walked the gardens, blue Polyester sticking to me like a second skin, henna marking me till my elbows. Demure bride. Now vultures circle over my head in anticipation of carrion. There are red letter boxes outside disrupting the pristine alabaster. It is a post office, they say. I look away, I was never here. One by one, the sepia toned photographs disappear from the family album with a broken spine. A woman with a beehive on her head, saree draped artlessly over a sleeveless blouse. A young man pretending to touch the spire, an optical illusion. Father caught in an awkward moment with a Yashica camera. This is no longer a story about love at first sight. A forlorn princess did not sit on a bench here in 1992.Poets never rhapsodized about its grandeur. We don’t know how it came into being. The sun is in arrant mode; it burns holes in my heart. Tomorrow, I’ll return and post a letter. Seeking solace in subterfuge for what never was. Glossary Haboob: A wind that brings sand from the desert native to Sudan. You will disappear… You will lose a lover and disappear off the face of the earth, you will squirm in the therapist’s chair and not tell her where you were. It has been eight sessions and two hundred dollars for an hour the seat is still warm from the person before you. An imprint left on the beige upholstery is oddly comforting. We are all drowning and the thought makes you feel not so alone. You have not cried once. For a whole week after his passing, you told Seema about the folded shirt and black trousers, he left them on the bed. He did not want to die, he had just slipped out into the night for a breath of fresh air, perhaps he needed to clear his head. You read books on reincarnation, about the afterlife, you meditate your hair grows white, you wake up screaming even with the night light on but you don’t shed tears. Ordinary days can kill you, you have learned luminous, filled with the chirping of birds, the chittering of crickets. You will carry your anguish into your New York apartment in lieu of luggage, there are no elevators, the man beneath is a doctor who sleeps during the day. You hate him because doctors could not save your love, yet you don’t entertain friends with kids anymore. Children are loud and you are fragile like a handheld grenade. You become a plant mother instead, you never weep, you pamper your pots with filtered water. And one day there is an Orange in a pot by the sill, a tree you had bought on a whim at the grocery store. You marvel at how perfectly spherical it is, how orange how it grew out of bereavement, you eat it peel and all. It is sweet and tart and bitter; it bursts and melts on your tongue and the salt finally pours from your eyes, it trickles past your lips. A familiar gnawing to devour everything fills your being as you sob. Your tears drown the whole building, then Manhattan, all of it but you swim ashore in your aliveness. Jahnavi Gogoi is a poet who grew up amidst insurgency in Assam, India and lived to tell the tale. She is a writer of children’s fiction and a mother to an assertive seven-year-old daughter. Her debut book of poetry ‘Things I told myself’ can be found on Amazon. Jahnavi now resides in Canada with her family in the picturesque town of Ajax. Her poetry has been published in Inssaei International journal, Academy of the Heart And Mind, Spillwords, Soul Connection by Guwahati Grand Poetry Festival, Mystic Aura magazine, Indian Periodical. She also has words in G plus, The Beacon webzine and others.
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Texas Fontanella
I'm just concerned about your emotional warfare, and putting the Charlie in Baudelaire Not racist, heaps border fears Bought their ears That's why your night's in arrears As for the secret weapon, it's in our pocket Not timeless, just rock it bored of years I turn on the tele just for a fix of fears Here they have the barkeep glitch our beers Don't snitch on peers No, put snitches on piers Treading on thin nice try, left swipe I don't want to live in a sci fi Haven't moved in a year, these things moving up me, they say it's not divine The main attraction, but still got sidekicked So fishy they had to more real than reel us in You can call me a wit, man, cos I lilac You can call me a Whitlam, cos it's time To get kicked out by the CIA I mean CI Gay, but don't tell my wifi I do skylines thru the eyes, chemtrails, clouds Walk in, all the fems loud Get the train rail off all its routes Now when we need it, they just cough up the doubt We don't smoke green, jist chop up the louts Can't help, we already shot up the Galts Why do you think we look so young for? I've got power you can point at, but you can't dock yours I've only got six mull in my sock drawer I only look so I can drop jaws I won't robocop to you any more I won't drop you any flaws Except the price one A word to the high rise can't be undone No batman bout the raves, but you can say I'm Robin Like you don't underline what these dreams be costing I'm getting plaid by Ryan Gosling So it's myself on the red Carpet I'm accosting So few memories I chuck myself out the pub was getting too rowdy Pack up my things say howdy Order up a beer relight the bounty kindle my ounces and single my prouder Movements out on TV Units back from Jon doe ray me Jumped from hand into my mode de vie And from there, into my ode to me And my shadows are irritable again Can't understand I'm not my friend sallows my cheeks, second elderhood But the youth I'm shooting says there's hell to prove Only rules I like the ones the dead flout So I guess that's why you had me at get the fuck out Queen of Odds So close to me like the cure So closed to me like the future Closer it gets the looser the thread we cut the loser instead - that me Choose you over life; you make me happy When skies are out of service And the winds are getting blabby Just as we do, and did last night Are you sure we didn't do this in a past life? We ask nice and the ocean lets us surfers Float instead of sink somehow shear the shore winks to make us go wow try to make clouds treetops won't kowtow Everything about you is pow wow bow wow Just flowers me thinking, like, our souls're grouse foul you be my perso climate change Get me glitching all the whys away With greenhouse gas lines We need replace, but Resources're lacking, time too Sick coal still too powerful Must est there; bower's full Hours neither heat nor cool now lost compass meaningless, sour flip flops clip clop on the way home from the drowse I'm deconstructed away from you Remodernist me, babe Frack modest Tee it up - you truly, madly, deeply think these rhymes are proper gay But so are you - I got you, bae And without warning, the coffee plate spins out of control absent of intervention And we console ourselves with what? Yawning indecision? Bring bring listenings no bring bring listen Oh, it's Sly? Tell em I said die Like the weather changes. Concrete's quicksand Whooshes the kitchen back to us Some kind of catalyst to see what matters to me Say can't cap a way free But actually, if you and me…. Bloodbath valley, guts to rally, no dilly dally, gashed up alley, one cashed up sally, who taking the tally? But sometimes, just sometimes, you can be a wee illuminasty Shut up and farm me Am I a terrorist for planting heroin in the president's office? For insulting old codgers with my eloquent doctrines? For inviting riots to decry it all the president's options? I'm intelligent often, I'm the resident boffin, I'm selling your coffins, inventive a god send me down to change the face of rap (crap), now whenever we play they claptrap back to the clawing, bored and faded the drawing board was always awesome jaded I'm bold and brain-dead Sold out and tasteless Must have the language virus Eating up an anguished iris I'm very good at dissection Highly likely I will die sectioned On the outside in We let the bouncers Spin them away from daggitude You don't have to do with it a dagger, dude Looks like crazy Pfft, you should see the streets that staged me
Poetry from Mahbub Alam
The Drawings The drawings are singing The wonderful melodious songs are sung with instruments Enchanting as the painting of Mona Lisa! The laugh you live in me For ever and ever. Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh 13 May, 2023 Withered Thoughts The cyclone is ready to destroy People are taking shelter as the birds fly to other Fear hovers around the coastal area Fear disturbs the mind The sun is so hot, the scorching sun Hinders to pace outside We are in this turmoil world Drooping in the furnace and chokes the breath. Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh 13 May, 2023
Poetry from David Kopaska-Merkel
UFO Museum: Roswell, NM Breaking in was nothing, For one of my talents, Ditto for lifting the device I needed From its glass case without tripping the alarm; Installing and testing it was a matter of moments. I was ready to go; I'd miss Darlene, she'd been good to me: A loving wife, willing participant In what must have seemed, at times, Bizarre activities, but she'd get over it, And I couldn't give her the children She so desperately needed, I needed to get back to my other family, My other wife Raising a horde of sprouts on her own, And I was so tired of the lies: An only child of fictitious parents Killed in a “car” crash, Born and raised in “the Midwest,” A retired airline pilot. My only real fear, That my wife had remarried, And her husband had, of course, eaten our young, So I'm on my way back to Aldebaran, And I really hope that if I have to kill and eat Her and her lover, He's not one of my brothers.
Poetry from Ergash Masharipov
Mother I get it when it's full of flowers scent I can't find a single scent I can't distinguish my mother From a thousand tosser Mercy is a river, my pure-hearted mother I have only one value To be alive for my child Eat our sorrow day and night He gave me a white wash Until adulthood I will see my child's happiness Give us a lifetime.
Poetry from Maja Milojkovic
GIFT FROM GOD Love is a gift from God thank Maya by writing about Me. You have no love for God, but call upon it, imagine that it is there, and pray for the Divine Vision. That sublime love is hidden in holy books and in people whose mouths kiss the word of God and do not deviate from the path of devotion. Don't trust Maya men when you read love poems, that's not love, that's lust. Yesterday someone wrote about the only love, today you are the only love tomorrow some other woman will be the only love. It is a lie hidden in beautiful words. Don't believe Maya's illusion Don't look for love where it doesn't exist. Pray to Maya with all your heart for protection. Call Me. I am Your gift, reveal me and keep me secret. I FEEL YOU Every raindrop is your inhale and exhale in the heavenly symphony I listen to the beat of your heart. Through the touch of the rain I feel you. Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia. She is a person to whom from an early age, Leonardo da Vinci's statement, "Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard," is circulating through the blood. That's why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them. As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies, and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube. Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali, and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers. She is the recipient of many international awards. "Trees of Desire" is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems "Moon Circle." She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists "Mountain Views" in Montenegro, and she is also a member of the Poetry club "Area Felix" in Serbia.
Essay from Feruza Abdullayeva
