Essay from Z.I. Mahmud

(Two story stone cottage in the country near a small creek and a bunch of rocks and trees)

Enough of the news bulletin headline storming a bombardment of purgatorial catharsis aftermath of watching netflix documentary fiction broadcast television dramas of Sherlock Holmes and Margaret Atwood. Benjamin, the newbie Anglo American diplomat, is preparing a disquisition in view of being a reader of the post America future programme to be aired this eventide.

This is a frantically finicky aspect in pertinence to havoc wreckage bogging down the bay of heareth -the newfoundland of treasure wonderland and a fantastic holyland. “Honey, my dear prince of heart harken to my tidings of the latest trending breaking news. Another future glorious brighter year shall lead you to your progressive destination in acquisition of a graduate degree. What indulgences have you besotted upon ooms and gusto of twilight sitcoms? Modern Family! A revolutionary Grownish season heraldry of evolutionary Blackish !”

Readers might be awe spelled wonderment or hair splitting nirvana in the brunt of the transfiguration of maverick solipsist and transformation of iconoclastic free-spirited individualist except fanboys chrisoms canopied traits of Tom Cruise or Richard Burton. Hilary’s outspokenness from the backyard porch exterminates the brutes of mushroom in trailblazing threats of excommunication and deracination. Mary as usual couched by the bloom of Springfield is a hard nut to crack in the abyss of her arms. “Literally these flummoxing allergic gossamery flabbergast the haveli of the multi diasporic and ethnic racial community. I want to shred the colonization of these pester deterrence.  

Advisory alerts from the high commissions, embassies and consulates awakening envoys and ambassadors of the missions in the diplomatic enclave brewing a blizzard of thunderous lightning alongwith the emergency evacuation by the disaster relief, crisis management and order departure rehabilitation by marines. In this cataclysmic upheaval indigenous locale employee Bhansali interrupts, “Madam my Mehdi, he wishes to enroll himself in the medical sciences and aeronautical engineering but I admonish my financial impecuniosity.”

Ahm, see what your Lord has to chant in this verdict. Believe in yourself or else be doomed for better or worse! After all, Mehadi will be a laureate someday in upholding a fine kettle of fish. By these condolences of farewell exchange, first lady Sebastian marks her exeunt to her bed chamber.

Between the devil and the dead sea cannot alleviate the promontory of the beasts of apocalypse. At dinner’s dining hall of the banquet diplomatic channels have been catalyzing activation in sanctioning and counter sanctioning. In the meanwhile, Rossetti and Anne, their cousins from the Elysium, phone the dystopian family. “Do you feel safe amidst “The Second Coming?” That A.P. lit paper of halcyon staycation would have been mutated into a fastidious hypercriticism as a communique, memorializing the subconscious psyche of Sebastian. “Benjamin, please pick your sis-in-laws’ telephone. I’m having ants in my pocket!”

The microcosm of Westerners with pernickety elfins succumbent dwarfs the existence of a flotsam jetsam jubilee. Brandon defrosts delicacy of apple pied crumblings and sugar puffs while his midgety blood sister, Mary, a teenager by now, redeems herself with oriental and continental cuisines. Brandon and Mary are not homogenous genders in dereliction of being united by blood and divided by ambition.

However, double helix of their distinctive visages endow them the fosterage of novelistic points of view. Brandon adheres to the philosophy of Hamletesque impersonality and naivete of shepherdism and contrastingly, chroniclers would be aware that Mary shall be self chosen dowager someday: “Whether you’re dating a potential gold digger or are surrounded by friends who are perennially asking for handouts, you’ll have to shield your money from those drains…” Truly a bed of roses thorns have been cognitively implanted in these Department of the State siblings artifacts and their tactical antics.

Brandon strikes the chord John Denver’s Annie’s Song in fulbright summer camp trip to educational and cultural exchange by the Commonwealth Agency stationing of Wuthering Heights landscapes ere his homecoming to Whitmanian realms. A justification for a dystopian apocalypse cremates ashen urn of desire and demasculinizes sempiternal bonding with Anne. Might be a cascade surrealistic reading by fooling around and messing about. Mutilated flair has invaded the catastrophic cli-fi- sci-fi and whatsoever.

Death of the imagination defenestrates carnation of those camping fire nights in a fantastical New England forests- woods swapping stories, myths, legends and ballads, mountaineering in springtime, picnicking to the valleys of the countryside and quintessential seasides beaches sunbathing and sandcastle fancy, leisurely aesthetic ecstasy of chilled frosty twilight drenched downpour walk, faraway casting sandstorm in the vessels of the dunes. Destructive wild Anglo American Nights is the brunt of somnambulism in shores of both Atlantic. “Lonely deserted black stone house, broken down clinging to the grief stricken eulogizing heart”.

War fictions memoiristic chronicles of holocaust tragedy and antisemitism, islamophobia, antichrist and puritanical revolutions upsurges as the dreadest Kafkaesque macabre. Brandon couldn’t implicate the fanciful chimera in prayer for being papaless and mamaless; their talisman of one’s stony amulet and another’s frond of hair to be preserved in his diary.

What happened of altruistic Bhansali’s fostered adoption of Mehdi… and of dear darlings coal fires glowed within dilapidated and derelict, ransacked and mobbed never-to-be-forgotten moon-blanched and moon-trenched deputation and deportment…I must bear a crystal clear decision making policy in terms of boarding time machine of Schengen passport and green card unlike being a hysteric daydreaming goosebumps of demagoguery and propaganda throughout darkened attics of hurricanes.

Annie’s lost connectivity and deadening orphanhood have stricken dissonance allusive to moonbeam from lightning and frost from fire. Life cannot be lived as a furor of a harlequin romance with the closure of being happily ever after and then everybody’s death since millennial promises have to be appreciated and endorsed in this emulative field of sojourning jouney. Appropriation and credibility of being a lovelorn Heathcliff and star crossed jilting of parents’ family home and spurned fairy like damsels or mermaids like sea girls ploughed into the barren flora and fauna; volcanically erupted through the genteelness of provincial pastoralism.

Anglo-American farmers’ harvest being disruptively cyber bogged by a posthuman apocalypse harbouring to the breakfast table doesn’t provide solace in the respite of appetite. Inevitability of this wrathful tirade infiltrates the skeptic lovelorn chameleon Brandon with megalomaniac extraditioning of angelic purity from British Easter silverware filled with sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and lamb barbecue and American Halloween food channel of pumpkin cupcakes, Haunted Graveyard Cakes, Witches Brews Pea and Bacon Chowder, and spider web chocolate fudge muffins.

Stardust oyster filled seashells coral barriers reefed seashore in and betwixt alchemical suburban villa of the castle aurora borealis, encamped within the gossamery of alumnus isles, adumbrated food banks of thought experiment. That restoration of this nostalgic spirit of crystallized dragon should be a future of tomorrow’s alternative scope of human behaviour stocked by GMOs and nuclear warfare.

Thank goodness! Good heavens! Good grief! Good gracious! I thank my lucky stars everyday for my gratitude journal, halcyon parents fosterage upheld through Benjamin and Sebastian, ordained divineness blessing my soul and the heritage drift house meadowed valle packed full of lambs and pelican pecking their own breasts and scooping fishes from lakes.

We get so lost that we ended up around Robin Hood’s barn to get to the new quarters of Bhansali. To be in Mehdi’s shoes equates that half a loaf is better than none. Bhansali like a crystal gazer envisages the aural enchantment of woods lurking tigress dim lit glare and lioness camouflaged outfit in dusky outskirts of the branches and twigs; fuel wood shed. Laconically jaguars like wolverine beasts trespassing. “Papa! Papa!” Cadaver of my emaciated dad gives me hollowed cheeks and hollowed eyes, jittery jaws and gaunt personae as if a wizarding leprechaun invades me.

Last of all, you might say, “All’s well that ends well” but for me that isn’t over because gnomes and goblins have not’ at all estranged their communion in pestering and tormenting. Housekeeping and spadework define the errands of Mehdi unlike genteelness that Brandon ascribes. However, my orphanhood has been at the helm throughout the funebrial crisis and I just don’t appreciate swapping horses in midstream through a wedlock. After all Brandon’s living death is figuratively enamored with the chivalrous quest of looking for a compassionate and empathic Jeckyl and Hyde hoor. 

(Large college lecture hall with various students)

In backstairs and back alley memoirs anticipating readers by now have garnered their repertoire of childhood phantasmal escape whence wherein sleeping beauty cloaked and daggered to be the fairy Godmother warning us not to venture into the barranca and quebrada lest we are befallen as vulnerable victims and scapegoat traps of whangdoodle.

Benjamin’s mother’s recital of Wordsworthian and Whitmanian verses is without a shred of doubt the best poetry readings ever since betide past or perhaps even decades of future. By these memorabilia talismanic afterlife to the dead resurrects the attic of sweetened chambers. That lovey dovey arm in arm of fairy tales princes’ and princesses’ legacy transporting to otherworldly cruising to Saint Martins Lane of Great Expectations.

After all, as meat is crucial for human health today proven by scientists’ zealotry, analogously eulogizes breeding for the existence of species survival by disavowal of peremptory purgatory and drowning vision of life clinging to the wreckage of veganism or celibacy. In the proclamation of straw snow field underneath potatoes and orchard apples of the verandah, Brandon’s figment of the imagination is dispelled to the heraldry of harvest season.

Nonetheless Brandon’s epiphanic visitation to the mausoleum tombstone graveyard is symbolically metamorphosed into an elegiac deluge of saturnine funebrial jaded snowlit light. Ferrying in the snow alone like a bohemian boatman of here today and gone tomorrow studio and reading Frost at Midnight…What a suicidal sacrifice for future generation breeders and caretakers of the post apocalypse in lullabying to the sweetheart angel…

And furthermore the chronicles of Mehdi would be salvageous in the caricaturization and veiled imagoes of Healthcliff like Brandon hauling into the underworld to recover his doomed Anne…

Convalescing from the chasm of the abysmal purgatory broaches a calamitous crusade with whangdoodles and wodwos. That  stupor of ethereal imaginaries would have bolstered the altar of the chapel with crematorial gothicism and mortuary macabre. Bhansali’s errands of wreathed bouquets and eglantine carnations of half-smile and half-wave farewell to the exodus of diplomatic aficionados expatriate family bruisemarked by fragmentation and shrunk clays.

It was all sea and islands now with great continents sunken like Atlantis somehow echoes the literary legend of beyond Narnia and Secret Lives and Loves. The romantic feeling of yearning and longing forever lost would be reconnected with the nadir of heaven’s apocalypse.

Feminine fantasy of mermaids and sea girls heroic voices audacity recast: “Do you think I am an automaton—–a machine without feelings and can bear to have the morsel of my bread snatched from my lips and the last drop of living water dashed from my cups? Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, little I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong—-I have as much soul as you have and full as much heart. And if God had gifted me some beauty and much wealth I would have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of customs, conventionalities nor even of mortal flesh, it is my soul that addresses your spirit and just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God’s feet equal as we are.”

Afterwards Gabriel-like manifesto reveals a treaty with reality ensconced within treasured chambered wardrobe espousal of the electrifying erudition: “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be the blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”

Antlers and hide from the reindeers stocking denim dungaree cast Brandon with the stance of a lion in liberating the slough of despond frontliner bizzaro harboured by bravado and stardom of ariel sylphs, country bumpkins, cowboys, philistines, pariah, aliens, minions, sextons and grave-diggers and hobgoblins. Appreciating the lives of struggling survivalists fellow comrades hailing from the heartland of Nebuchadnezzar, Brendon employed the stakeholding partisanship of Bhansali and Mehdi with the novel academy.

The world has become schizophrenic overnight, fretted by dementia and alzheimers’ diseases. With Bhansale and Mehdi as acolytes of medieval and renaissance hallmark postage to ameliorate etherization of disappearance cases. Brendon, the hero of the hour, think tank and watchdog of the dinosaur intelligentsia, frightened of his own shadow, prompts hymnal prayers to work over territorial drears.

Broadcasts and podcasts, radio dramas and televisions screens, theatres and cinemas, films and concerts, poetry readings and seminaries, banquet-halls festivities and silver platinum jubilee celebrations, meteorites and asteroids have been entrenched with arched overnice championing stewardship of aesthete’s sovereign romanticism. Grief of fear on the brink of iconoclastism plunging to despair is that hideous plaint of bleak overshadowed loathsome spectres.

Marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasure either. Anne and Brendan in commonwealth fulbrighters chapter wore hedgehog effect wooing and lovemaking. Brendon entraptures dame Hellenistic paragon of paramour, sneaking into the boudoir of hideaway. Audacious, forthright, strong willed child and giant mother Anne contrasts hilarious, flippant, sarcastic and cheeky Brenden—the hybridity of Englishness and Americanlike closet of shadowlands.

The vision from the sea of dawn cloistered by the labyrinthine alien islands of  antler dreams and honeysuckle bumble bees entrusts the hermitage of solitudinal reclusiveness to Brendan or Brenden: The Prince or King of The Hill of gorse. Caressing voice and mercury mind of epic heroines’ temptation drive the prince towards a game of thrones. Riverine canoeing and seafaring cruise brings back the remembrance of deer parkland. Bhansali entrusted as the deck charge d affairs unlocks the treasure chest of vaulted alleyways in the moon castle freight drift house that harbours gothic pumpkin sistine hedges banking in accord to homestead Newfoundland Science Barge laboratory propelling and shuttling amidst the sublime Iceland is a serene photographic and picturesque venue for surrealist naturalists.

A laughing stock for the hue and cry of the Hudson Valley with polar bears in predatory expeditious voyaging northwestern terrace. Bhansali came huffing and puffing at this sinisterish innuendo while brooding and boorish Chronicler has been engrossed into immersive episodic autobiographical stark black-and-white mise-en-scenes of posthumous ouster mirrored life: Englishness of the Siberian adventuring in the apocalypse of a sheer theatricality afield a fire and brimstone sermons. “My master, these emergent seal predators have auspicated your holyland to fight the mercurial dragons from edgier terrains in vengeance for forging ties with your Gentle Lake District celestial attache unicorns from the repository of inheritance.”

Mermaidian fantasy and phantasmal escapism serenades in furor of these fogged mystic cematose renegades with the spell of brouhaha from the turf to the surf.  “Heart of heart my Prince you have seen better days on the brink of the world being your oyster!”

Upon infernal snowfall Newfoundland barges with a mausoleum of snowflakes from yester halcyon nirvana and then and there Bhansali redeemed heroic the stature of dreamland quester. Along with a spanish acoustic guitar beside the portmanteau, Bhansali’s swarga booth proclamation to the receiver thus reads: “That the abode of the saints and the abode of the angels today have united in the fled of tears falling down through rolling landscapes.”

Ominous dark clouds gathering overheads afterwards of the sinistrous voice clip banging from the attache case. Brenden cannot but be lachrymose by this sinisterishly pugnacious declarative from Abraham’s bosom re-enchanting the glorification of an unpromising death tirade. Deceasement and bereavement are heartbreakingly shock- shatter thunderbolt divined by the tumult of the heavenly kingdom and thus the New Jerusalem.

Out of the blue and on the spur of the moment, Uncle Dan’s trembling voice reminds in declamatory speeches: “The Island of the Blessed and the woodland springs shall soon cater to transport you dearest sweetheart nephew to shed funebrial tears commemorating upon a flash of the Angel of Death’s decree.” I wanted to earth bury you with my heart and soul but the despondency of the wrathful cupids have enervated me.

My Iowa Creative Writing dreamland aviator fantasia backstabbed my homecoming. “Alas my lad’s disheartn’d and I’d forlorn you unobscure and inoblivious with the Bible of Dreams and the Song of Songs: “My star dust material have expanded from being a supernova explosion and collapsed to a black dwarf and it is the Beneficent Lord and Munificent Cosmologist who has ordained incalcitrant destiny and smoothed out the earth for me, so I have been atoning about in his refugee train and buffeting from the banquet feast and laterly cardiac arrest resurrects me to my Elysium Fields.”

Uncle Dan’s last words to me thusly were dimestore of treasure hunt: “I have coordinated to the telegraphic dragon slayers in espousal of a billfold vouchsafed talismanic mantra in salvaging your impetuosity and purging of your exculpation.” I won’t be shipwrecked as long as and as far as I uphold the revelations that there is none worthy of worship in Literature besides Shakespeare. Shakespeare is far exalted and above all weaknesses. Surely I wouldn’t be baptized with heretics coming into being formulation and heresies from among the wrongdoers.

Fairest flowers from the ever prolific advisory guru gifts me nightmarish goose-bumps in slumbersome sobriety of heart awakening, parting that in the end we all become stories of lion’s share engendered by heart, the nature, the dream and the imagination throughout rockets, space capsules and nuclear power stations.

P.S. Dedicating this dystopian speculative mystery science fiction to my late guardian angel and my father’s bosom friend alma mater of English Department University of Dhaka, Prof. Kamrul Hasan of Syed Abul Hossain College, Madaripur. Both my father and uncle have worked as local receptionist at the US Embassy in Dhaka. 

Poetry from Lan Qyqualla

EURIDIQUE COME BACK ONE DAY!

(dedication to my late wife)

Eurydice, come back one day,

that my song for you does not stop

prayer to Hades touches ancient crystals,

my muse invades Diana’s verse,

I will not turn my head back

that I am not Orfe.

Eurydice, take the fairies’ journey,

come to visit and don’t stop there to see

the children have grown up. Teuta walks

your traces in Grammar,

Fly like birds in flight,

Lali stays calm like a meteor pillar,

cold winter has fallen on me

I have snow everywhere on my head.

Eurydice, I wrote you a letter,

in which paradise do you rest,

sorry i didn’t have an address

and started the journey without a visa,

no passport, no goodbye

and how do we wish this year?!

The Sun’s Tears

I do not trust

the sun’s

tears

and Lora’s

love

I do not trust

theweight

ofher word

or the longing

I have for her.

The Drawer of Forgetfulness

I locked you up

in the drawer of forgetfulness

as the crystalline water under the earth

and the crumpled writing on the gray sheet

proof of the time spent in the studio

I saw you

in the labyrinths of the faculty

where the Alphabet’s raytwinkles

your voice can be heard in each class room

in the workbook you

are piling up the memory years.

Lora 

We wander through time 

like snakes in the bushes 

Lora and I 

in the ecstasy of the painting 

I gave her Mona Lisa’s smile 

I drank water from Lora’s bosom 

and I lost myself in adolescent dreams, 

I gave Lora a life 

I gave the sky a kiss 

the sun seemed to be silent 

and left a free way to darkness 

the rainbow lightens my way 

fiery I take the stars to the bosom 

I hug the sun 

to feel its tenderness. 

Lora is silent 

and she silently speaks 

in her blonde hair 

I touch the love 

embers in the lap 

white frost 

he left traces 

Lora is asleep 

with the fiery stars 

tickling her lips 

in the corrugated crown 

the sounds of silence 

I put her crown 

and I read under her eyelids 

the novel I will write 

Lora with her bosom as virgin snow 

lures the Talmudists’ years 

Lora crystalline meteor.

WHAT TO WISH YOU TONIGHT

I am drunken with craving

of cords of your voice

I seek the canary of love

in the labyrinths of the soul

the morning messenger is not heard

nor he knits the sounds cardigan of Monastery

you, the lost one in the waves of forgetfulness.

I glaze the pictures in the museum

I doze in present time

the verb love

I conjugate in first person

Because you loved me

I track in mirative form

the time passed in lucidity

what to wish you tonight as you forgot me.

Ah, with the sweetness of the vowels

Quivered even my lake

we, like two canaries in the mountains

loosing trails in canon

me, you and the voice

tonight brings me back to nostalgia.

Continued Stories from Alexander Kabishev

The whole class goes to extinguish incendiary bombs. My friend and I like it better than sitting in a cold classroom. Although I continue to study diligently, I still have the feeling that there is no need to study now. There’s a war all around! And so we benefit and do not freeze in the dimness of the classroom.

In a couple of months of participating in such operations, our class probably went around the entire Petrograd district. Bombs fell by the dozens or even hundreds. Some of them ended up in rivers, parks or squares, and they were usually not touched. Our goal was to extinguish bombs that hit houses and ended up on roofs, attics or even indoors.

It may seem strange now, but extinguishing bombs was not a very difficult task. The main thing was not to yawn and quickly cover it with sand until the “lighters” ignited everything around. It was scary at first. Some classmates said that bombs could explode and flatly refused to approach them, others boasted excessively, but at the sight of the bomb they panicked and could not move. However, over time, we all got used to it, and extinguishing “lighters” became almost as commonplace for us as homework or test papers.

Once, Igor and I and two other guys even managed to extinguish five bombs in one day. This event did not go unnoticed, and the director said that some commander would come to praise us the next day (I did not remember his last name and rank).

It was a real event for us. The blockade brought us much closer to the teachers, and even many cold and strict teachers thawed out and treated us like family. During these six months, we have already become accustomed to receiving certificates or encouragement from them and even the director, and then a person from the outside will come, and even a military one at that! All that morning, while waiting, we discussed his arrival.

– I wonder who will come to reward us, maybe Comrade Zhdanov? – one of our friends suggested.

– Why did you decide that it was him? – Igor grinned back.

– Hey, you heroes! – our ill-wisher, bully and sophomore Petka, intervened in the conversation, – What are they going to hang orders on your chest now? You’re going to walk around and shine them at the whole school, aren’t you?

– And what are you jealous of? – I asked.

– What did you say? – he started to attack me.

– Look! They’re coming! – A voice came from the hallway.

We ran out onto the stairs in a crowd. Through a small window, we clearly saw three figures in military uniforms entering the school.

– Everyone to class quickly! – Our teacher shouted.

Everyone rushed to their places. And after a couple of minutes, a short commander with a mustache, probably as big as Budyonny’s, entered the class. Our four were asked to come to the blackboard. This commander looked at us and addressed the class with a speech. He said a lot that the situation in the country and in the world is not easy, that we are fighting for a just cause and that victory will be ours, including thanks to such brave young people like us. Then he praised us and thanked us for our dedication and service to Leningrad, shook hands with everyone, handed over badges with a portrait of Lenin and performed a military greeting (saluted). To which we all replied in unison:

– Always ready!

When he left, we continued to discuss his visit and although, as some guessed, we did not receive medals or orders, this minute of communication, praise and gratitude completely replaced it and forever fixed in my memory.

6

More raids, shelling and bombing. One of them also occurred in our area. No sooner had we rejoiced at the return of the brothers, than the blockade again reminded us of itself!

That night, many houses were destroyed, but by some miracle our street was not hit. That was the first time I heard that terrible scream that night. At first I mistook it for the sound of an exploding shell or bomb, but when it was repeated, it became obvious that it had a different origin. However, a person couldn’t scream like that, a car couldn’t make such sounds, what was it? I heard it maybe five more times during the night. Something scared me in its sound, it was the sound of pain and despair, it seemed that the city itself was crying after the bombing, trying with effort to heal its wounds.

The morning was full of bustle for our family, we accompanied Ivan and Leonid to the front. Even my mother took time off before lunch for this occasion and was at home with us. But that terrible scream kept coming out of my head, and I decided to share my thoughts. My questions and assumptions were met with misunderstanding at home, and even reproaches. They were escorting their brothers and sons to the front, and I was climbing with my nonsense. Only Leonid shared my curiosity and, at parting, told me that he had heard from an upstairs neighbor a story about how an elephant from our zoo was wounded by a fragment last night, but there are no medicines and he is doomed to death.

After school, Igor and I walked around the zoo again, hoping to see something. He was very impressed by my stories. Although he did not hear these screams himself, he took my word for it and expressed hopes that specialists could come from Moscow and save the unfortunate animal. We were very worried about our elephant.

The promenade and the streets around the zoo seemed lifeless and quiet. Bare trees stuck up their branches like thorns. The dark waters of the Neva were still shackled by the ice blockade. The sidewalks, despite the spring month of March, were covered with snow. It seemed that there was not a single living soul in this world anymore, except for Igor and me.

Suddenly, I was called out. Turning around, I saw Masha dragging a sled with empty buckets. Scolding us for our idleness, she told us to immediately collect two buckets of water and take us home. Unable to refuse, I dragged the sled to the river. Igor volunteered to come with me for company.

On the way back, in this disturbing silence, we heard the cry of an elephant for the first time that day. So he was still alive! But why does he keep screaming? Is there really no way to help him? While we were standing and wondering, the elephant trumpeted again, even louder and longer.

His cry was reflected in our hearts with horror. We quickly walked away from the zoo, and he screamed over and over again, it seemed that he was chasing us, either begging for help, or warning about the agony of death, or blaming the pain that man generously gave to innocent animals.

At night, the screams of a dying elephant were heard again. I couldn’t sleep, and in order not to wake my brothers, I quietly got out of bed and walked barefoot to the window, slightly opening the window into the night darkness.

The almost indistinguishable silhouettes of the city were filled with the wild cry of death of the unfortunate animal. Perhaps this is the most terrible memory of the blockade and what I have always associated with it. That night, I also couldn’t sleep, but just stood and stared out the window for several hours in a row, hoping that my participation could ease the elephant’s torment.

The next morning, the screams stopped. It died.

Poetry from Jake Cosmos Aller

Waiting For The Rapture

While I was sitting on the crowded subway train

Reading the corporate spoon-fed false propaganda news

While commuting from my suburban townhouse

Watching the lies masquerading as so-called truth news.

I became consumed 

With dread, fear, and grief,

The ever-growing fear that the terrorists 

Have won the war against terrorism.

We’ve given our freedom away 

Dissent is un-American, anti-Christian,

 and unpatriotic.

“Shut your face, you whiny leftist girlie man 

Communist, fascist, Marxist hoodlum punk

Radical left-wing vermin, garbage person,

Un-American terrorist supporting, Tersymps, 

Trans gendered, LGBTQ supporting, 

 wimpy assed piece of crap”

You are poisoning the pure blood 

of our great land

Show us your papers, prepare to be deported,”

Growls the voice of the One True American party

The party that controls our life, rules our very existence

And I want to escape these dark nightmarish times

All around me, but there is nowhere to run

Nowhere to hide anymore, no one cares 

What I think anyway.

The terrorists lurk behind every door

Who are the terrorists?

They are not me

I am a god-fearing white Christian man

The terrorist does not go to my church

He does not even believe in my God..

He is a heretic, a Muslim fanatic

A non-believer in Jesus, not like me

They must be killed, exterminated 

All according to God’s plan

This has been revealed 

to our Prophet in chief

King Donald Trump 

, the invincible

Must learn how to believe again

I must reprogram myself

God is watching us, or is it big Brother

As the world descends into chaos

And the Orange alerts 

grows brightly day by day

I lay down to pray for the bombs to fall

For the rapture to take me away

Waiting for the end of existence

Cleanse the world of its sins

Bring on the rapture, sweat nuclear flames 

With these dismal thoughts

I pick up my newspaper

 and look for something

I will never find there.

Truth is nothing but lies

Lies promoted by the spinmeisters

The true masters of the Universe.

Integrity is nothing but a lie

Nothing but a game.

Slime oozes out 

of every corner of the media

And so I remain consumed

 by dread, fear, and hatred.

Waiting in vain for the rapture

The dropping of the big one

Waiting for the

 end of this period of chaos.

It is all going according to plan

The end of the era 

according to the ancient Mayan

Revelations and the Koran.

Bring on the rapture

Let me meet my god

If he exists.

If not the hell ahead

Is surely better than this hell

We live in.

Poetry from Mesfakus Salahin

South Asian man with reading glasses and red shoulder length hair. He's got a red collared shirt on.
Mesfakus Salahin

Love Anchor

The voice of heart is the voice of love

The language of heart is the language of love.

The beat of heart is the beat of love

Love lives in hearts and hearts live in love

The language of love is one.

The feelings of hearts are same

The language of hearts is same.

Love has no special language 

It has no special religion

It has no border 

It is an unconditional belief 

It is true and eternal

It has no specific existence 

But it exists in everywhere 

Every true heart is the religious worship of love

Every religious worship is the source of love

A heart without love is a castle 

A castle is dark and ugly

Love doesn’t stay in darkness and ugliness 

It has no colour 

But it is colourful 

It is light

It is a good feeling

Or a sad feeling of heart.

It is a voice of heart

It is a language of heart

It is an obedience on God

Actually, it is the way to go to God

To love someone is to love God.

Poetry from Philip Butera

In an Affair, the Brush Barely Touches the Canvas

At dawn,

before breakfast,

before the indulgence, the words, and the aftermath

I needed the truth.

That slippery serpent that chokes and discards.

You smiled thinly,

“Perceive what you will,” you said, “I need to shower.”

He was wealthy, and I was a pair of dark glasses you wore occasionally.

He purchased, and I shopped.

A light burns, and a light’s shadow blends.

Color, texture, and shape describe a work of art.

In a relationship,

the foreground is devoured, and the background is lyrical.

In an affair,

the brush barely touches the canvas, and other narratives become possibilities.

Naked and obedient,

you are borrowed like fine art exhibited from gallery to gallery.

Gran Sasso, Italy, became a fist to the chest

as the clouds turned dark,

the heavy rains started, while your scent lingered

on the sheets and in my thoughts.

Fine glass

is never used to secure.

It is to be admired, handled, and then put away.

If dropped, by chance or purpose,

a momentary visual experience

is created

before the chards are swept into a heap

and then discarded.

You were cold and self-absorbed

when you hurried out the door.

I leaned back on the bedroom chair

tapped the tips of my fingers together

and eventually closed my eyes.

Excuses were a credit I believed I deserved.

Yet I understood

how optimism

usually morphs into a sad smile.

You are an illusionist

and your carefully crafted illusion

makes the truth

an uncertainty that chimes

silently and deadly.

Your note

had no inhibitions.

It stood there propped against an empty wine glass.

Your handwriting was graceful, stylish, and to the point.

“Forever was never on my mind.”

Philip received his Master of Arts in Psychology from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He has published five poetry books, three novels and two plays. He has a column in the quarterly magazine Per Niente. He enjoys all things artistic.

Poetry from Tuyet Van Do

October Hurricane 

watching hurricane news
how I long to hear your updates 
from the valley of death

patiently waiting 
I check my inbox
a black void
 
I am reminded
you are without assistance
without food, without water
let alone internet services

in utter horror
your authorities leave you to die
blocking civilian intervention
threaten arrests 
to those trying to help

unnamed helicopters
hovering aid sites
causing fear and disruption
destroying supplies

watching news from the distance
I am wondering
why 

deep gratitude 
to fellow humans
groups of great brave people
continue to reach out
hearing your cries
they continue bringing supplies 

another day's end 
the sun will keep on rising 
silent prayers and thoughts of you
from the dark abyss
sparks of hope