HUNGRY FIRE  

Here is a debutante 

Burning on a hungry fire

That is sparkling and searing 

Chewing the nerves in her chest 

Gulping the blood in her spleen 

Though not satiated 

The fire is hissing like the sound a snake might make

Symbol of hungriness written on the wall of her hub

Designed by blue flames 

She feels the hungry fire burning and burning 

The fire to flow like water that flows in the ocean 

The fire to glow like a candle that glows in the dark 

The fire to sparkle like freshly fallen snow that sparkles in winter 

This fire is felt not seen 

I feel hungry fire burning in me too.

Aisha MLabo writes from Katsina, Nigeria and is a Law student of Umaru Musa Yar’adua University Katsina, Nigeria.

Pouring the Isle of “You smile all the time” in Titanic Chugged Cruiser: ‘The Way We Were’—-A Decanter of Obituaryfest Through Filmic Literature

Z I Mahmud, Alma Mater, English Department, University of Delhi, India

Silver screen mountain lion of Utah—Robert Redford and lioness glamour girl—Barbra Streisand manifest character arcs within claustrophobic debonair … As Rooseveltian romantic lovers, the chameleon couple is exposed to being infested and pestered through an ensemble of aural-visual on-screen framework enculturated within psychodrama ; thus marooned within the shipwreck of unamnesiac anathema. Sydney Pollack embodies francophone aboriginality and diasporic expatriate postnationalist postcoloniality Bunyanesquing— [Bunyanesquing is a neologism, insomuch and inasmuch of psychologizing and sexualizing filmic repertoire and that is this line of argument can be phrased as projections of extended personalities from curatorial directorship perspectivity] a laurel wreathed in romantic tenor filmic production. Erens, Patricia, and Sydney Pollack. “SYDNEY POLLACK: THE WAY WEARE.” Film Comment 11, no. 5
(1975): 24–29.

Katie Morosky puts forth the rhetoric of Rooseveltistic welfarism and unionization —raking over the coals anti-Cold War tensions and anti-McCarthyism in controversial conversation with fellow travelers and socialist compatriots of the motion picture industry.
Without cineversing hat on a hat, Barbra Streisand roasts arguments to watch their melting faces drip off their worthless faces as explained in the article by Matelski, Marilyn J. “‘The Way We Were. . .’ and Wish We Weren’t: A Hollywood Memoir of Blacklisting in America.” Studies in Popular Culture 24, no. 2 (2001): 79–98. Herein the interpolation of Rooseveltistic sympathizer cast Streisand in highlights of liberalistic Americanism.

Her husband is dead! Dead!!! Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt went down into the mines. And when they asked her why, she said, “I am my husband’s legs.” Did you tell the crippled jokes, too? Is there anything that isn’t a joke to you people?”

Hubbell and Morosky star studded casts pacifist egalitarianism transition toward flashforwards of retrospective grain of salt : ‘but making a blessed buck’ and ‘PEOPLE—are more important than any goddamn witch-hunt’.

Crystalline Jewishness of Katie Morosky [Barbra Streisand] surmountingly triumphs with conquest of a bagel of appreciation. Because of her creditworthy work ethics, passion, intelligence and marvel —- heartmelting observance of Jewish American lady persona in Hubbell Gardner [Robert Redford] backstage is fruitified in PICKETTE, SAMANTHA. “‘When You’re a Funny Girl’: Confirming and Complicating Accepted Cultural Images of Jewish Femininity in the Films of Barbra Streisand.” In Jews and Gender, edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon, 245–70. Purdue University Press, 2021. Both masculinization and feminization are characteristic traits of wave of womanist revolutionary blueprint of Jewishness and Samantha Pickette situates Streisand framework consolidating ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ to undermine ideals of a hierarchical society governed by hegemonic gendered expectations.

However, commie to saddie stock caricature imperils this governance of femininity. For the sake of argumentative emphasis, castration threat faced by the heroine is an unheimlich torrent in the vein of imaginary eugenics agrophobia—- superimposed upon the hero’s egomaniacal masculinity and psychic virility.
‘You and me. Not causes. Not principles’—-depoliticizes her political partisanship and disenfranchises female empowerment. After all, undertones and undercurrents of power struggles derelict the relationship between the couple with Katie’s clash of counterback, “Hubbell, people are their principles.” For Hubbell Katie’s reformer sage-like personality for thriving and striving the way of the world is a utopian idealism. Despite platonic romance Hubbell-Katie is a doomed pair—- stranded in dysfunctional marriage—– recoils into a shuddered wedding. If Katie doesn’t sell her soul for the sake of the American dream as extrapolated from the literary critic Letty
Cottin Pogrebin’s point of view, then I wish to argue what Samantha Pickette’s illustrative scholarship eschews. Hubbell Americanizes Judaism to the hinges and fringes of Christianity for the sake of the American Dream by permutation of plot twist and storyline. The transposition of a divorce petition springs forth within the cellar of the fourth wall.

Wasn’t Samantha Pickette walking on egg shells with confession in the performative gender of bolstering feminine body polity that after all she shrugs off her standpoint in the teleological ontology tracing Barbra Streisand’s happy endings— as transgressive nature of
feisty womanist Jewishness betide through poetic justice in the consequential aftermath of breaking off ritualization of interreligious institution.

Later the erudite scholarly critic nails the coffin in Katie Morosky’s everywoman struggles for restoration of family building by sheltering in the refuge of lyrical poetic fairy tale tradition of angel of the hearth. Dissolution of marriage coincided since salt of the earth Hubbell wanted care-free reliable family reconciliation within screen writing career; however Hubbell’s angel of the hearth was always waiting for the next shoe to drop in this mores of the nuclear disarmament campaign. In a nutshell, nostalgic glorification behind succumbment of the rack and ruin pair is likewise opening a can of worms amongst star-crossed and unrequited lovers.

The Way We Were transcendentally nostalgizes as symbolic epitome —in the heartfelt memoiristic reminiscences of Barbra Streisand for being cultural lightning in a bottled remembrance—memorial services of star-studded goodbye Hollywood has seen in decades. We are talking about a man who didn’t just act. He discovered talents. He nurtured careers. He changed the entire landscape of independent filmmaking. After all, as much as you can and as long as you can, philosophy floods with the memorabilia chemistry of this on-screen
couple—outlasting impressions of idolization of the entertainment industry alongside film studies and film criticism. ‘The double helix of the star wattage heyday lionizes tussled blonde locks, granite jaw and million dollar smiles’ as star cast reviewed by Robert Redford’s Funeral, Barbara Streisand’s TRIBUTE Is STUNNING!

Robert Redford elevated the powerhouse actress like Streisand through the enduring magical caprice of the popcorn classic The Way We Were. ‘That film, that performance, that chemistry between Redford and Streisand, it captured something eternal about love and loss, and the way time changes everything … As Barbra Streisand takes her leather gloved hand and pushes her summer boy Sandie blonde hair from Robert Redford’s forehead and he clasps her
wrist gently pulling her into a final embrace. An inevitable farewell, the audience sobbed.’

Redford resurrects in her epitaphic memorial as the times she remembered the fun they had commenting upon the Oprah Winfrey interviewing him, “I remember liking her energy and her spirit. It was wonderful to play off of. I also really enjoyed kidding her. She was fun to kid.”

From touching every corner of the entertainment industry, the actors he worked with, the directors he discovered and causes he championed…devotion to conservation, life, vision and
lasting contribution to Utah…feelings he inspired, dreams he encourages, independent voices he amplified through Sundance, lives he touched, careers he launched, the storytelling craft…loyalty, trustworthiness, principles, looks, commitment to excellence… and so on and so forth. Streisand’s onscreen heroization of Redford shall outlive real marriages through the relationship strands between Katie-Hubbell pair—-beauty with substance and stardom with
purpose helming the filmworld—-recognizing his worth, celebrating his talent, maintaining the everlasting bond throughout decades.

Photography Acknowledgement
THE WAY WE WERE Starring Barbra Streisand & Robert Redford. October 16, 1973. Picture, taken on set during the filming in 1972. Eoghan. Barbra Streisand Fan’s World Page
Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, who starred together in 1973’s ‘The Way We Were’.

💜Smooth Radio
Robert Redford In ‘The Way We Were’
Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford sit smiling looking forward in a scene from the film ‘The Way We Were’, 1973. (Photo by Columbia Pictures/Getty Images)

Streisand & Redford In ‘The Way We Were’
View of American actors Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford as they lie in bed in a scene from the film ‘The Way We Were’ (directed by Sydney Pollack), Los Angeles, California, 1972. (Photo
by Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty Images)

Redford & Streisand In ‘The Way We Were’
View of American actors Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand as they face one another in a scene from the film ‘The Way We Were’ (directed by Sydney Pollack), Los Angeles, California, (Photo by Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty Images) 1972.

Z. I. Mahmud [email: zimahmud_anan@yahoo.com] is a Bangladeshi scholar, creative writer, and B.A. (Honours) alumnus in English from Satyawati College, University of Delhi. He has recently submitted an essay for the Keats Shelley Memorial Prize titled, The Utopian Enlightenment of Romantic Sublime Dissolves Into Dystopian Apocalypse Within Mary Shelley’s Last Man. His research and creative work explore literature’s intersections with history, imagination, and cultural reception. Mahmud’s abstract, Dungeon-Castle and Demonic Downfall: Traumatizing Horroresque Gothicization of the Medievalist Halloween, has been selected for panel presentation at the virtual conference Confound the Time: Reception in Medieval & Early Modern Studies, 24–25 January 2026.

ANKLETS

My mother told me I was born with anklets

gaudy, beautiful things

forged of false surrender.

Like every woman before me,

They strapped iron links to their shine,

stretching heavy into the earth’s bosom,

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.

A rant, not a rumour, about a real man

I don’t believe in an arrangement

Of a ringmaster refusing to realize,

Not reprising a role of authority

I realize was never really real.

He won’t reincarnate as a robin when

There isn’t a belief in flying free

Riding the sharks in his dying brain.

I am what remains; I relate back

To a man who can only relapse 

Where I can not keep regiving

My heart’s energy as he replays

His wrongful reasons of ruling:

A royalty his favorite shade of red.

AND THEN EVERYTHING WAS THE STORM

A village siren did not exist to start startling us to the flood,
nor would one make us distrust luck to prevent it reaching me.

The deer running away made the dusk dulling the eye shine
amidst the heaps of overturned trash  with banqueting buzzards.

An indifferent moon had soothed the sunburnt arms of visitors
who had not thought they held tickets to a deadly raceway of water.

An aviary display of confused birds aligned on telephone wires
took off all at once like those assembled in Hitchcock’s story.

Headlights of escaping cars float their glint on a sudden rush of
water in what was a quiet river that now swept along trees

near the deserted parking lots, trailer clusters, and summer camps,
where a few hours before friends had gathered for a night’s bar-b-que.

And sometimes those headlights, broken one-eyed cyclops, targeted
a leaping stag before the lights expired, replaced by lightning strikes.

Those  able to wade to safety waited for the next day’s light
to reveal what would startle even the old at such new absences.

Racing overhead, cirrus clouds of accumulated water in the
heat could not hold the buildup of rain that now spiraled down.

Apparently a cheap wall calendar dropped page after page
as penciled-in weeks rode the brown water with photos and toys.

Empty hopes left together as we tried to screen out what we all
knew was coming, but maybe every fifty years or only each century.

And the wild flowers along the highways and those in the gardens
that opened for each day’s bright morning had now closed forever.
_____________________________________________________________

PHOTO FINISH

The photo I found in a plastic frame
was a close-up made by the boyfriend
of a rich girl who generously left me
a set of Hitchcock chairs taken
from her family’s heirloom barn.
Her beau, balding and too friendly,
had three cameras dangling
around his sunburnt neck
that endless day we stretched
on a beach of singing sand.
I was wearing non-tinted, rimless
glasses, and turned my head
to the dark, blinking eyes of
each instrument he aimed.
The image itself, like any process
of creation, could not be trusted,
as a property of lens and angle,
shrinking me to a visual story.
I understand more than before
those religious people who
shunned such ghost-catchers,
knowing it was so dangerous,
and each snapshot to be feared
in the dots of gray worrying
away the flesh fixed on paper,
in time without any reference
to time, true but not really
accurate, or accurate but
not true, like chaos when
the picture breaks apart,
indistinguishable from plain air.
Looking across fathomless water
we wanted to see what God
sees, but what does God see?
We had not replaced God,
only refined our all-seeing eye
in a solid sense of ourselves,
but were forced to face at last
things we prefer not to look at,
trying to control the universe’s
response, like anything we make,
even the careful crafting of love
I burned as completely as the photo.
_________________________________________________

ON THE VIGIL OF ALL HALLOWS

On the vigil of All Hallows
a tailfree, fuzzy comet
made us face the sky
as this omen’s glow burst
by a factor over a million,
not from an unknown nova,
but an object leaving our space
into a welcoming darkness
with a final, gaseous flare,
like a sign of our own good night.
Along the village byways
children hunting down treats
at the gingerbread houses of strangers
held flashlights to bathe their steps
and chanted a rote threat.
They dressed as fantasy figures;
a hint of escape and longing
clings to these flat imitations.
In time they will wear the subtle
costumes worn by their parents.
This hallowed night the parade
of original innocence
keeps at arm’s length
the spirits “roaming the world
seeking the ruin of souls.”
They await another time.

In the first light my car,
coated in sugary frost,
displays on its locked trunk
a design, a childish squiggle,
a mask of Potatohead,
a clown, or a continent,
and a child’s hand imprinted,
an enigmatic token,
like a palm on a horse’s flank
from an owner riding the prairie
or the perfect ochre outline
on a cave’s smoky vault.
The warmth of that phantom hand
had melted the ice glaze
and left a record of touch —
a blessing.

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose work has appeared in literary journals in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and India. He lives in a small village that is close to a nature conservancy, green cemetery, and Amish farms.

Ecotourism: A Journey Not Only to Nature, but to Ourselves

In today’s rapidly globalizing world, travel has become more than just a hobby – it is a lifestyle, a symbol of freedom, and an exploration of identity. Millions of people cross borders each year to see new places, breathe in new air, and collect memories that last a lifetime.

Yet, behind the growing excitement of tourism lies a silent cry — the cry of nature struggling to breathe under the weight of human footsteps. Forests shrink. Rivers lose their purity. Wildlife retreats into silence. In such a moment, tourism cannot remain the same. The world no longer needs tourists who only consume nature — it needs travelers who protect it. This is where ecotourism rises as a new philosophy of travel.

Ecotourism is not about luxury resorts or crowded entertainment parks. It is about visiting nature with care, respect, and love. Ecotourists step lightly, listen carefully, and learn deeply. They seek not only beauty, but meaning; not only adventure, but responsibility. To travel responsibly means to understand that every leaf has value, every bird song is a story, and every river is a pulse of life.

Ecotourism reminds us that nature is not a backdrop for photos — it is the foundation of our existence. Environmental crises are no longer distant warnings; they are our daily reality. Climate change, soil degradation, water scarcity, and species extinction threaten the balance of our planet. Ecotourism is one of the most effective ways to connect humans back to the earth, raise awareness, and create economic incentives for conservation. In many countries, this industry has become a model of sustainable development. Local communities gain employment, protected areas receive funding, and travelers return home with a renewed respect for the planet.

Uzbekistan is blessed with natural diversity — from the ancient sands of Kyzylkum to the majestic Chimgan mountains, from the mysterious Ustyurt Plateau to the rising hope of the Aral Sea ecotourism zone. These places are not just landscapes; they are national treasures.

Yet natural beauty alone is not enough. We must nurture it. Promote it wisely. Protect it fiercely. A single careless campfire can turn a forest into ash; a single plastic bottle can pollute a river for decades. Ecotourism teaches us that loving our homeland begins with caring for its nature. A tree planted today becomes a shade for tomorrow. A river kept clean becomes life for generations. Protecting nature is not a duty — it is an honor.

Ecotourism shapes a culture where humans and nature grow together, hand in hand, heart in heart. Travel, but travel responsibly. Discover, but do not destroy. Touch the earth, but with kindness. Because while nature has sheltered humanity for thousands of years, now it is humanity’s turn to shelter nature.

Dildora Xojyozova is a young geography student and environmental enthusiast from Uzbekistan. Passionate about sustainable development and nature conservation, she actively participates in academic, social, and ecological initiatives. Dildora promotes environmental awareness among youth and dreams of contributing to global eco-tourism development. With a strong dedication to education and research, she aims to become a leading specialist in geography and sustainable tourism.