Poetry from Prerna Bakshi

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What’s the name of your pind?

(First published in The Ofi Press)

 

He asks me which pind
do I belong to?

Confused, I respond by telling him
the names of my grandfather’s and grandmother’s village.

He interjects, her’s not necessary. Your belonging, your identity, your pind is traced through the pind of your father and his father and so on, you see.

I say nothing, and just nod.In the blink of an eye, my grandmother’s history was deemed irrelevant. Erased.

History belongs to victors, they say.
Clearly, she had lost.

Her past, torn
like it was an unwanted page from the book of history.

Her clung together memories
got flushed down the toilet like a clump of hair stuck in the comb.

What is her pind, then?
What is her home country?

Or is she a traveling soul?
A wandering Sufi?

An escaped soldier?
An absconded convict?

A fugitive?
A refugee?

If she had no home to claim as her own,
which borders did she cross then?

To what extent did she even cross any, if at all?
What was her supposed ‘home’?

Or was there even any?

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Poem from Colin McCandless

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Balancing Act

A stealthy stalker stops and stares, still life
Before it’s prudent prey, poised to pounce
The hunted, hunched down and hovering low the hunter
Is waiting and weighing, wired in and watching
Crouching and creeping, crawling ever closer
Tiptoeing toward the tantalizing target
Leaping and launching, letting loose a lethal
Attack that achieves an aim and addresses a balance

Colin McCandless lives in Charleston, South Carolina where he works as a PR/Marketing Director for a nonprofit that serves youth in foster care. In his spare time he enjoys reading, writing poetry and traveling the world. 

Haiku from Christopher Bernard

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Haiku for Adelle
by Christopher Bernard

AdelleFoley

Adelle Foley


I bend down to pick

   up, in the fragrant garden,

   a sleek, dark feather.

 

   A fallen glove. A

   smell of cloves and grass. Far off,

   a small, drunken bell.

 

   If death is sleep, you

   are like the little mountain flowers

   folding under a vanishing sun.

 

   At times like this

   I ask impossible questions,

   like an abandoned child.

 

   Nightshade. Day lily.

   Noon. A hummingbird sips sweet water

   from my astonished hand.

 

Adelle Joan Foley (1940−2016) regularly appeared in performances of the choral poems of her husband, Jack Foley. She also wrote haiku.

Christopher Bernard is a regular contributor to Synchronized Chaos.

Poetry from Hanoch Guy

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At this moment                                                  

“At this moment I realized that I did not know anything for certain:”*
Hundreds of thousands of bodies wash to shore
A volcanic eruption at sea submerges twenty islands,
forest fires leave piles of charred redwood  trees,
a glacier sails away carrying a family  of polar bears.
Layers of stars get entangled in strings shaking them off
into  a network  of milky ways.
The St. John river flows away from the bay of Fundy.
Cars go back on Magnetic Hill.

The creek in my back yard is as huge as the Nile or the Amazon.
and  is still polishing pebbles,
Mallards fly over.
The birch tree splits , dies and
falls into the water.

The torn balloon was once the sky dome.
Yellow and red balls left by little Lilly
contain the code for future universes.

Evening touches morning
Night swallows high noon.

A door opens in the basement ceiling
goes up to visit the attic.

*    Tadeusz Borowski

     1922-1951

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Interview by Jaylan Salah with Jackson Gallagher

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The Man who Roamed the World

Upcoming Australian Talent Jackson Gallagher Speaks on Photography, On-screen Machismo and Being an Icon of Modern Fan Culture

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(Jackson Gallagher – credit: Oli Sansom)

One might try a little harder if they plan to scare Jackson Gallagher.

Going from one extreme to the other seems to be his game. From directing serious documentaries to flirting on-screen with countless love interests on the famous Aussie soap opera “Home and Away”, Gallagher is not what you’d expect from your average 26-year-old Australian. Being a farm boy and growing up on a farm in Daylesford (a small town in Victoria, Australia) still didn’t keep him from barely escaping death during an ice-climbing trip in New Zealand, and traveling deep in the desert on photography missions with the “Act for Peace” organization, Gallagher documented experiences of the Syrian refugees in Talbiah Camp in Jordan and Al-Amari Camp in Ramallah.

What drew him to the experience was mostly, “Talking to the men and seeing how despite everything they try to sustain their integrity, how their roles -as providers for their homes- were affected and it hurts them. As the conversation goes on you could see through the cracks how intense the tragedy they’ve been through. All their lives they’ve been caring and looking after their families and now they lost a lot; homes, jobs, prolific careers. The women have shown great bravery in the face of turmoil and tried to maintain a sense of family.” The refugee experience had also tremendous importance for him because of his strong opinion on the way the Australian government handled the refugee crisis.

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Review of Gödel, Escher, Bach by Tony Longshanks LeTigre

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Review of Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

by Tony Longshanks LeTigre

When I lived in San Francisco, there was a hackerspace in the Mission district that became my entire world for two wild years. It was like being beamed aboard an experimental anarchist spacecraft full of creative technology & the coolest, weirdest people imaginable, forever immersed in fascinating projects & conversations. All at once, I realized that hackers were the people I’d been searching & subconsciously waiting for my whole life. Everything was free in both senses. There was a laser cutter, a kitchen, a darkroom for photography, a woodshop; there were 3D printers, fabrics & sewing materials, tables & bins & shelves stacked with gadgets & computer parts & soldering materials; there were two classrooms, & best of all in my view, a beautiful little library where I spent many happy hours. I got to know hacker history & culture & what hackers like to read. I read The Jargon File & delved into the dazzling vortex of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. And I heard many raves for a book called Gödel, Escher, Bach.

By the time I finally got around to reading GEB (as we henceforth abbreviate it), I had left San Francisco & life had changed; but Douglas Hofstadter’s “metaphorical fugue on minds & machines” will always remind me of that hackerspace in the Mission district where I spent some unforgettable days.

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Essay from Donal Mahoney

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Why Did You Write That? 

Anyone who has written fiction or poetry probably has been asked at one time or another, “Why did you write that?” I’ve been asked that question and I have never been able to provide an answer.

Some writers may set out to write a poem that will address an important question about life, such as who we are as human beings and what purpose, if any, we have on Earth. I have never tried to write a poem like that. Nor have I ever written a poem knowing in advance what it might say. I just write down “words” that come to me, provided I like the way they sound and like their “rhythm” when heard together.

I might be sitting in a diner or in my living room and “hear” a few words that sound as though they belong together and so I jot them down, often on a napkin or scrap paper. Maybe an hour or a week later, those same few words will “give birth” to a few more words that seem to fit with their “parents” so I add them to the scrap paper.  When I have enough words, I make my first conscious decision to do something with them. I add verbs or nouns and whatever else is needed to add structure. Eventually I have sentences which I then break into lines, according to sound and inflection. End breaks are important to me. Next I try to determine what the poem, if anything, is trying to say. And that’s not always easy.

I have never been impressed with adjectives and adverbs. I like concrete nouns and strong verbs that drive those nouns wherever they need to go. Sometimes they never go anywhere. Sometimes they “sleep” for a long time, technically alive, but not developing into anything. It’s as if they were an ovum needing semen to become an embryo. But no matter how long a group of words may lie dormant, I never abort them because some day I may know what to do with them and they might develop into a poem.

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