Poetry from Ilhomova Mohichehra

Uzbekistan

My country is always
My dear Uzbekistan.
This girl is rich in beauty,
Narcissus in my garden.

The so-called Uzbekistan
I was born in a beautiful place.
By and by
I pulled out the rock.

Have fun these days,
Flowers open every day.
Birds flying far away,
Happy girls.

Play and laugh at home
Sneak away.
Push your period,
You build the future.

The country is burning for you,
Both parents.
always burning for you
Sweating and burning.

For the value of such a country,
Enough dear friends.
Such a country from the world,
You will never find.


Ilhomova Mohichehra is a student of the 8th grade of the 9th general secondary school of Zarafshan city, Navoi region.

Essay from Z. I. Mahmud (one of many)

Philip Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings

Examine a close reading of the poem “Whitsun Weddings” with critical analysis and textual references.

(Image of Philip Larkin, a black and white photo of a skinny middle-aged white man sitting on a couch in a room, wearing reading glasses).

Whitsun Weddings is a brandishing testamentary swashbuckler locomotive wedding party of ceremonial festivities and ritualistic observance of postcolonial and post industrial England. The impending wedding coach has been metaphorically epitomized by Philip Larkin as a means of celebratory cavalcade. “We headed towards London, shuffling gouts of steam. Now fields were building plots and poplars cast”

Whitsun Weddings occasion symbolically manifest old maidish Postcolonial British folks entrenched and rooted by a connubial affair in accord to the fiscal reformation aftermath of the beginning of a new financial year instead of that ending from a previous year. Philip Larkin’s vaticination and sortilege of the porters and mails bears to metaphorical connotations of pregnant women and their spouses respectively through avant garde impressionism. Poet laureate’s setting and locale of Whitsun Weddings is a treasure trove of observation, reflection and contemplation amidst “Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.”

“The secret like a happy funeral” encapsulates the oxymoronic ambivalence that is at the heart of this fascinating reading of Larkin’s litany poems. “While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared. At a religious wounding” might implicate references to saturnine temperaments and stony faced solemnity being exposed to sepulchral sombre melancholia. The affair of espousal is overall sultry dismay, gloomy despair, desultory grim and grave depression in accord with Larkin’s point of view. Expanses and vistas of England with drifting of Britannic legacy and British isles have been subjected to dismantlement and shrinkages afterwards of the Great World Wars. 

Whitsun Weddings is that seventh Sunday after Easter, Pentecost Christian holiday, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem and 1950s Britain’s progressive levy reform position legitimizes financially beneficiary matrimonial alliance. The signature litany of verbal photographic memorabilia from the memorialization of a train travelling outside the carriage windows rattling through the British landscapes. Englishness and Britishness of the 1960s era symbolize cultural hallmarks of the charismatic poem as indicated by the parodies of fashion lurking beneath veils and heels of soon to be wedded maidens and already betrothed ladies. Language, speech, prosody and rhetoric has been alchemically metamorphosed from the bedrock of ordinariness to that extraordinary visual and auditory impact and emphases. For exemplary evidences point to uncles with smutty mouth, fathers with broad belts under suits and mothers with seamy foreheads, nylon gloves and jewellery substitutes and lemons, mauves and olive ochres.  

“A sense of falling, like an arrow shower/ Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain” herein the epilogue revealing epiphanic heavenly downpour onto earth as metaphorical connotations of anarchy being poured. Larkin, haunted and obsessed with marriage, conspicuously extrapolates the unforeseen on edge and fidgety ending. 

BBC has a radio show where Simon Armitage explores Philip Larkin’s poem The Whitsun Weddings.

Poetry from J.K. Durick

                 New Curfew

Now it’s a “suggested” curfew, dusk till dawn

for certain towns and it’s not hard to picture

the citizens of those towns huddled in their

homes waiting out the night. It’s not Covid

this time, with its masks and hand washing

its safe spacing away from your friend and

neighbors. It’s not all that simple this time.

No, this time it’s Triple E, a disease that once

was confined to horses and some other farm

animals. Now they only “suggest” that we keep

to the curfew. Now there’s a culprit that has been

a character in our lives for what seems like for-

ever. Don’t we all remember coming home on

a summer’s day scratching mosquito bites and

taking them in stride. But now, this nuisance

from years back is playing a part in all this. It’s

not hard to imagine them hiding in the backyard

planning their attack on us, if we don’t follow

the “suggested” curfew – they’re planning, they’re

plotting their taking over after we are all killed

off. The mosquito, that formerly unimportant part

of our lives, our summers, has risen up to take

their shot at getting control. They’re out there buzzing

that faint buzz we remember, trying to reassure us

and lure us out some time between dusk and dawn.

               Proper Form

I’m filling out the form, filling in

the blanks, you know the kind that

levels the field for us. We become

as we fill in blanks, like Name___

and Address_________ andother

relevant points of our identities.

They know us by what we put down.

Before they can assign us a number

they need to know a bit about us.

They do ask if we are a robot, which

of course I am not. I make our mark

next to that point, as if a robot couldn’t

figure it out and fill this out. They want

my Date of Birth_______________

my Phone Number______________

and in this case, for this form, they want

Full Name of Emergency Contact___

and an ominous sounding Return Airport

which notes that this would be where 

in case of emergency I should be flown.

This is the form before me, the one I will

fill out today. It lets me know what is so

important about me that I must share if

I hope to get my name on their list of

properly identified individuals who will

fill out any form put in front of him/her.

                   The End of…

A character came up with, “you can’t hide

from the End of the World in a goddamn

bathtub.” This rings especially true when

applied to our tub, white plastic fitted over

the old one, even the look-alike tiles are

plastic glued over the originals. There I’d

be sitting in the tub as the world burned up

all around me. The white plastic pouring in

like heavy cream, and I’m, of course, sitting

there becoming a tub of human chowder.

That’s if the world ends in fire, with global

warming and wildfires that seems a real

possibility. But if the opposite in the end

happens, destruction by ice would suffice and

all that was said about all that. I’d be sitting in

my plastic tub, teeth chattering, losing feeling

in my extremities, dozing off, ending up still

wondering whatever happened to the hot or

even warm water. When and if it comes, I’ll

probably run outside, stand in the middle of

my front lawn, hands at my side, looking up

then down, then all around, as it all falls apart

with me smack dab in the middle. So much

for that goddamn bathtub.

Essay by Orinbayeva Lalezar

Teen Uzbek girl with long dark hair in a purple blouse with red and white embroidery, seated in a wooden chair.

I don’t get used to pain.

What is life?  Yes, many people have been thinking about this word until now, and people answer based on the years of their lives, happy and sad events, truths and injustices, wounds and ointments. 

I will tell you that life is sometimes like a book full of riddles, sometimes it is like a trial road with endless joys and sorrows, a labyrinth from which it is difficult to find a way out.  Yes, there is a human race that is forced to get used to whatever happens in its fate, endure, feel, laugh and cry, and sometimes see the opposite.  In this way, there will be joy and pain.  I am a woman who does not get used to the pains she encountered in her life, and still cannot forget those pains. 

Life, if a person thinks about this word from the beginning to the end of his life, then Life is a Cluster.  Our coming into the world, the joy of our parents, our first step, our first spoken words, our innocent childish laughter, our love, our kindness, and parallel to these, our first fall and the first pain we felt, the first sound we heard, the sticks we ate, the lies we heard, our joy and sorrow and pain.  .  Yes, there are people who have ailments, some get used to these ailments and some don’t. 

Everyone remembers these pains in different forms and situations.  Someone’s pain from childhood, someone’s pain from adolescence, someone’s pain from adulthood and other different situations.  I have a problem with my parents.  There is a saying in our people that “the death of parents is an inheritance”.  I still can’t get used to this pain, I can’t get used to it.  In my life, I have faced various situations, lies, slander, thanks, good and bad.  There are some of them that I have not forgotten, which I still keep in my heart.  Because they happened in a situation I did not expect and by people I did not expect. 

My parents are the most painful pain that I have not been able to find a cure for, even after years have passed.  That they are not in this bright world, that I can’t see them whenever I want, that I can’t get their prayers, their advice at the right time, that I can’t get enough of their scent, that I can’t sleep like the aunt who forgot my pains by resting my head on my mother’s lap, that I can’t stroke her white hair, forgive me, mother, our worries,  I can’t say that our sorrows are old.  This pain is such a pain that it destroys a person from the inside, his pain and longing involuntarily bring tears to his eyes and cause deep sighs.  I still can’t get used to the words of my mother, “Have you come, my child, are you staying late, are you safe, my child, are you healthy, are you in pain, what do you want?”  My father’s sweet words, “My daughter, my daughter, this is my daughter, don’t hurt her, why did you hit her, why did you cry, are you healthy, my child, eat your food, don’t go hungry and study, let me give you the money, whatever you want”  My lost moments and pains that I can’t find even if I spend my wealth and time. 

This life is such a time that it passes before we open and close our eyes.  I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll go sooner, but the time we couldn’t separate will come one day, from our inexhaustible wealth with us, from our ointments for a thousand pains, from our counselors who listen to us when we pour out all our pain, from our people who listened to our pain and threw theirs into the well, and gave everything for our joy.  separating from our existence.  This pain remains in our hearts regardless of how old we are, it causes pain.  It creates such a void that no wealth, no sweet words, no gift greetings can fill this void, no world’s riches, gifts, sweet words and attention of people around you can fill it.  Yes, I am a woman who lost her parents in her life and cannot get used to this pain of life.

Beloved, take care that your parents are with you now.  Be a salve for their pains, be ready for their services.  Time is so cruel that you can’t find them at a glance, even if you turn the world upside down, even if you scatter the world’s riches, and you won’t get used to pain like me.

Orinbayeva Lalezar Azadbay was born on April 8, 2003 in Tortkol district of the Republic of Karakalpakstan.  Her nationality is Turkmen, she knows the Turkmen language and Uzbek well. She graduated from the 24th general secondary school with excellent grades.  She graduated from school in 2021, and in the same year she became a student of the “Elementary Education” faculty of Tashkent University of Applied Sciences.  She works at school No. 24, where she graduated, and is a master of her profession. She has been writing articles since she was 20 years old and has students.   The first article is “The role of Makhtimkuli Firoghi in world history”.  She is engaged in journalism and opened a course.  Until now, several scientific and journalistic articles have been published in international journals.  She has participated in many anthologies and almanacs in this regard in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Belarus, Germany, Kenya, and European countries.  She also organized a personal anthology.  In the anthology “CREATORS OF THE YEAR”, a scientific article entitled “METHODICS OF MATHEMATICS TEACHING IN PRIMARY CLASSES” and an article by her students were published. 

Her creative work “Methods Of Attention Of Primary Class Students” was published in the Kenyan anthology “SERENITY A COMPILATION OF ART AND LITERATURE BY WOMEN” and received a certificate.  In the “Blue Sky Stars” anthology, her creative scientific article “EDUCATIONAL METHODS AND TOOLS IN PRIMARY CLASSES” and the articles of her students were published and received a certificate.  A scientific article entitled “THE SUBJECT AND TASKS OF MOTHER LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY IN PRIMARY GRADES” was published in the journal of the scientific practical conference “New Seekers” and received a diploma, certificate, letter of acceptance, author’s certificate.  The scientific article titled “METHODS OF ATTENTION OF PRIMARY CLASS STUDENTS” was published and received an international invitation and an international certificate.  The story “JANNATIM ONAM” and the poem “ONAM” were published in the anthology “Tazim to you mother” which took part in the contest “Ship of Knowledge” of Russia and took the honorable 1st place.  The poem “Father and Mother” was published in his personal anthology “Future Scientists”.  The poem “Orzulari Osman Kiz” was published in the anthology “Youth of Uzbekistan” and received a diploma, a statuette, and a book.  In the anthology “Yoshlar Bayozi”, the article “My Profession: How to Be a Primary School Teacher” was published, and she received a diploma, a statuette, and a book.  , certificate, medal holder.  The poem “This is a world full of fakes” was published in the anthology “Uzbek women-girls” and received a certificate.  Currently, her creative works are regularly published in “Kenya Times” magazine and International sites and indexed in Google.  Holder of international certificates.

Poetry from Iroda Abdusamiyeva

Teen Central Asian girl with long dark hair, brown eyes, and a floral blouse.

My grandmother

A butterfly flew to our house
Laughter also left us
The hands that caressed me as my daughter are no more
My grandmother flew to the skies

Life will be very difficult without you
You were in our hearts, spring blossomed
I miss my angel, I can't find it
My grandmother flew to the skies

This heart is waiting for you to give advice
But I know it's too late now
I can tremble when I hear my pain
My grandmother flew to the skies



I, Abdusamiyeva Iroda Sherzod, was born on May 15, 2009 in Sherabad district of Surkhandarya region. In 2016, I went to study in the 1st grade of general education school No. 67 in Sherabad district of Surkhandarya region. Currently, I am a 9th grade student of this school. I started writing poems since I was in the 5th grade, and I have about 17 poems so far. In the future, I want to become a lawyer. I intend to become a mature person who will serve my country.

Artwork from Diana Magallón

Design with two strands suspending a necklace-like medallion forming a pendant. The figure is shaded in gray and dotted with blue and orange.

The waves are the silenced groans of the ocean, seeking to be freed in the foam

Design with interlocking bonelike figures forming two curlicues, one on the top and the other on the bottom. Figures are shaded in gray and dotted with blue and orange.
The sea is counting the hours with bubbles of time
Design with interlocking bonelike figures forming two curlicues, one on the left and the other on the right. Figures are shaded in gray and dotted with blue and orange.
las escamas de las sirenas hacen un ruido similar a la espuma del mar