Mritiqa

‎

‎Mritiqa, can you walk?

‎From one heart to another.

‎

‎Can you arrange emotions?

‎in the heart of a boring world.

‎

‎Can you paint with the colors of the sun?

‎The hungry stomach of the sea that has been thrown up.

‎

‎Can you  play the flute of Hamilto?

‎In the cursed city gathered on the forehead.

‎

‎Can you make a walking path?

‎In the unnecessary glands.

‎

‎Can you read?

‎The silent call.

‎

‎Can you absorb?

‎The red tears that tore my heaven.

‎

‎Can you make me

‎a dreamy musical piece

‎

‎Come and slowly touch

‎My final twilight.

‎Look at this vast sea of people

‎Silent in the half-darkness and the crushing darkness.

‎The fields, the mountains, the valleys, the springs are oppressed

‎Dead winter, dead spring.

‎The dead emotions of living people walk around

‎On the path flowing past the grave.

‎Candles do not illuminate the grave of the heart

‎Immortal death on the edge of the sleepless night

‎I return to you in deep sorrow

‎Leaving my hometown to the forest.

‎All pain fades away in an instant

‎In the cage of your innocent chest.

‎I like to do in search of you

‎In the form of the wind.

‎

‎Embrace me once in both arms

‎The beginning of a bright new day

‎Cast anchor in the song of the primeval night

‎Where civilization sprouts from seeds

‎My fire pit – eager for freedom

‎In the united march of free living

Previously appeared in Romance Buds, and Butterflies

Asha sashayed across the London tavern floor, looking every bit the exotic, strikingly beautiful Indian ex-pat. As she walked, men turned on their barstools to regard her, thinking, I’d like some of that. But Asha was not available, at least not to them.

Ignoring the others, she stopped at a table in the center of the saloon, where sat an 80-ish man, gray at the temples, and with a slight tremor in his hands. He seized his cane and made to stand up, but Asha held up her hand to stop him.
“Don’t get up, Ari,” she said, taking a seat by his side.

Across the tavern, covetous men shook their heads, bewildered at Asha’s choice.
“Have you been waiting long?” she asked.
Ari shook his head no. He seemed to have difficulty speaking.

Suddenly Asha moved, leaning into Ari and throwing her arms about him and kissing him affectionately on the cheek. She squeezed him tight.
The spectators in the bar rolled their eyes and tossed back their drinks, puzzled by the apparent attraction of the old man to the stunning woman.

“What’s that all about, Fahey?” a large, attractive man dressed in the garb of a construction worker asked the bartender.
Fahey said, “I can’t say for sure where it began, Mike, but I’ve heard rumors from those that know one or the other of them. Ari was an upper class Brit in the colonial days. Some of them were right bastards but he was one of the good ones. He did what he could to help the locals. Asha’s family was quite poor, but Ari got her father a good job as a government bureaucrat. Got a good paycheck for signing papers, and making low-level decisions. As a result, Asha’s family and Ari’s socialized a lot. Asha’s family learned about Britain, and Ari’s family learned about India. When they first started socializing Asha was two years old, and Ari was a forty-year-old man with a wife the same age.”

“How old is she now?” inquired Mike.
Fahey shrugged. “Around 40? Anything else you want to know?” he asked archly.
The irony of the remark was lost on the other man. “Is she involved with the old man, or is she a…free agent?”

“My man,” said Fahey, with a knowing grin, “nothing in this life is free.”
“How about you introduce us?” asked Mike.
Fahey began to wipe down the bar. “You’re a little late,” he said.
“You mean…” began Mike.

Fahey nodded. “They’re married.” When Mike looked lost, the bartender continued, “Ari lived in India until about ten years ago, when he began to get dementia. Ari’s wife, Mabel, moved them back to London to their old home so he’d be in more familiar surroundings. About five years ago, his wife became terminal and she contacted Asha and she came to the city almost immediately. She moved in with them and took care of them both. Then, a year ago, when Mabel died, Asha and Ari got married so that it was acceptable for the culture for them to live together. You understand?

Mike did understand, and gazed with compassion and admiration across the tavern at a true love story.

                                                                   

AI

Give me a topic

We’ll build from there

Put in the words

Just the topic

And then we’ll wait.

It’s the waiting

That’s tough.

We remember back

Back to when

We had to carry on

On our own.

Had to come up with

Ideas that fit

Linked together

And made the point

We needed to make.

School became easier

Once AI arrived.

We barely need

Teachers or libraries.

Everything is taken on

Taken care of.

Give us an assignment

And it’s done

As well as it can be

By a machine and brains

That are no longer ours.

               Watering

Early this morning I heard my Donna

Outside dragging the hose, setting up

The sprinkler near the back garden.

She turned on the water and set her

Timer. This is what’s necessary these

Days – mid-summer heat with no rain

In the forecast. We try our best to get

Ahead, water the various gardens we

Foolishly planted, thinking that nature

Would take care of itself this time, such

Odd certainty based on so little. Nature

Or whatever we call it rarely cooperates

These days. Other parts of the country

Are being flooded, others are burning up

Causing the haze we experience, haze

That they warn us to avoid. We should

Limit outdoor activities, but how would

Our gardens survive without my wife being

Out there setting up the sprinklers and

Setting up her timer. How long will this all

Take? How much water will it take? What

Will we do if this drought turns official and

We are told to limit watering? When will

This all end? My wife just moved it all out

Front – those gardens need her too.

                Invasive

The urge to take over, to control

Is in them. They entangle, cross

Over, link themselves, tie them-

Selves. This is an invasive vine

One that needs more room and

Takes it wherever it can. Left to

Their own devices they begin to

Choke out the other plants, ferns

Fall easy victims, even hydrangea

Can’t keep up with them. This vine

Will even go after pine trees, ours

Is being tangled, strangled by it.

Once a year we try to fight back. I

Remember being out there last

Year thinking we were finally getting

The upper hand. But here we are

Again this year waging our side of

The endless war against an invasive

Vine that probably knows that we

Will declare yet another temporary

Win, and leave off – and it will start

Over testing us, waging guerilla warfare

Till it sees we turn our backs and

Then it’s back to a full invasion, D-Day

Along the fence and back into our

Back yard.

Flower  

a disbelieving priest got lost on his way to the sausage shop

god died

a dog died and cheap semi-counterfeit sausage appeared

god died and cheap semi-counterfeit sausage appeared

a son planted a cherrystone bone and a tree grew from the rib

god was born

a dog was born

a homeless dog is a god born in the cold

merry christmas

the butcher shop is closed for the holidays

the meat has fallen asleep

merry birthday

a tree gives birth to a flower

but a flower is not the future

Вird

province of death

without a hat and jacket a snowman goes out into the street

and around the raging iblian hot weather

a fragment of a shot moon falls out of a gun

naked people press themselves against the pistols of summer

a snowman shoots me in the chest and a bird flies out

All in sleep

Exclamation mark   drifts

White lies of snow scattered

I’m throwing sweat in the dry river

Weighing acid in the ocean and on land

Today there is so little dying at the twilight 

I am losing the threads of my ancestors

Grandmother is sewing the hems of frayed

Pe(i)ace and relations

In the evening, I count the missing hills

Losing the aesthetic of appreciating

Nothing. No names, no lands, no flowers,

no birds, no animals. Nothing, nothing.

I am a half animal, half cancer, half-life and

half death wherever I go

there is emptiness, a lifeless desert

Breathing smoke like

Buzzing chiming mobile and TV

Everything is available in a mouse click

Money exchanging life in the night

We have been earning and paying

For what is useless?

The truth is nothing

For sale, exchange offer,

Language of broken

Thoughts divided by lines

Tenacious memory like oil on a turtle 

The violent angry sun is stomping the sea

You took a pill to drug the drought mind

All in sleep

Colonizers 

Not poor but plundered

Chor bazzari of 

Gold to be held 

Booty looty

Extracting, desecrating, devastating 

Land

Glory is dripping blood

The sun never set for it didn’t trust your macabre  deeds

By the by, whatever in the name of civilization 

You faked it till you traded it 

You, what shall I name you?

Thief, thug, plunderer, murderer 

History’s revenge or remedy 

Don’t point your finger 

We are here because you were there

So, bro, I wanna wanna

In the beginning, there was a sigh

I eat and drink with the tongue

That pained my experience

Gone, gone my

Language

My words tried to

Find

Space

I seek mother

Tongue

Dream/nightmare of confused

Language

Speech

An answered question

With white lies

Woman

In passive voice an object

One word indelible in memory

History means inquiry in

Language

On skin

Speaks silence?

Simple Maths

The whole number of our lives is zero

Suppose the value of a person is zero

Suppose one common man meets another

It’s 1/0=0

When Two B *B

It’s equal to E

If A accuses B

B cancels A either by dividing or by subtracting

One thousand guns = mass shooting

80% plastic = Greed

Money > relations

Kindness <violence

Green _Green = concrete

War +War=Insanity

If we run at this speed/Km

Our end is near

Colour

Nothing is mine

Land. Love. Life.

The colour of my skin, my flag, my land,

my name, my blood, my flesh are 

not mine

Longing heart, not mine. 

My language is colourful too.

Yet it lost its fragrance in the market.

Tired of strolling, it brought RP.

My mother in her lost her tongue, is pronouncing her land.

Her eyes are losing their colour as land.

The paper I carried. My identity is discoloured with time.

The sepia of the frayed paper is slipping.

Time coloured the paper and life.

The forgotten colour of falling time has ripened.

Now, the bells are ringing.

Pulkita Anand is an avid reader of poetry. Author of two children’s e-books, her recent eco-poetry collection is ‘we were not born to be erased’. Various publications include:  Tint Journal, Origami Press, New Verse News, Green Verse: An anthology of poems for our planet (Saraband Publication), Ecological Citizen, Origami Press, Asiatic, Inanna Publication, Bronze Bird Books, SAGE Magazine, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere.

Erin Kim is a student attending a school in Seoul, South Korea. When she has not trapped herself in her room alone working on her art, she enjoys playing tennis. 

Reflection  

On top of an old rug

smeared with footprints of grey, brown, and red

was a little boy—

who wore a coat, navy blue 

and a pair of polished, leather shoes. 

His eyes were blue, 

like the endless sky above him  

Next to him was a teenage girl—

Who wore bangle hoops and black headphones

With a grey cat in her arms 

She gazed into the vibrant city lights,

Lightly humming a rhythm with a sotto voice. 

Her eyes reflected a burning shade of yellow, 

and in them lay a fierce flicker of curiosity  

and a vague excitement for a better tomorrow 

Across two tables and a counter was a barista.

she held a portafilter in one hand 

and an espresso machine base in another

Sunlight illuminated her black hair, 

reflecting her soft, hazel eyes into a shade of orange. 

In them, lingered a quiet protest. 

And an unspoken fear for another restless dawn.

 Lili Mariline

3 AM in the morning, Fifth Avenue, New York.  

She walked down bricky tapestry of memories

All neatly knit together on one breezy autumn night. 

The streets were vibrant in neon colors, and the streetlights were dim—

yet, with hordes of moths. 

Craving for the flickering of light bulbs, 

One by one fluttering to the ground, lifeless. 

She re-opened a letter he sent her years ago 

and smelt a fragrance of his nostalgic cynicism.

It came from a land far away,

Where bullets were words—-and truths are silenced. 

It came from a world so different from the one she lives, 

One she has never dared to imagine. 

She heard a faint melody of his, singing ‘Lili Mariline’. 

Then, she gazed into the distance. 

Thinking about the very spark that once made life in her world

And one that had once filled her heart with joy. 

With a stream of memory running down her left cheek, 

With panoramas of forgone yesterdays running down her other,

And with a dim reminiscence of his last goodbye,  

Her castle of conscience reached its last chapter, and then—

She fell.

Memories of Kindergarteners 

This ground bears the memories of kindergarteners

Mashed flowers and a sandbox, the hot sun baking two plastic slides—-

And a child, fallen from a swing—running to her mother.  

This is the last ground she’s touched since then, 

as she felt the hands of a million, pushing her down. 

Burying the girl’s arms into her beautiful nature, 

This is where she sank—and sank—

Wrapping herself around the warm, bottomless sandpit. 

This is where I saw leftovers of a Hawaiian pizza, rolling on the ground. 

This is where I played hide-and seek with my parents, after school. 

This is where my friend walked her dog, wearing that pink ribbon of hers. 

This is where I stood barefoot, building sand-castles all day. 

And this is where I last saw you, after all these years 

This is where you carved that map of mahogany inside my heart, 

As you plunged into the unreachable abyss, 

on your own.

Alina Lee is a high school student at an international school in Seoul, South Korea. Her writing explores memory, identity, and the quiet moments between people. When she’s not writing, she enjoys hiking, running, and playing the ukulele. Her work is inspired by the natural world and the rhythms of everyday life.