Global South Salon

Listen to the mp3 audio

We were thrilled and honoured to have participated in an exciting, free public event at the World Literature and Global South Conference  (23-25 August, 2019) co-hosted by Peking University and the School of Languages at the University of Sydney, convened by Professor Yixu Lu.

The Global South Salon is a creative submersion into the colloquium themes from diaspora writers and translators who live and work in Sydney, and whose ancestries trace to the Global South. They have lived in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Africa, Mexico and Australia. They share resistant imaginaries.

The writers were introduced by Dr Toby Fitch with a brief introduction by award-winning poet Dimitra Harvey.
Featuring six award winning writers: Mario Licon Cabrera, Anuapama Pilbrow, Lachlan Brown, Debbie Lim, Michelle Cahill, Christopher Cyrill.

This stellar conference featured authors from Argentina, China, Egypt, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Myanmar, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, with keynotes by Alexis Wright and Gauri Viswanathan. Alexis Wright is an Indigenous Australian writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and the 2018 Stella Prize for her “collective memoir” of Leigh Bruce “Tracker” Tilmouth.  Gauri Viswanathan is the author of Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (Columbia, 1989; 25th anniversary edition, 2014) and Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief  (Princeton, 1998) which won several awards.

The conference also featured a launch of a documentary screening of Gangalidda political leader Clarence Walden, a witness to the cruel racism experienced by Aboriginal people during the 1950s and 60s on the remote Doomadgee Mission in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The documentary addresses the enormity of the political struggles with governments and mining companies in the modern era. Here is a link to the ABC’s audio recording of Nothing But the Truth,
(Credits: Interviewer: Alexis Wright. Sound Engineer: Russell Stapleton / Ben Denham. Producer: Ben Etherington)

The creative component of the conference is curated by acclaimed author and academic, Nicholas Jose.

S. Gupta was born in 1988 in the middle of a Texas snow storm. She graduated from Johns Hopkins with degrees in creative writing and psychology. She currently lives in Washington DC. Her work has previously appeared in The Talkin’ Blues Literary Magazine, and Midwest Literary Magazine.

Blessing

When you are little you figure a blessing is a sort of cake. To receive it, you kneel down in front of your parents and they balance it on top of your head. As you rise you catch it and pop it into your mouth so that the last taste of home is a sweet one.

You know this because your father reads Indian folk tales to you. A lot of them are variations on the same theme: the hero goes out into the world to seek his fortune, but before that he had to seek his parents’ blessing. Mostly he gets it, but sometimes he doesn’t and then he has to resort to Drastic Action or leave home with a Heavy Heart.

You’re outraged to discover that no, in fact, a blessing is not a cake. A blessing means that your parents raise you up, kiss your forehead and say, “Go with God, my child.” You don’t understand. It’s not like words can stop you in your tracks.

“A blessing gives means your parents support your endeavors,” your father says. “A blessing can mean peace, courage.”

He would know. He was nine when he left home. His father was an engineer who hopped from city to city following blueprints to build canals and bridges, anything that would pay the bills. His mother taught her children mathematics at her knee, whacked them with a ruler when they made mistakes, and sent her children off to the best boarding school she could afford: military school where the students change clothes five times a day, run a few miles before breakfast and don’t cry for home.

Your father could not run, he came last in all the races, but in the classroom he left his classmates in the dust as he spun through mathematics, hammered away at physics until it became the lens he used to examine life, and found as he examined it, that he hated school.

But he had his parents blessing.

When he left for college, he did not have his parents blessing. He left to study physics in a place where only doctors and engineers could count on making any money, in a time where even those comfortably ensconced in the middle class worried about having enough food on the table. You’re mad, his parents told him. You’ll never be able to feed a family, they told him. You’ll starve on the streets, they told him.

I am mad, he said. I will not get married and raise a family, he said. I don’t need much money, he said. And then he trained himself to dream of a future spent living in a single room, eating very little. It was not difficult after military school where fifty boys would share one room and the occasional cockroach would be mixed into the canteen food.

As it happened, physics led him to America where he got married, gave it all up for business because he couldn’t support a wife on a researcher’s salary and then got it all back when he started his first company where he could write mathematical algorithms and found he liked it better than the political games professors, even physics professors, especially physics professors, play.

“I have found my life’s work,” he says to you when you are very young.

You have a life plan too. You are going to follow your father’s footsteps, placing your feet in the whirls and hollows he has left imprinted on the earth. First you will become a physicist. You will read his thesis, a thesis that very few people are capable of understanding, he tells you, and then you will ease your way into the company, help it lift off. It runs, it does well even, but he dreams of an empire. You will come, and it will be an empire.

Your first grade teacher is so impressed by your plans, and the stories your father tells her of how you conduct your own experiments, that she sets aside science text books for you to take home. You take them home and you and your father go through the experiments for about half an hour until you get bored.

In third grade you attempt to start your own company. You’ve got it planned out. Work out a profit proposal with your father. Your best friends are going to be your business partners. Announce the idea on the playground. They are full of ideas. Decide their ideas are stupid. The company flops.

You don’t particularly care because you’ve just discovered Sherlock Holmes and are reading your way through the complete works. Every week your mother takes you to the library and you wander in and out of the different sections pulling books from shelves, Nancy Drew, Louisa May Alcott, Tolkien.

“Junk,” your father cries. “Stop reading such junk. Read something worthwhile. Science. Math.”

Occasionally you ask the librarians for books on antelopes because antelopes are animals and animals are biology and biology is a science, but antelopes are so boring you switch to biographies and keep hitting the fiction. Read Sense and Sensibility and decide Marianne is a drip. Read Animal Farm without knowing anything about communism and decide power corrupts. Read Anna Karenina and decide men are evil. Race through your class assignments so you can read, cram homework into an hour so you can read, read through recesses, car rides, road trips, family reunions, dinner parties, read until your eyes hurt and your legs are cramped and the words on the page are more real than the sofa you’re sitting on.

***

Hit sixth grade. The homework starts getting serious. You can’t finish math homework while the teacher explains the lesson anymore. Slowly, so slowly, you don’t notice it, you start to lag behind. A little knot starts living in the pit of your stomach during tests and grows larger and more wretched with each test.

Read so you can forget about math. Read while you should be doing math. Read, read, read.

Occasionally write. In seventh grade a poet teaches your English class for a few days. Before she leaves she pulls your parents aside.

“You must be a writing family,” she says.

“Quite the opposite,” your father says. “I was terrible at the humanities.” He was. He likes to tell you about how he wrote one English paper in high school and turned it in year after year for a solid “B”. A “B” was good enough for English.

“Your daughter is talented,” she says.

He smiles. He is proud. Middle school is all about being proud of you, the poems you are getting published, the essays that the teachers talk about in the hallways, it is almost enough to make up for the fact that the math is getting worse each year. By eighth grade the math teacher is calling you in after class to ask you if there’s anything she can do to help improve your grades.

“You’re not stupid,” your father says. He says it often. He says instead, that he has failed you. He should have spent more time teaching you math when you were little, as his mother taught him. Instead he devoted his time to his company.

You nod and you think of all those wasted hours, the hours you spent reading about fictional people with fictional lives when you could have studied the curve of the universe, understood reality, and you want to throw up.

You have begun to panic about your future. The math isn’t working out, the writing is, but everyone knows writers don’t get jobs, and somehow you know already, that you will never be a writer. You were meant to travel other paths.

Take a deep breathe. High school is around the corner. In high school there will be real science class, and there you will learn, oh you will learn.

***

In high school you load up on physics and chemistry and math. Your father looks through your textbooks each summer.

“You’re going to love these courses,” he says. This is the sort of thing he wishes he had when he was your age. “You should study over the summer,” he says.

You try. You sit with last year’s text book and the coming year’s text book and you tell yourself you’ll do two hours a day, but sooner or later you reach for your pile of library books and the calculus, the chemistry, the physics lies forgotten, and then the school year comes around and there again you’re taking home grades that steadily sink lower and lower.

Stay up late to finish problem sets, drink coffee on test days until you vibrate in your chair, start having nightmares about failing months before each exam. Write in your blog about how much you hate school. Get a small audience. Keep writing in your blog. Write. Write. Write.

“Be careful about your blog,” your father says. “You’re going to be someone running a company one day and you don’t want your blog to haunt you.”

You try.

In eleventh grade you take Calculus. In the hallway at school a parent stops you. Her son is in your Calculus class.

“I used to work for your father,” she says. “He’s a genius. I’m so excited that my son has the chance to be in class with you. He keeps telling me about there’s freshman in his class who is setting the curve. That’s you right? ”

Smile. Back away. Later in the day the Calc teacher hands out the mid-semester grades. She gives you your first fail.

That year your father makes a mathematical break through. His best friend is over at the time, and when your father shows him the math, he gasps and drags you over.

“Have you seen what your father has done?” he asks and graphs and formulas pour out of him and you shake your head and back away.

Your father shakes his head and smiles a little painfully, the smile of the perpetually isolated, “Stop. You’re not being fair to her. She hasn’t studied that. She can’t understand.”

“A pity,” his friend says. “Such a pity.”

“Physics is about seeing and understanding the world in its precise truth,” your father will say periodically. “It’s not like the humanities or the arts, where nothing is known, where nothing is precise and you can build nothing.”

You envy the scientists, the mathematicians of the world— people who are born seeing the truth, people who can slice through the multitudinous deceptions of ordinary mortals, and reveal the bleached bones of truth.

What would that be like?

You can not imagine it. You are not capable of it.

Tell your college counselor on whim you want to go to a place with a good English program.

***

The summer after you graduate from high school you run into that freshman, now sophomore, who was in your Calculus class and dazzled the teachers. “I don’t know what to do,” her mother says half laughing, half afraid as if this girl’s talent is bright enough to burn.

Your father writes down his telephone number, rattles off books and techniques, says, “You must call me if you need anything.” Later he shakes his head and smiles. Oh that girl, that girl, he sees his younger self in her eyes.

Then he tells you not to sign up for Calculus III in college.

“Don’t torture yourself unnecessarily,” he says.

Despite your best intentions you become a writing major in college. Spend three years dissecting books, ripping up your writing style and piecing it together again, learning that you know nothing. Hate the stuffy professors, hate the redundant syllabus, hate the pompous students, get high on Neruda and Eliot while you do your homework, fall asleep dreaming of libraries. Send your father all your stories. He reads them and tells you he’s not the best person to give you feedback: this is not his forte.

Then it’s your last year of college and you have to go job hunting.

No one will give you an interview.

“If you were an economics major or an engineering major you would have a job,” your father says. “They see writing major and toss your resume out. This is the price you pay for following your passion.”

“This is the price,” you say.

“It’s just the writing major,” he says.

“It’s just the writing major,” you say.

No one will give you an interview.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You can always work for me.” His company is beginning take off, it is expanding, these days all he can speak of is the latest algorithm, how it is dynamite and unleashed it will change the world.

After seven months, the government offers to hire you. Your friends laugh. “Good luck accomplishing anything there,” they say. They had expected more from you.

You call your father.

“Come work with me,” he says. “We need you and we’re growing and we’re at an exciting place.”

“But what about this job?” you ask. “What do you think of it?”

“God, when I compare what’s going on at my company with a shitty little government job…oh, it’s frustrating.”

“It’s a shitty little job,” you say.

***

The job isn’t bad as far as shitty little jobs go. You get up, you go to work, then you come home and you write, you write, you write until you think you’ve used up all the words in the world, and then you fall asleep and get up and do it all over again the next day, and sometimes there isn’t enough time to write, and you think, maybe you could be a writer, only there’s never enough time, there’s never enough time and meanwhile all you have to write about is what happens inside the gray cubes of the government.

You can’t stay here forever. But you don’t want to go to business school, you don’t want to get another job that will take away even more of your writing time.

“I know at the moment writing is very important to you,” he says when you tell him this, “But think. Probably, you could do well, even pick up a few hundred every year, but is that enough to live on? To bet your life on? I know you. You wouldn’t be happy without the kind of success I have.”

The next day you go to work and your boss calls a staff meeting. You sit with excellent posture in your crisp white shirt and neat black skirt. You have a notebook full of questions and you ask them in a crisp little British accent. You think about how this isn’t bad, and how in ten years on a morning like this when a fresh breeze is blowing through the room and the air smells like sunlight you will still be wearing a crisp white shirt speaking in a crisp little British accent in some office somewhere. A good life.

You go back to your cube and pull out your assignment, only your head aches so you think perhaps you will sit for a while. And as you sit, you think, ah, you will go home, you will write. But what to write? And you imagine that you are a stranger, picking through your own stories, bidding on them, and you want to gouge out your eyeballs.

It is no use, you think. It is a hobby worth a few hundred a year.

You sip some caffeine to fill something in your chest that has gone hollow and funny and go back to work.

You know what a blessing is now. It is a stone compass, round and heavy that your parents slip into your hand when you are born. Pray that you have the strength to carry it, pray that you are able to follow the direction of the arrow easily and effortlessly so you will never discover how relentlessly it tugs you forward.

Nija Dalal was born in Atlanta, GA; she’s a second-generation Indian-American, currently living in Sydney, Australia. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Georgia State University, and she produces for Final Draft, a radio show all about books and writing on 2SERfm. Her work has been published in Dry Ink, an online magazine based in Atlanta, and in Ordinary, an online magazine from Sydney.

photograph by Dorothy O’Connor

A Midget Toe

A sign of inbreeding long ago that weaves through generations from a small Indian village, where people still die of live wires in water, to a city where the rich live in sparkle-ugly towers built on top of slums. This minute warp in genetic code weft its way through my mother’s DNA and winds with her across oceans and continents, over, under, over, under.  

I have named it “the midget toe.” The fourth toe on my right foot, it sits slightly higher than the others; it’s never quite fit in. It assumes a superior attitude, never touching ground unless forced, leaving the other toes to do the actual work of walking.  

Because of the midget toe, my right foot’s profile looks oddly truncated. A delicate heel, an elegant curve at the arch, a big toe, and the rest is misery. A downward sloping hill ends with a shock flat diving board. The other foot bears no match; no, the toes of my left foot follow the graceful gradient you might expect, if you ever expect things about toes. The midget toe means every open-toed shoe purchase is fraught with one very disconcerting question: does it create the illusion of symmetry? The sales girl is never paid well enough to respond kindly; closed-toed is my refuge. 

Like a grown woman wearing a padded bra, I hide my toe’s shortcoming and my shame with curved rigid structure. It feels wrong inside my shoe, self-consciously insufficient, while the left foot rolls easy and confident.  

I share the midget toe with my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, but not all the women in my family. Irregular, unpredictable, like a needle skipping stitches, the toe dances with some, slights others. If my lineage were woven in an ever-lengthening fabric, if the midget toes were marked, the tapestry would show a sort of hidden genealogy, a kind of coded secret, and it seems slightly magical, fairy lights twinkling in a family tree. I didn’t choose to have it; life might be easier without it. But the marvel of the midget toe lies in the knowledge that no matter how far I travel, if I unravel, a twisting thread keeps me tethered across oceans and continents to an immigrant home, a leafy Southern suburb, a sour-smelling sea-borne city, and a small Indian village, over, under, over, under.

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Zuzanna Nitecka left her home country in June 2008 to seek inspiration under the palm trees of Spain. Her greatest inspiration is the magical world of Richard Brautigan’s imagination. She is currently living in Madrid, writing, wandering around at night and making friends with struggling musicians. And teaching English in her free time.

After

You get on the train at 6:45 giving off waves of afterlove frequency.

There is a glow under your skin as if you had dozens of very small Christmas candles in your belly. You stand out against the cold fluorescence of the metro. Eyes turn to follow you as you pass by in search of a seat. You sit down, oblivious: perhaps you pull out a book from you bag or sip tea from a green thermos. All the while. The car gradually fills up with your mind that is aglow.

Loss

There’s nothing more sadly sensual than after-rain pine trees stuck into earth like paper umbrellas dropped into a cocktail glass.

As I walk under dripping branches, thinking my thoughts, I see a black scarf on the concrete path before me. It belonged to a woman. She wears heels and perfect make up. Sweet perfume. She is afraid of growing old. The wind must have untangled the scarf from her shoulders. She walked all the way home from this little park with the ghost of the scarf wrapped around her neck. Before she realized it was gone.

Concert

The clanking of pots and pans drowns out the music (a sonata of practicality). She brings out the dinner: rice in asparagus sauce. As the music begins, she will fidget. Thinking about plates that should be washed; drinks to be served; stains on the tablecloth. Meanwhile, the musician plays

as if he was taking revenge on the world. To avenge some terrible grievance. Then. The trembling of strings announces it’s over. In the silence

that comes, a question: “Will you help me clean up?”

(…)

The demon of disturbed sleep

broods

in bright daylight

(…)

A hudred years ago, it was 7 am. Beds rocked softly

on cold floor like empty peanut shells.

Bob Hart is the author of two books of poems Acrobat and Lightly in the Good of Day (Bench Press). He grew up in Harlem, on 145th Street, 142nd Street and 158th Street. Her served in the army from 1952 to 1954, and was stationed in Germany during the Korean war. Now he works for a mail sorting company in Midtown West, and lives in Brooklyn.

In A Guitar

I like the anger in a guitar—

it doesn’t need a reason;

no need to gain back face, having lost none.

Its strings smell no insults;

it is mouth, not ears.

I like the sorrow spilled from its hole

whose hollow has lost nothing;

rejoices in its own hollow being

(devoid of void, though massless),

empty bowl of tongues.

I crave the tremored fear of its strings

which riverrun, but nowhere.

Five nerves take turn to shiver their speaking:

our doomless deathless dying

by the blood guitar.

Although it drums an air of its own

it can drum one into battle!

It has no politics but it pushes—

or pulls like blind horse running

as its path shines black!

Man, Can They!

Man those girls can laugh!

I mean they really splatter cheer into the air.

They let go. Oh boy they let go.

Can their chairs hold them, tables contain them?

They should ride horses

jump cloudhigh fences; they should, they should

run beside the running deer; do

Phoenician somersault on bulls, then

leap amid spectators in the stands.

Make way for those laughing girls—

wave banners for them; fly the flags.

Spare no colors. Spare no winds. Let the light

burst its sides with brightness.

Let the heavy turtles of the galaxies

declare a rabbit holiday.

It’s catching. Help me hold my sides.

This is too lively for

the likes of any gravity-coherent solid thing.

Usha Akella has authored two books of poetry. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan, an organization that provides free readings and workshops to the disadvantaged. She has read at various international festivals and her work is upcoming in the HarperCollins Anthology of Indian English Poetry. She lives in Austin, Texas, USA.

Hymn To Shiva

Here take this bitterness

Hold it in the cup of your throat

For all the lives I may live

Call yourself  Neelkant

So I may be sweet as a lyre.

Take these desires

Wreathe them on your body

That I may be a temple

Empty as eternity.

Here take the sight of this world

So I might close my eyes in ecstasy.

Take this, my anger

Seat yourself on it

Your own compassion

whirling white as the milky way

Frothing in your matted locks.

Let it overflow

Drench me.

Tomorrow’s poem
 
I want to begin a poem
without saying “I want,”
Wait like a page or
          undone button in the dust,
A poem that comes like
a blighted ovum,
fading as a body fades into a shroud.
 
inside, demons are persistent like
worker bees, it is not the unwillingness

to surrender
            to the divine but
            the unwillingness to
            give up on the human,

I want the one as the many.
 
All that is good is in small quantities,
                Like the hidden flames in flowers,
                    Like eyes which are magic lamps
                      holding the universe,
All that ties us is invisible,
                                     trailing umbilical chords unsevered.
 
They tell me prophets are missing from caves,
their words floating in bottles in old seas,
and old cities surface like prophecies,
and someone is a silent incarnation working like yeast,
 
for some this is enough,
 
here, I don’t know that face in the mirror,
a ship afar, the sails down.

Botero’s Doves

Can there be a dove of peace,

And a dove of war?

Can a country stick out two tongues?

Its wounds bloom like roses

Or explode as rifle fire,

Can there be two dawns?

A dawn of the sun,

A dawn of the night.

Humans, we have two hearts,

One black and one white,

But to see it so exposed…

Botero’s doves are installed in the plaza  of church of St. Antonio. Botero donated the dove of peace to the city of Medellin which was subsequently bombed. He donated another on condition that the former dove remain as it is. The two doves stand next to each other, a chilling  symbol of Medellin’s history.

 
Gina Forberg is an elementary school teacher in Westport, Connecticut.  She received her Masters of Arts Creative Writing at Manhattanville College.  Her work has appeared in The New Delta Review, The Mochila Review, Slant Magazine, Blueline Press, Squaw Valley Review, Anderbo Magazine,

The Turn

Maybe there is gratitude in the map
quest that steered us wrong, that allowed
us to meet our mate when we missed
the church, that prevented the accident
at mile 54. Perhaps we found our dream
house, a new favourite restaurant.  
What if we returned to the simple scribble
on the page, the loops, curves of a writer’s
hand, the elegance of slant, the enjambment
of words. I’d  like to believe he is
intrigued by the white space, cares less
about cross-outs, erasures, knows not
what direction he is going.  For us
to worry about diction, syntax,
punctuation is to misplace the emotion,
to resist the turn we need to make.
The starts, the stops are what drive
our engines.  The setting aside restores us.
If we are willing to lose ourselves
in the extra miles we may be surprised
at our destination. If we are lucky,
a reader will follow close behind.

The Conditions and Events of The Winter Olympic Games as a Metaphor for Sex

i.  
Snowfall must be sufficient enough to guarantee beyond question a heavy cover
during the prelimary practice.

ii.
Altitude should be sufficient to guarantee snowfall without unduly affecting the
respiration of the athletes.
                                
iii.
If you are going to be a skiier choose freestyle. It has no restrictions.

iv.
It is important for a woman to use her hips during the turns in the downhill slalom.

v.
In classic freestyle, skiiers use the traditional straight-striding technique and do not
deviate from the parallel tracks.

vi.
The word “hockey” derives itself from the French word “hocquet” which refers to
crooked stick.

vii.
Skaters must wear rubber caps to reduce the amount of wind resistance.

viii.
In the luge there is no rule that says a doubles team must comprise members of the
same sex, but traditionally, men have ridden together with the larger man lying on top
for a more aerodynamic fit.

ix.
The luge event is designed to reward consistency, endurance and ability to withstand
pressure, particularly on the second day.

x.
In curling, the stone moves toward a series of concentric circles. The object is to get
the stone as close to the centre of the circle as possible.

xi.
In the biathalon relay each team member has two firing sequences and is allowed
three extra bullets to hit five targets.

xii.
Location changes every two years so make sure the conditions are conducive to your
specified event.

Born and brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Usha Kishore now lives on the Isle of Man, UK. Usha was educated at the University of Kerala (India), Sheffield Hallam University (UK) and Canterbury Christ Church University College (UK).   After having taught for some time in the British Secondary and Tertiary Sector, Usha now teaches English at a Secondary School on the Isle of Man . Usha’s poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, Ireland, Europe, New Zealand, India and online. Some of her poems have been translated into German, Spanish and Gujurati. She also writes critical articles for international magazines.  Her poetry has won prizes in UK competitions and has been part of national and international projects. Her short story “Dowry” was shortlisted for a major UK literary award, the Asham Award (UK) in 2005.  Usha also translates from Sanskrit; her translations of Sankara have been published in India, the UK and USA.   She is now translating Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara, in conjunction with Dr.Rati Saxena of Shree Shankaracharya Sanskrit University, Kalady, Kerala.

For The Dynasty Of the Moon
(after reading Kylie Rose)

For the dynasty of the Moon,
A hundred thousand lives lost
in verse…

Metres of battle scanned into
Krishna’s eternal song –
A stoic sage chronicles the

end of his own dynasty –
a patient elephant God scribes
into eternity…

In the Vela kali of yesteryear’s
setting sun, I hear the battle cry of
the lone sun-warrior, who challenges

the house of the moon.
Panchavadya notes echo
into twilight memory –

The raga hindola, mourning the death
of the lone young warrior killed
by deceit. Arjuna takes a terrible

vow and Krishna smiles in the
bugles of Panchajanya, while a
lone monkey mediates on the flagstaff…

From the carvings on the temple wall,
she, with unravelled hair, calls out to my
soul from stone – screaming revenge for

the disrobing of womanhood….

Krishna’s eternal song – The Hindu “Gita”
Vela kali – Temple art (dance) form
Panchavadya – five instruments played together
Hindola – a raga in Carnatic music
Panchajanya – the conch of Krishna (The poem is based on the Hindu epic Mahabharatha)

Nikhat’s Mother

She stands out in a crowd –
Her shocking pink
dupatta carrying
songs from the Gilgit –

She is without
a language here –
I am her interpreter –
translating her
language, her culture
her colour–

She does not understand
why Nikhat has to attend
school daily – Nikhat is at
her sister-in law’s cousin’s
wedding in Bradford–
Today is Mehendi, tomorrow
is the Nikah  and Nikhat will
not be in school for a week –

She does not understand
why Nikhat is harassed
by school bobbies –
Bibi jaan, taleem lena,
dena hamara mamla hai –
Ye gore kyun dakl dete
hain?

Biting back half-an hour’s
exasperated laughter,
I interpret to the irate
Head of School:
Nikhat’s mother  does not
understand the concept
of compulsory education…

Mehendi – The henna festival before marriage     
dupatta – veil/scarf    
Nikah –  Muslim Wedding ceremony                                        
The Urdu dialogue can be translated as:  Madam, education is our personal business, why are the whites interfering?                              
Gilgit – a city in Northern Pakistan and is the gateway to the Karakoram ranges of the Himalayas.

Peter J. Dellolio has published critical essays on art and film, fiction, poetry, and drama. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary magazines, including Antenna, Aero-Sun Times, Bogus Review, and Pen-Dec Press. Through 1998, Peter was a contributing editor for NYArts Magazine. Currently he is working on a critical study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock.  He is a graduate of New York University, 1978, and holds a B.A. in cinema and literature.

Ineluctabilis

I will leave the building with her.  We will walk together for several blocks.  It will be night.  Before we leave, she will say something to me, she will make some remark about the tone of my voice.  When I speak to her, the tone of my voice will have a certain effect on her, and so she will make this comment.  As we leave the lobby of the building, I will notice that its beige marble walls have a faint glow.  This will be the effect of a street lamp shining through the glass doors of the entryway.

      I am not speaking to her at this moment.  I am going to speak to her.

      After turning my head to the right, I will lower my eyes and see the bicycle that she will be wheeling alongside her.  I will notice its two wheels.  She will have painted the black rubber blue, for aesthetic effect.  The black night will be filled with cool air.  The blue wheels will appear many shades darker than they are. This will be caused by the numerous shadows the night will have cast upon us.  The cool air will make me feel carefree and somber at the same time.  This association between atmosphere and emotion will be unconventional.  For the darkness of the night will give me a carefree feeling, and the coolness of the air will give me a somber feeling.  She will glance at me from time to time.  These glances will be unrelated to the movement of the bicycle she will be pushing alongside her, except of course for the contrast between the dark circular wheels and her bright round eyes, but I will not notice this contrast.

      She is not glancing at me at this moment.  She is going to glance at me.

      It will not be late, but the streets will be empty.  It will be quiet.  For the most part, the only sound to be heard will be the softly squeaking wheels of the bicycle.  I will have forgotten the sound of the door that will slam shut as we leave the lobby of the building.  However, she will remember this slamming sound, because while we are walking, she will glance at the dim, empty doorway of an abandoned building, making a remark about how unusually quiet it is. I will feel particularly lighthearted if I too look into this doorway.  The moment she turns to look towards it, a zephyr will lightly blow across my face, and thus I will suddenly be arrested by a desolate feeling.  A huge flag will be attached to a pole protruding from the window of a building across the street.  It will wave slowly and gently in the night air.  By the time I notice this flag, we will have passed the abandoned building with its caliginous entrance, but the flag will continue to wave in the breeze.

      It is not waving at this moment.  It is going to wave.

      When we reach the subway station, we will part.  I will enter the station and board a train.  She will begin to ride the bicycle home.  Before we part, we will stop for a few moments by the station entrance.  It will be located on the corner of a main avenue surrounded by traffic and pedestrians, and so the silence of the night will be gradually filled with the noisy sounds of traffic and talking people.  From below us, in the underground tunnel, a chaos of vibrations, created by the parallel trajectories of many speeding trains, will suddenly emerge, and at this moment I will glance at the two blue wheels of the bicycle.  She will be looking at me when I glance at the shadowy wheels.  Her head will be positioned at an angle that will allow the whites of her eyes to shine very brightly.  By this point, the air will be still, and the flag we will have passed will hang down limply, no longer waving.  I will not see the flag in this state of immobility, but I will be reminded of its waving when I lift my head from the wheels and look at her.  This reminder will be triggered by a cool gust of air, lightly blowing across my face just as I lift my head from the wheels in order to look at her.  At this moment, a passenger sitting in one of the passing trains will glance at a public service poster for the homeless, displaying a photograph of a derelict building, glowing in the moonlight.  When I lift my head and look at her, we will say goodnight.  As I turn away from her and start walking in the opposite direction, I will glimpse a gleaming yellow taxi speeding behind her head from left to right.  The streetlamp will no longer shine directly upon the marble walls inside the lobby; the glow of the taxi will diminish considerably as it falls under the shadow of a newsstand in a futile attempt to miss her.  This attempt will indeed fail as the cab strikes her fatally during the moment she closes her eyes while waiting for the traffic light to change.

      She is not closing her eyes at this moment.  She is going to close them.

Nandini Dhar’s poems have appeared or is forthcoming in Muse India, Kritya  and Sheher:Urban Poetry by Indian Women. Nandini grew up in Kolkata, India, finished her M.A. In Comparative Literature from University of Oregon, and is now a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature at University of Texas at Austin.

inking the hyacinth

knowing how to make

                             the rosemary smell

                             like thyme is not enough.

her  brother told her. with a touch on her forehead,

which, he thought, would reassure her. if she really

wants to be the kabiyali she thinks she is, she must

learn how to make pearls  from inside her spleen.

                           and that, he said,

                           requires perseverance.

                           amongst other things.

not yet ready to give up, she  spent days

sorting through spine splintering brick.

looking for the right kind of dust.

                     holding the specks

                     against the sun with

                     her three fingers.

the other two craving for shades of green

she had never hoped to touch. then, once

she had them all, she  swallowed the dust

drops. one by one. every one of them. not

noticing that her forehead now bears five

glowing blue spots.

                          exactly on the places where

                          her brother’s fingers touched her

                          cantaloupe skin.

probably because, she wasn’t feeling anything there.

almost in the same way the leprosy skin fails to notice

                            the prick

                            of a pin

                            on itself.

in the bread-colored desolation of a machete moon,

she  had to admit that her brother did not want her

to pull out her eyes one after the other and serve them

to him in crystal jars.

                        marinated in lemon juice, rock

                        salt and cinnamon flakes. neither

                        does he want her to spend the day

sweeping speckless the ground under the guava tree

but, being just back from turning an oyster princess

into a porcelain-doll, he believes his assurances can

                      turn all silhouettes into full-blown

                      statuettes. she, on the other hand,

                      would rather scratch the oyster-shells

hard  and let the blood dry under her broken nails.

blood, when allowed to harbor chaos on its own, can

become a bladed verb which will pierce a bone right

in two. yet, eager to regale in his desperate certitude,

                       she gave up the bristles,

                       the blood,

                       bones and the blades.

for thirteen years, three months and three days, she made

the hyacinth leaf her bed. fed on air. and woke up every

morning to throw up spit the color of deep brown earth

and sunlit scar tissue. which she would then use to sculpt

rabbits, deer, sparrows and hedge-hogs.

                     and once she crawled back

                     into her hyacinth bed, her brother

                     would break them all. one by one

too ordinary, he would say, with an expert frown. the morning

she spat the pearl out, her brother held her head, picked up

the pearl stone, and after looking at it for two whole minutes

through purple tinted field glass, said, sissy dear, you are yet to learn

the art of madness wild. it was then that she smashed

                       the pearl on the rock. collected pieces

                       too pink. and  wrapped them up in

                       her rainbow-skinned scarf, walking off

towards her hyacinth-shield.  needless to say, no one

saw her ever again. Nothing much happened to her

brother either. only the white hyacinth flowers, in

the lake, turned fluorescent  violet. and on full-moon

nights, they bleed red. routinely. ritually. without fail.

irreconcilable:lines for virginia mem-sahib

My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. […] A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever.

                                                                                                     A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

since 1835,

when abhinavagupta, shudrak, and rumi were forced to sit

tight-packed on a single shelf, leaving the rest of the world to alphabets

that jumped out of ships and judge-sahib’s wigs, textbooks have perfected

the art of making crazed scribbling-chicks look tame.

tame enough to be tapestried into buttercream muslin pillow cases

tame enough to be painted on jasmine-white schoolroom walls

tame enough to be talked about without once referring

to that conch-shaped nose of yours

the look in your eyes, which says,

i am perfectly capable of drenching myself

in the purple-blue of a drizzly-day sun, claiming, the sun

belongs to me and only to me, and can,therefore,

be swept away, into the abyss of my purse,

just like the peacock-feather of my hat.

my tongue was daffodil-bruised.

the little man made me peel oranges

for eight hours every day, my ass on wood,

the tip of his beard brushing off the last traces

of elizabeth, mary, all those poet-girls who walked straight

into the smoke-filled coffeehouses, corsets tightly folded into eight

in their armpits.

hell,i didn’t know that even sammy dear

had waved off the sugar-bowl with the back of his left hand while pouring

out a full dose of white guilt in the wings of albatross

so, i held on to your lonely sun. although,

for my own sake,i would have rather opened my lips,

tongue,limbs and nipples to the storm. yet, there are days,

when i craved for a share of your sun, with bleeding fingernails

and all.

you were running,

your skirt hitched up to your knees,

from the very old man

with scissors for clipping the wings of women

who build abodes other than the ones thrust upon them

by holy matrimony.

i was running right beside you,

trying to figure out the color of the thread of your hems.

i would have given anything for them to be the shade

of clotted blood, rust, deep-fried, well-breaded mutton cutlet.

and there was mary beton.

bombay.the horse. the fall.

five hundred pounds a year. a room ensured.

damn it, girl, i couldn’t care less

for your aunt beton or her fall. but I did care

for the five hundred pounds, which, had they

stayed behind, could have been used to build

my own room. Or, for that matter,

one for my sister

one for my cousin

one for my aunt

one for my mother

one each for my father, brother and uncle.

ginny dearest, i don’t trust you

with the carving of my wood.

for all practical purposes, you’re just

another mem-sahib.

nothing more.

Born in New Delhi, Aseem Kaul now lives in Minneapolis, where he is Assistant Professor of Strategy at the University of Minnesota. Aseem’s poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, nthposition, Rhino and Softblow, among others, and a collection of his short fiction, titled études, was published in 2009.

Ghalib

Tonight, you recite Ghalib from memory;
because poetry, like blood, must come from the heart.

Taking a sip from your glass after every couplet,
the scotch rhyming perfectly the melancholy on your tongue.

You cling to nostalgia like an empty mirror,
to the scent of this language that withers like flowers.

You gather pain the way the sky gathers,
pinprick by slow pinprick, the stars.

Somewhere between question and answer
the feeling dissolves. The need to sing becomes

the struggle not to fall. And you arrange
your ruins into one last gesture,

knowing the Beloved will not heed your call,
knowing she will prove false, like God, or the Moon.

***

You write to me from Delhi,
speak of summer blackouts,

of how, disconnected from the machines,
you thought of Ghalib –

the bomb blast of his grief
leaving the city in ruins –

and how the history of loss
could be written on a feather.

When the power returned
you turned the lights off,

lit a candle to see
the darkness a little better,

and still the shadows
were not the same.
 
***

“Madness”, Ghalib writes, “is never without its reasons;
surely there is something that the veil is meant to protect”
 
And I think of all the years we have spent
listening to these ghazals, the verses
 
falling from our lips like pieces of exquisite glass
from broken window frames;
 
shaping our mouths to his sadness,
unbuttoning our collars to let his words stain
 
the rubbed language of our songs.
What have we been hiding from,
 
my friend? What longing is this inside us
that we disguise in a dead man’s clothes?

Autumn Cannibalism

It’s a painting about war:
about civil war and the way
hatred makes us all family,
 
the way two wrongs will feed
on each other till they both
taste about the same.
 
So it has to be wrong
that it reminds me of us
eating ice cream in the park
 
that October, reminds
me how you pressed
your lips to mine
 
for one squeezed instant,
how your tongue curled
cold in my mouth,

how I pulled away surprised;
and how, in that moment,
spoon still in hand,
 
you looked good enough to eat.

Static

There are nights beyond voices;
nights when all you listen to
is the static on the radio,
its sound of in-betweens;
 
haunted by disturbance,
by the endless galaxy
of daydream whose pipes and whistles
remind you how long it’s been
 
since you danced with a stranger,
or stayed up till dawn
nursing heartbreak
with the volume turned down low.
 
You wanted something more –
a song you knew the words to,
the sound of human speech –
but are content to sit
 
by this fire of crackling frequencies,
the hiss of its sympathy
like the echo of some long-ago
Babel, a clamour of stations
 
that murmurs the air; displacements
you prefer to the silence
they inhabit, if only for the sense
that there is someone else out there.

Dean Gui is first generation Hong Kong born, having left when he was fifteen from King George V School to finish high school in Saint John’s School of Alberta, Canada, an all-boys’ Anglican boarding school. He spent the next twenty years living in the USA, the first sixteen of those in Chicago, and the last four in California. Getting back into academia was the last thing on his list of things to do after a BA in English and an M.A. in Creative Writing to follow from the University of Illinois… but through the guidance and wisdom of one friend in particular, he taught his first high school English class in 2000. Since then, Dean has made a career of teaching. His poetry has been published in small press around North America, in magazines such as Arizona State Poetry, Innisfree, and Worm Feast.

King

the perfect princess

took off her tiara this morning

after a fierce night

bumping with celeda and the queens

peeling off a cat suit

claws and lashes

she plopped down onto her loo

a darling cigarette between dry lips

bent-over churning inside 

exhaling into a black and white

photo album cracked open on the floor

full of black and blue memories

of a little boy

with little girl dreams

pink wallpaper

golden lips

skin like powdered lilies

wishing everyone away

and when the wigless, crownless

princess scratched her balls

clicked her heels three times

and whispered

“there’s no place…”

“there’s no place…”

“there’s no place…”

the sun suddenly disappeared

shadows laid out another line

and with three snorts, starlight, and stardom in her eyes

quasi life had begun again

Eurasian

dragon eyes

durians

guavas

sister you are missed

sinigang

feijoada

lang mein

mother you are missed

peppered gizzard

boiled pig’s blood

fried fermented tofu

grandmother you are missed

hamburger helper

ramen noodles

uncle ben’s

dinners are just not the same

anymore

A dual Australian-Irish citizen, Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool and raised in Ballarat, Brisbane and Shepparton. He has lived in England, Ireland, Germany, Ukraine and the United States, where he currently resides. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Antipodes, Harvest, Windmills, LiNQ, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, Prosopisia, and Blackmail Press. He is the author of the chapbook Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010).

Driving in Texas

I.

A woman pushes a baby
In a stroller down the centre
Of a busy four-lane highway
As traffic speeds by on either side.

II.

A black pick-up truck overloaded
With tools, bricks and buckets
Weaves in and out of its lane
On a narrow county road.

III.

Three African-Americans kneel
In the grass facing away from the road,
Their hands cuffed behind their backs
As cops search their Cadillac.

IV.

A helmetless motorcyclist wearing
Shorts and t-shirt hurtles down
The freeway at ninety miles per hour
Zigzagging through heavy traffic.

V.

Five white flower-adorned crosses
Ranging in descending order
From daddy-sized to baby-sized
Testify in the grass beside the highway.

VI.

A roadside canvas marquee bears
A hand painted sign proclaiming
Holy Spirit Revival
7:30 nightly            24/7 prayer

Too Young

We killed time at the empty skate park
In Matamata, where I pretended I had
A board, running up the quarterpipe
Chucking one-eighties, sliding along
Steel rails, simulating ollies and kickflips
While your mum toured hobbit holes.
Too young to be embarrassed,
You thought I was hilarious.

Worn out, we retired to a main street café
Where we drank chocolate milk and a latte
While sharing an Anzac biscuit,
Then drove until we found a playground.
You joined in with the Maori kids,
Too young to know or care about race
Or nationality, rolling down an embankment
Into a pile of crunchy June leaves
While I exchanged nods with the other dads.

When your mum returned from the tour
We took the narrow backroads in the rain
To Te Awamutu, hoping in vain to find
A monument to the Finns. We had to settle
For Waikato Draught at the Commercial Hotel.
You sipped lemonade, too young to understand
Why we cared about music from New Zealand.

Peycho Kanev’s work has been published in Welter, Poetry Quarterly,The Catalonian Review,The Arava Review, The Mayo Review, Chiron Review,Tonopah Review, Mad Swirl, In Posse Review, Southern Ocean Review, The Houston Literary Review and many others. He is nominated for Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago.His collaborative collection “r“, containing poetry by him and Felino Soriano, as well as photography from Duane Locke and Edward Wells II is available at Amazon.com. His new poetry collection Bone Silence will be published in September 2010 by Desperanto, New York.

Abandon The Moment

Her breasts like temple’s bells

swing back and forth…

and the highway of her legs

disappear in the horizon,

into the mist of the dream:

there is nothing else except

sweat, lust and sorrow.

Everything sinks into the deep well

of the memories,

once her sure body lit candles

for the darkness in me

and now the pulsating neon of the night

is thicker than any light could banish.

What was once

will never be

again.

The sun goes down

behind the hills

and the birds on the wires –

tilting and silent like

boats by the lake shore.

Abandon all

and all will be again

with or without

you.

Learn to

slide.

Empty Space

The sun penetrates the glass
and hits the small plant on
the windowsill
 
I look at my toes,
I observe my arm.
 
From the whiteness of the sheets
her face emerges like some fat drunken
moon and asks me:
 
“Do you have any cigarettes? “
 
I light one and put it between
the waiting fingers.
 
I watch the ashes,
I see the butt.
 
And then she gets up
and walks naked to the bathroom
leaving me in the empty bed
with the swirling smoke
and the burnt desires.
 
Some people go through all
of their lives without experiencing
something like that
as for me this is my everyday
routine.
 
Light
and
grey.
 
Everything fills.

Ansley Moon was born in India and has since lived on three continents.
Her work has been published or is forthcoming in J Journal, Jersey
Devil Press, Southern Women’s Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal and
various anthologies. She has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and
was chosen as SLS Unified Contest Fiction Semi-Finalist. She lives in
Brooklyn, New York and is a Poetry Editor for The Furnace Review.

Visions from a Brooklyn Window

I

Sometime between night and morning
we are awaken to sound of gunshot.
You held me down.
“That wasn’t a gun. Go back to sleep”
But I am reminded of him, years ago.
The rifle by his side. I know that nothing
sounds like a life being taken
but what it is.

II

Sometimes, I am sometimes shaken from sleep.
You always, undisturbed beside me.
My side damp with a feeling that maybe
I could have made what happened
un-happen.
Your snoring, a reminder that reality
exists, only if we believe in it.

Annabelle’s Cove

I
My father baits my worm,
piercing the silver hook
through the flesh. Delicately,
killing it. Each time he says
that I, like my brothers,
must learn the art of killing for myself.
Preparing me for the life ahead,
without him.

II

He pushes the throttle down,
slowly, eases out of the cove.
His cigarette suspended
in his left hand. His beer
in the cup holder.
As we leave and charter
into the mainland, the sun
bakes his skin a dark brown.

III

On the evenings in Georgia,
we would huddle in the front
of the boat as we glided through
the waves. A soft thud as the motor
lifted out and back into the water.
And the gas from our engine showed
our trail of breadcrumbs, but we never
wanted to find our way home.

IV

Year passed. The cove went up
and down, and back up in price.
My brother saving my cousin,
my mom’s Easter lilies, grilling fish,
playing checkers, swimming
in the dark. And all of us.
Washed away with the dock.

Summer

Summer was picking blackberries from the vine,
being the smallest and the only girl, reaching
beyond my brothers. Throwing some back
but keeping the ripest for myself, inside
the bowl I made with my shirt. The stain,
the proof of my guilt.

Scratches like border lines
of divided countries, the blood,
small bodies of water.
My legs, a map of all my sins;
the trees I climbed. And almost
being caught. On someone
else’s property.

Viki Holmes is a widely anthologised and prize-winning British poet and performer who began her writing career in Cardiff as part of the Happy Demon poetry collective. She has been living and writing in Hong Kong since 2005. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Wales, England, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Macao and Singapore. She was twice a finalist in the John Tripp Award for spoken Poetry (Wales), and was a runner-up in Hong Kong’s inaugural Poetry Slam. Her first collection, miss moon’s class, is published by Chameleon Press (Hong Kong) and she is co-editor of the Haven (Hong Kong) anthology of world women’s writing Not A Muse, which has launched at literary festivals in Ubud, Hong Kong, and at a variety of locations in the US and Canada.

aqueous

We didn’t know what to drink, what was possible
when the light beckoned; kinked finger’s promise
of a coin flicked to the ocean’s wishing well:
spun from thumb to fore-finger,
tossed in the tumble of tide and night.

We hardly noticed it at first, huddled
in the depths of the evening, but
the doors hinged open, in an instant,
we were more than warmed, cuddled up
in an amber glow. We were soaked
in light: sub-mariners peeking
from a fringed amber bubble,
questing for treasure.

Our eyes swum; we found a place to sink into.
Shoals of wanderers ushered the closeness you’d written.
Reassurance shimmering
through the fronds, we plunged together,
a kiss predicted, promised. I replied:

fumbled clutch at a coin’s wish; latched
in the murmur of a mermaid moving seawards.
Silently but singing.

discoveries made collecting botanic samples
after Adam Aitken

on these cliffs we imagined we knew one another
looked back on how we’d nostalgised endlessly.
it was over before it started:
caravan’s land of grey and pink, pre-history,
pre-liminary. set adrift, we fashioned
joints from bamboo, made fires over
sand-hoppper cities, watched cliffs
burn. it was our last place, running
away from a hatful of acid and
not enough drugs. the sky loomed
and we came back here, parked
up in your red car, shivering
through the sun’s comedown.
somehow we made it, and in
the cradle of the night’s arms
we almost made it right
that time. yellow gorse
trifoliate spines
waiting for the scorch
for regeneration
fire razes some,
others need the
heat so they can burst.
a cormorant flashed
for  a moment,
years below us.
off-duty, watching
us let go.

Mehnaz Turner was born in Pakistan and raised in southern California. She is a 2009 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow in poetry. Her story, “The Alphabet Workbook”, is forthcoming in the August 2010 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Asia Writes, The Journal of Pakistan Studies, Cahoots Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Desilit Magazine, and An Anthology of California Poets.  She is currently at work on her first poetry manuscript, Tongue-tied: A Memoir in Poems.  To learn more about Mehnaz, visit her at www.mehnazturner.blogspot.com

Mugged

This morning a bird mugged me,

its beak pecking at my hair for twine.

The oven mugged my ginger cake

this evening.  After thirty-four minutes,

it was shaped like a canyon.

For years, Iraq’s mugged the television,

oil hungry despots have mugged Iraq.

Last night, the sky mugged

by 1200 clouds, signaled an apocalypse.

California’s mugged my Pakistani roots,

mugged every square inch of Lahore out of me. 

My mother says, nothing can mug a person’s

memories.  I say, the empty suitcases

in my closet have mugged my optimism.

The last time I tried to visit Lahore,

the airline mugged my ticket, the computers

had mugged my reservation.  In London,

I had to make a U-turn.

That December I spent two solitary weeks

reading in my apartment. The homes

in Ventura had been mugged by Christmas lights. 

Snowmen with carrot noses grinned

clown-like on the front lawns.

One night, near midnight, I drove

around town looking for something to mug.

My pockets were empty.  I hadn’t spoken

Urdu in months.  I ended up at a diner

where a shiny waitress brought me a mug

of coffee.  When she asked about my eyes,

I told her they were waiting to look

at everything I’d ever lost.

Once when I was sixteen, I was mugged

after mosque.  A philosophy book shot an arrow

through every minaret I’d seen.  Snow gathered

around my heart.  For years, it seems, I’ve been

scraping pans, drinking fire, dodging birds.

Everything New

That night, I couldn’t escape menace.

I stared down at the dripping faucet

in my kitchen, cursing under my breath.

The evening had been a fickle light bulb.

A long conversation with my mother sparked

by the flame of our tongues, the phone

heavy in my hands as the light seesawed

on and off.  The whole house shook like

the belly of a lamp nudged by a careless hip.

I had worn a night like this before where

darkness thickened behind the shades, where

I was the skin and the veil, the neck

and the wrench.  I spotted a spider teasing

out a web in my dining room,  and later

sifting through saris in the closet, my fingers

pressed over dust, and I imagined each garment

in the tomb of its own unwearing,

like the weeks when no light bulbs glowed

inside me, and there were piles of memories

on my desk.  I had managed with my khakis

and cotton tees, the odd dress which suggested

I had the fleeting charm of a tourist.

But that night, in Los Angeles, I made sure

to touch the green-lipped hems, even the turquoise

shawl my mother handed me once as a wish.

Scarf by scarf, shoe by shoe, I spelled a prayer 

with my hands, making everything new,

even the belts and the caps. Even that too small

ruffled skirt I once bought from a clothing store in Lahore

with all the white of a summer cloud

between my eyes, light fusing with my breath.

China Silk Shoes

I womaned my way into fourteen pairs in the rack. 

Three more in the coat closet and four under my bed.

My husband hums the math, skims a puzzled look

over my feet.  His favorites include the red sneakers

and flamenco heels.  Men are simple, he says with

a shake of his head, as if complexity were a tarot deck. 

And I wave through the twin response: part zen

teacher, part succubus.  How can I explain that city

women live in the clickity-click of their imaginations. 

The sidewalk’s a runway, a yellow carpet spilling

into countries of leaf.  How can I explain, when there

are the other days I wish I could pivot barefoot

through the weeks.  But my soles would grow restless. 

Nothing like a leather strap over each ankle to make

the dinner wine taste like meat.  It’s not just a pair

of shoes.  It’s that weeping woman in Picasso’s oil

on canvas, getting up and stepping out.  She gives her

hips a purposeful shake.  I’m headed crimson, she says,

reaching into a kitchen bowl to grab a handful of cherries,

before she puts on her china-silk shoes and colors free.

Aimee Norton is a research astronomer with a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles. She is a lecturer and researcher at James Cook University in Queensland.  An emerging poet she has published in Many Mountains Moving, Paper Wasp, Byline and Literature in North Queensland (LiNQ). She was a featured reader in 2008 at Edge: A Reading Series of Emerging and Young Writers hosted by Casa Libre en la Solana in Arizona and a finalist in the 2005 poetry competition hosted by Many Mountains Moving as judged by Marcus Cafagna.  She enjoys the parallel ways in which physics and poetry can compress great, big experiential truths into small spaces.

On the Road to Sexual Freedom

I’m grateful to lovers, every one, who flashed me the salt in their eyes

or Morse coded me in pleasure text to say passion

is a part of compassion. But my memories are pocked on all sides

by girls in tight cotton wearing NO on silver necklaces, 

bank tellers of reproduction, these ascetics sat upright

with books covered in the brown, grocery-sack paper of thrift. 

They insisted I do the same. Fear rose from them like startled birds.

The No-girls quick-syllable words were bought behind counters

stocked with lottery tickets and plastic saints. 

I pitied such shortsighted chastity.

What they called a one-night stand was transformative. 

Sex dissolved pain in the detergent of time. How empowering

to be chosen, even neon-light briefly, by another. 

As a genius teenage fuck, I won the Nobel Prize for loving

several years running. My talent was seeing each brittle yeoman

for who he really was. In return, I was dubbed as easy, gained

a reputation spread by the fire tongues of the No-girls,

I threatened the sexual economy. Brigitta called me Slut  

in her strangled pigeon voice. So I played parade music,

straight-ahead drum and bugle, and marveled on the downbeats

at all the No-girls didn’t know. This: a talisman against loneliness

is an old lovers name spoken aloud. And this: even a memory

of being held remains strong against the bowhead of time. 

So here’s my note to the sanctimonious: Stop dinging

the sides of my dreams with fictive piety. Up ahead,

I see the Romeo nation, where Latissimus Dorsi curve

into the small of men’s backs  and a chorus of stories

are sung as forearms become blunt instruments of bliss.

Somewhere here,

a spell of indifference

This body, it could be any body.

Rather, any body could be mine.

And the town, well, it is any town –

the street names wiped clean at dawn.

My husband, an arbitrary man,

is no less and no more than other men.

The children, small dear loaves of life,

are randomly being drawn out by time.

Anywhere, with any one,

any me could be.

I can’t tell if the sentiment

is laudable or laughable,

whether I’ve attained enlightenment

or disillusionment.

But clearly, it doesn’t matter.

The menu is always the same.

The apples arrive with

their leafless stems,

and the bird outside my window

is the same one outside yours.

Born in 1988 in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong is currently an undergraduate English Major at Brooklyn College, CUNY. His poems have received an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Beatrice Dubin Rose Award, the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Al Savard Award, as well as two Pushcart Prize nominations. His work appear in Word Riot, the Kartika Review, Lantern Review, SOFTBLOW, Asia Literary Review, and PANK among others. He enjoys practicing Zen Meditation and lives in Brooklyn with an 84 year old lady who he nurses in lieu of paying rent. Visit his blog at www.oceanvuong.blogspot.com

Arrival by Fire

Wooden teacups, steam swirled into the blue
then gray of morning. There was no one there to drink.
Before dawn blurred the edges of the sky,

when darkness made fools of limbs, we followed
the lantern’s golden eye, blinking from across the shore.
The river sliced our legs at the waist. Water

could not keep our secrets. When a croc’s eyes lit
like coals in the dark, my mother’s hand
clasped my mouth. The scent of sweat and garlic

would infuse my dreams for years. I had to touch
to believe my father was shaking. But there
is something different about reptiles.

Unlike humans, they do not eat when full.
But to disappear one must be swallowed
and so, we crawled into the bowels of a boat.

When we drifted to where sky and sea vanished
into a black wall, someone began to sing
a childhood song, and someone else begged him

to stop. The air began to tremble
as a hundred prayers hummed through my skin.
And where a fragment of moon fell through the hull,

a blue river of piss and vomit streamed
across the deck—washing away the fallen tears.
When there was too much silence, we would place

a hand on the closest chest, feel for drumbeats
then drift into dreams of chrysanthemums
flickering in the youth we’ve never known.

When we reached the new world, we dissipated
into shadows, apologized for our clumsy tongues,
our far and archaic gods. We changed our names

to John, Julie, Edward, or Susan. How many mirrors
have we tried to prove wrong? Who were we
when burning houses dimmed with distance,

and we watched our fathers hurl their hearts
into oceans where the salt sizzled in their wounds?
Now, on nights like this, when sleep sounds too much

like the sea, when the bed stretches into a ship
we cannot abandon, all we have are these stories, resurrected
like ghosts over steam of tea. Listen. Someone is trying

to croon that old song but the voice cracks over words
like Mother, Home. Nicolas, comrade, brother, whatever
your name, touch here—my hand, and remember: we were drifters,

we were orphans, but mostly, we were heat—steam
escaping
                   our bones.

If You Are a Refugee

There will be nights when you wake
to touch the photo, your fingers
fading the faces you cannot name.
They are phantoms of your own,
whose eyes have watched the precession
of waving hands
diminish into distance. 

There will be moments, between
a lover’s kiss, when you remember
the taste of blood,
and the limits to the answers
one mouth can hold.

When you sweat, you will sweat the oil
that has stained the city
of which you only know
from what is lost.

You will return to that city,
beg the woman whose hair
has grayed to scalp to tell you
your true name. You will stare
into her turbid eyes and ask
of the crescent in your mother’s smile.

And when you dream, you will revisit
the body in the forest, say
it is not your brother’s. You will see again
the naked man crouched
by the charred house, licking ash
from his fingers to taste the bodies
he can no longer hold.

If you are a refugee, you will come to praise
the thickness of walls, the warmth
that clings to cotton
from embrace,

the cricket’s song
in a night virgin to death.
But before you leave
what is gone forever,

go back. Go back and gather that boy
you left behind. The boy who stood
at the edge of a field
where your father once prayed
with a pistol in his mouth.

Weam Namou was born in Baghdad, Iraq as a minority Christian, and came to America at age ten. The author of three novels, she studied poetry in Prague and screenwriting at MPI (Motion Picture Institute of Michigan). She is also the co-founder and president of IAA (Iraqi Artists Association). Her articles and poetry has appeared in national and international publications. http://www.pw.org/content/weam_namou

A Childhood in Iraq

Sun shines over a mélange of
green grass and white snow,
like a lime flavored slurpee.
Snow in rarely detected in Baghdad.

Through the window a squirrel
passes by, nibbles at the cereal
I’ve left for it on the deck.
Pets are not encouraged in Iraq.

A lunch of hot tea and a cold slice
of pepperoni pizza I prepare for me,
without removing the pepperoni.
Pork is not halal in the Arabic world.

I listen to the poetic Quranic verses on TV
even though I belong to a Christian minority
who still speak Aramaic, called the Chaldeans.
They’re being persecuted in their native land as we speak.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds…
the imam leads a prayer
I remember the paper bag of baby green apples
my father used to bring home for us.

My younger brother and I tied
their stems to a string,
treated the apples like yoyos.
We had no toys back then, nor swings.

We built play houses out of cardboard boxes
pretended pillows were our dolls,
pots and utensils our musical instruments.
In Iraq, today, children can’t afford to be that simple.

Didn’t need anyone to read to us a bedtime story
aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbors,
were our heroes and villains.
Now, terrorists and gangs rule that part of the earth. 

America

I talk about you, as many others do,
sticking labels such as arrogant and gullible
over your name, like stamps over a large Christmas package.

You dress me with possibilities,
I try on this and that outfit of different colors and sizes,
meanwhile focusing on your limitations.

You do not reprimand me for my verbal thoughts,
rather, you listen, weigh the options and consider
whether what I have to say is worthy of action.

Oftentimes, I even receive applause
for pointing out your negativities and idiocies.
In return, you remain true to the First Amendment you’ve provided.

You’ve allowed me to take a deep look at your weaknesses
and in turn caused me to appreciate your strength and integrity.
That’s real balance, the yin and yang, of our planet.

While I love the country of my birth, of Iraq,
where I was blessed with the best childhood,
I must admit, had I remained there, as an adult,
Freedom of Speech is something I may never have experienced.

A dual Australian-Irish citizen, Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool and raised in Ballarat, Brisbane and Shepparton. He has lived in England, Ireland, Germany, Ukraine and the United States, where he currently resides. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Antipodes, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, Prosopisia, Blackmail Press and Southern Ocean Review.

The Hills of Bendigo
For Sean Scarisbrick

We spent the summer of ninety-two
In the hills of Bendigo
Living in a colonial house
Replete with a croquet lawn,
A ballroom, servant’s quarters,
A wine cellar, an in-ground pool
And a deep, dark verandah
Overlooking an acre of grounds
Scattered with pine needles,
Stone benches and rose bushes.

Home from uni on summer holidays,
We lived on my parent’s charity.
After sleeping past midday
In a room with burgundy velvet curtains
And foot-thick stone walls,
Days were spent swimming in the pool
Seven steps and a leap from our beds,
Reading Eliot, Salinger and Hardy
In the shade on the verandah,
Writing long letters to girls
We thought we knew and loved,
Listening to U2, Van Morrison,
And Hunters & Collectors, always
Getting a kick out of the line
“Way out back in Bendigo.”

When the heat was bearable
We walked over the hills
Along winding goat-track streets
Left over from the goldrush,
Discovering tiny pubs,
No more than front rooms
Of miner’s cottages,
Occupied by old blokes
In op-shop three-piece suits
Perched precariously
On vinyl bar stools.
Old Jimmy fished a battered
Harmonica from his waistcoat
Pocket, shook out the saliva
And puffed out a wheezy tune,
His narrow shoulders hunching
As the condensation slid
Down the side of his pot of VB.

Some days we walked to the mall,
After passing the oval, the Art Gallery,
The high school and the park,
Browsed countless racks of CDs
We couldn’t afford at Brash’s,
Left our sweaty fingerprints
On Thrasher and Rolling Stone
Under the disapproving glare
Of the Chinese newsagent,
Took refuge in the Public Library
Where we flipped through LPs,
Discovering Klaus Wunderlich
And His Amazing Pop Organ Sound.

Evenings were spent at home
Drinking my parents’ wine,
Eating thick slabs of cheese
Grilled on toast while watching
Day-night cricket matches on telly.
Or, if the Austudy hadn’t run out,
Drinking Carlton Draught downtown
In the Shamrock Hotel or the Rifle Brigade,
Playing pool and the jukebox,
Bullshitting about the great things
We would do after finishing uni,
What we would do for a living,
Where we would live,
Where we would go on holidays,
Which girls we would sleep with.

At night we wandered through the hills
Drinking from the silver bladder
Ripped from a box of Coolabah Riesling,
Unable to sleep in the January heat.
We took turns waiting on the swings
In the park across from the Milk Bar,
While you or I made reverse-charge
Calls from a Telecom phone box
With shattered glass and AC/DC graffiti.
Afterwards, we went back to the house
For more grilled cheese on toast,
More chilled wine, and conversations
That lasted into the early hours
And echo through the years.

Born in 1963, a Hindu in Malaysia, Anushka Anastasia Solomon left for the United States as a teenager to study journalism. She returned to Malaysia with a B.A (Creative Writing/Education), envisioning change of the race and religion based Malaysian system of Education. Her poem, “13 Ways of Looking at Malaysia” inspired by Wallace Stevens, which appears in Asia Literary Review Autumn 2008, articulates that vision. The Malaysian government, then and now, frowns upon her ideas. In 1998, due to intolerable family violence and persecution after her mother’s premature death, Anushka, her husband, Ben Solomon, and son David Marshall converted to Christianity, fled Malaysia and immigrated to the United States.

The author of two poetry chapbooks, Please, God, Don’t Let Me Write Like A Woman, (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and The Hindu and The Punk, (Pudding House Press 2009), Anushka’s work is featured by Amnesty International at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scotland, 2007, 2008 and 2009. She lives in beautiful Evergreen, Colorado. (www.atthewindow.us)

Recipe for Success –Slumdog Millionaire

I buy the Bollywood look in Wal-Mart
Gold hoop earrings with yellow beads
$1.50 marked down from 5 US Dollars
Decorate my years shrivel the sari to a
A skirt I buy at Forever 21
$10.00 marked down from more than that
With my skin the color of cinnamon bark
I dress up for a lark. I make naan and
Have An American friend photograph
Me by the Yellow Barn
The lentils are
Cooking slowly, I will add some spinach
And prepare to garnish the dish with some
Dried red chillies
That will crackle in my frying pan
And on your tongue, I will hum a Hindi
Song and you will never know
That perhaps
Like you
I do not know how to live
In a slum.

Cooking A South Indian Curry From Memory

1.

I slice tender red beef, the cold silver blade
Of the knife creating an everglade
Collide worlds in a colander
Demarcate the days on the calendar
Take a cutting from the past
It is not my intention to aghast
Those who consider the cow holy
I just want to cook a curry boldly
Solely
from memory.

2.

Listen. Here in America,
They tell me– the poet – that the onion
an apple and the potato
all have the same taste.

That the differences in flavor
Are caused by their smell.

Listen. Here they prove
these things
Science, Surveys, Studies.

I can’t argue with their facts.
I don’t. The facts mount this
case from Malaysia
And ride it, like a show horse,
around and around until I am
ground into the spices
bleeding the truth in my marrow bones
for William Butler Yeats

and this South Indian Curry I am cooking from
memory because I am
ornery

3.

To prove the onion, an apple
and the potato the same

They say – pinch your nose
Take a bite.

They will all taste sweet.
Try it!

Booze, women and writing.
All the same.

4.

I remember my Hindu father swinging a bag
Of goat’s intestines
For my mother to cook, she ran water
In the sink
Obediently washing the insides of a goat
Wrinkling her nose in distaste
Listen. Charles Bu-cow- ski wrote a poem
About a Mexican girl
Who washed his private part
With a rag

5.

Contemporary American men’s poetry
is that sultry
the Buddhist monks who conducted  
Bu-cow-ski’s funeral rites
must set their sights a tad higher
for women. Our gravestones
ought to read: “Don’t Try”
like his.

Alternatively:
 “Don’t Cry”.

The more things change
The more women I find

On the streets – like loose change.
They, like all things, stay the same.

6.

Or am I cooking this up from memory
Mixing it up with chicory

Using it to pound a point in
Like ginger and garlic

In a medley of flavors
For a variety of favors

Like the Thai and Indonesian women
With splayed toes

Who for a few bhat or rupiah
Rub the stress off the backs

Of the missionaries selling Jesus
Vying for a chance to stand

Beside Bill Gates? Accolades.

7.

I ought to go back to cooking the
South Indian curry from memory.

Don’t use beef. The cow is holy.
Remember?

Use chicken. Hold your nose.
And all the horses in Colorado.

It would be a good idea to hold
Your tongue as well, my belle.

Show some cleavage at Christmas.
And don’t joke about mangoes.

Or tell them that wearing a sari
And exposing the navel is asking

to get raped. Save the juicy parts
for when the Guests go away.

..unless they stay.

8.

Then you can tell them the recipe.
How you stand poised on the edge of the precipice

Cooking South Indian curry from memory
Listening for some inner harmony

Orange and purple bougainvillea
Climbing over the balcony like all

The idealized Tamil lovers
Of the silver screen

Your love of all things
falling unrequited

like the bougainvillia
Bunga kertas, paper flowers

Your nail polish, the new indigo blue of the sky.

Author and musician Toby Fitch was born in London and raised in Sydney. His chapbook, Everyday Static, was published by Vagabond Press, 2010. His first full-length book of poems Raw Shock is forthcoming in 2011 with Puncher & Wattmann. tobyfitch.blogspot.com

Light Switches

As with rocks emerging

in the lull between waves,

flourishing green, rekindled flames,

memories arise    comets

with strangely familiar names

seen from the bottom of the sea like somehow

I stepped on a light switch.

But as with autumn’s

undertow of leaves, rained-on

letters, tumbledown dreams,

memories dissolve    coins cast into the sea,

while the one I keep sifting for

is lost in the gravel at my feet, the swollen

waves engulfing the rocks.

On a night of fireworks veiled in mist, 

of Ferris wheels burdened by clouds —

     after hollow music beat down the door to my ears

     and soggy bones had dragged me home —

I found myself on a mattress on the floor

in the middle of a pitch-dark room

     awake and listening to the echo, upstairs,

of an old, upright piano playing grand arpeggios — 

twenty- to thirty-finger chords, 

     friends gathered round in warm chorus,

     singing old standards with abandon —

and it occurred to me I want to see daybreak again

having become both cavernous and water-logged,

     more afraid of myself than anyone else is of me. 

Bird in a Carpark 

She saw this coming:

stealth bombers hunting bats;

hailstones and lightning;

shadows burnt into the walls. 

The land has been lifted 

from under her claws 

and replaced by a

complex of rectangles

where fluoro lights flicker,

mercurial, sleep-deprived;

where spellbound lemmings 

go further and further

down, seeking a way up.     

Concrete warren, trap

of all traps — the future

like tarmac setting fast

around machinery both

redundant and indispensable,

hissing with oil, crawling

with sparks. Tangled in

webs, she cracks her beak

on the ceiling of black thunder,

her cry becoming a distant,

dissonant echo.

Anca Vlasopolos was born in Bucharest, Rumania. Her father, a political prisoner of the Communist regime in Rumania, died when Anca was eight. After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the United States with her mother, a prominent Rumanian intellectual and a survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her poetry collection is titled Penguins In A Warming World. Anca is also the author of an award winning novel, The New Bedford Samurai and the memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement.

Wedded Bliss

gold bands glint
over a plastic bucket
where two pairs of hands
lovingly
gut
fish no bigger
than the hands

this could be a portrait
of marriage
man and woman
in harmonious
complicity
fish gored bleeding
from the side

Above the Bird’s Eye View

winter this year
sprang
a lynx
from still full-leaved branches

huge paws of wind to bat us
should we raise eyes toward light
or sigh at the thin horizon
arriving earlier each day

in this desolation in drab and gray
i look from a second-story window
see him—olive camouflage
for a pulsebeat unzipped

his rich summer gold
streaking
sun bullet
bursting through lynx dominion

Nabina Das lives two lives, shuttling between USA and India. Her short stories have been published in Inner Voices, a contest-winning collection of fiction (Mirage Books, India), and The Cartier Street Review. A 2^nd prize winner of an all-India Poetry Contest organized by HarperCollins-India and Open Space, her poems appear in Quay, Pirene’s Fountain, Shalla Magazine, Kritya, The Toronto Quarterly, The Cartier Street Review, Maintenant 3 (Three Rooms Press), Muse India, Danse Macabre, The Smoking Book anthology, Liberated Muse anthology, Mad Swirl and elsewhere. A poetry commentary and a poetry book review also appear in Kritya and The Cartier Street Review respectively. A 2007 Joan Jakobson fiction scholar from Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, and a 2007 Julio Lobo fiction scholar from Lesley Writers’ Conference, Nabina was Assistant Metro Editor with The Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY, and has worked as a journalist and media person in India for about 10 years in places as diverse as Tehelka.com, Down To Earth environmental magazine, Confederation of Indian Industries, National Foundation for India and The Sentinel newspaper. She has published several articles, commentaries and essays during her tenures. An M.A. in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, her other interests are theater and music. Formally trained in India classical music, she has performed in radio and TV programs and acted in street theater productions in India. She blogs at www.fleuve-souterrain.blogspot.com and freelances when not writing.

Aleph

The first sound uttered is always forgotten
Possibly it is never even a word. Just
An interjection that derives from faraway
Fears or an anxious rhythm of speech.
The first sound can be heard quite clear
When groans and grunts are taken care
Of with mighty sweep of authorized
Hands that also stifle songs and smiles.
If you were a baby or a doddering pair
Of legs, your first word would be despair
Not a calligrapher’s delight in dusky ink
Blinking away in the heliotrope night.

In one little fable the first letter was
Meant to be the first word of wonder
But no one wrote it down and so later
The ocean took it with fish and dead matter.

Living Room Homily

Women talking in high voice
Tingling streets
An indolent afternoon in the library
– All that glides up to whisper:
How we love life

After poems are read
Blood is spilled
Bee stings are removed
From unresponsive arms

We can measure up to reality
As though it’s a challenge
We can read minds
As though it’s an ancient art, revived

Furry dogs bustling
Smothering fleur du soir
A fleeting glance after remembrance
– Nothing that stops enchantment,
To say we love life

After you come back home
Hobble in the pantry
After newsprint withers
Becomes compost in the bin

I can clamour under the bright light
Straighten my pleats and scarf
I can wake up before dawn
As though night never came.

Sriya Narayanan works in the marketing department of a newspaper where she writes feature articles. Her poetry has been published in Nthposition and Eclectica. In 2009, she was shortlisted for the Toto Funds The Arts (TFA) Creative Writing award. A classical violinist she blogs at sriyanarayanan.blogspot.com on animal rights.

The Moral Science Teacher

The pirated book of fables is awash with typos. 

Like a row of grey tulips, her uniformed audience sits

On brown benches, staring. Their eyeballs are elevator shafts.

“Why should we learn all this?”

She gives them a test to silence them

So she can have a quiet moment at the window

Overlooking an open sewer where a dehydrated puppy

Is drinking itself to death. She grabs her water flask

And rushes out to its rescue as

The 12-year-old silhouettes begin to go rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.

When she returns, it is recess and the corridors are flooded

With children who fantasize about escape.  

Their shoes squish against the concrete floor.

Raising her index fingers to her temples

She makes ripples with them, closes her eyes.

The asbestos roof is being pelted with bulbous raindrops

And is bleeding poison into the girls’ wing.

She ignores a stubborn lump in her armpit, and writes

In cursive with a pastel chalk 

“Dip all your deeds in faith”.

Traffic

I’m running late and am stuck at this intersection

Where the temple is vomiting people into the street

(And vice versa).

A loudspeaker cone hangs like a torn wire

From a lamppost whose sides are drenched in bright red spit.

Screams of faith wash over all of us

As my agnostic lungs well up.

I should’ve known better than to bury myself

In my sheets for those extra five minutes.

Others switch off their engines as a gesture of surrender

But I accelerate, look at my watch and at the mirror

I am growing old in this car.

A coconut is severed and flung onto the syrup-soaked floor

What a waste of food.

I’m hungry.

The believers form a twitching line with no-arm distance

Sparking off a tug-of-war of tongues.

I allow myself a prayer: may this crowd dissipate.

Sunlight pours through my windshield and climbs over my face.

I try again.

Meanwhile, at the entrance, a triangular heap of footwear grows

Like a sea monkey

Once moistened, unstoppable.

Lara S. Williams is a British/Australian writer who has been published or has work appearing in over twenty international literary journals including Voiceworks, Cordite, Antipodes, Islet, Blue Crow, page seventeen, Magma, Island, Agenda, MiPOesias, Blue Fifth Review, Orbis and Neon. She is currently living in Seoul, South Korea, and spends most of her time writing and eating kimchi. She plays the saxophone somewhat haphazardly.

A Fugue To Happy Moments In Time

‘Son, your mother doesn’t understand like I do. You need this.’
            ‘I didn’t even apply, it’s a scholarship.’

            ‘So you’re looking a gift in the mouth?’

            ‘It’s to look a gift horse in the mouth.’
            He concedes with a wave of his hand, sips his absinthe and lets out a loud exhalation. His foot taps to the beat of Paul Desmond’s ‘Take Five’ crackling from a stereo above the doorway; he gears himself up.
            ‘Hundreds of people apply to this school and ninety nine percent of them spend years beating themselves up because they didn’t make it. Waste money on extra tuition, books. But you don’t need that! They’re giving it to you on a plate. “Didn’t even apply”, good god, boy!’ Another sip of absinthe. He never uses the accompanying sugar.

            ‘You drink far too many of those,’ I wince.

            ‘Don’t change the subject. I won’t watch you turn them down.’ He slams the table with his fist.

            I smile into my less abrasive vodka, turning the glass in the sun and watching smoky rainbows strike the cement. ‘Calm down. You know I‘m going. It‘s mum.’

            He considers, tilting his head at an angle. Past his ear I see the café sign winking to a bookshop across the street.
            ‘Lie,’ he says.

            ‘I cannot lie to my mother.’

            ‘But I can.’

            ‘I don’t want to tell her some story. I want her to be happy for me.’ I kick at the ground. ‘There’s only so long she can use the same excuse to keep me here.’

            ‘Now that’s unkind,’ he replies. ‘You know how she feels. She lost her son.’

            ‘We all lost him. But I can’t stay home with her forever. I’m not him. I’m not a replacement!’

            ‘She worries. And you should be more understanding.’ He is flustered and I regret upsetting him.

            ‘Will you come visit me?’

            ‘Never.’ We are silent for some time and my father raises his hand and clicks, signalling for another drink. I smile and shake away a second vodka.

            ‘Why not?’

            He chews his cheek and thinks. ‘I said I’d never go back to Paris.’

            ‘Bad memories?’ I ask.

            ‘No, my son, good!’ he replies explosively. ‘Good memories, excellent, the very best of my life.’

            ‘Then why stay away?’
            He is serious now, eyebrows almost meeting at the bridge of his nose. A new absinthe appears and he pushes it aside, fearing the distraction.

            ‘Have you ever felt so utterly happy and content that you want to lie down and die, just to finish on a high?’

            ‘Not exactly. I think it would put a rather sour note on things.’

            ‘I have!’ He leans forward, eyes fixed on something beyond my ear. ‘Years ago in Paris, I played flute in a tiny restaurant. I don’t recall where it was.’ He waves his hand impatiently, continues, ‘blue window shutters upstairs. It was called ‘L’amour’. I met Gabriella, a Spanish student visiting for a study break.’ He looks at me. ‘She was sensational. Dark and quiet, didn’t ask questions. I finished playing and drank wine with her and the moon came out over the top of her perfect head.’ He pulls a white handkerchief from his pocket and lays it on the table, showing me the embroidery of a woman’s figure in light blue thread.
            ‘I always liked this.’ I touch the corner
            ‘You ever wonder where I got it? She gave it to me. One kiss and an eternal memory.’ He stops and shivers. ‘Paris will make you.’ He finishes the drink and I think for a moment he means to stay longer, get drunker. Instead he tumbles two bills onto the table and gestures to the book store opposite us. ‘Come with me. I’m getting you something.’
            I’d been there many times before, always finding unpriced copies of penguin editions in boxes at the counter. I watch my father disappear in that direction, then return clutching a sheaf of lined paper.

            ‘I knew they had this here,’ he says. My fist fills with paper and he ushers me out onto the street. ‘Beautiful on the flute, that.’ As I look he digs in his pocket and unwraps a chocolate cigar.
            ‘Satie? Ah, Trois Gynopodies.’ I point the music at his mid-drift and nod my head. ‘Thank you.’

            ‘You can play that at your final performance.’ He sprays cocoa smoke around my ears.

            ‘I might not get that far.’
            He backs away, jabbing his cigar in the air. ‘Course you will. You’ve got Satie.’

            ‘Can we go home?’ I walk beside him and finger the corners of my sheet music to sweat.

            I arrived for orientation on the third of February, early on a snowy evening. My bags, bursting with music sheaves and polishing oil, slapped against my father’s flute, all pressed tightly to my thigh like a child. Already students milled around the entrance hall dragging cases, stands, trunks, coats and naked instruments. A rumble of languages filled the quiet spaces in the air. As I made my way to the dormitory a black boy with coloured beads in his hair dropped a saxophone and I heard the squealing snap of valves.
            My room was a twin, the room mate not yet arrived. I put my flute on a narrow metal-framed bed and inspected the pine shelves above the head board. After lining up a few books and unpacking my pressed clothes I went to explore the grounds.

            Outside I buttoned my overcoat and turned the corner of the building, heading for a varnished wooden gate set into the surrounding fence. Slipping through I entered a small courtyard dark with pine branches. Bird feeders and bony rose stems dangled from the wood and tangled together until the two became one impenetrable force. Fresh snow sat on the grass like carpet free of footprints and rain stain. A paved ring of brickwork clawed through, its only adornment a rusty iron bench.

            Seated was a young woman tightening the string of a viola. She drew the bow across its face, listening closed-eyed. I thought her beautiful; haematite hair wound around the neck of her instrument, knuckles pink in the cold, finger tips white with string pressure. I approached, watching the slender arm slide back and forth. Her eyes opened when my heels clicked on the bricks.

            ‘Bonjour.’ She lowered her viola.
            ‘Don’t stop,’ I murmured.

            She smiled and put the instrument away. I looked at the shape of her coat collar against the white throat. Her eyes were wet with large irises that rolled around the line of my face. I wanted to say something about her playing.

            ‘Embrasse-moi,’ she breathed in melodious baritone.

            ‘I’m sorry?’

            Snow settled on my head, melt running behind my ear and traversing the hairline to spread at the nape of my neck. Her breath clouded into my nostrils and I smelt cinnamon and tasted tiny speckles of snow on her cheeks. Her left elbow was remarkably warm, sheltered as it was in the curve of her body whilst playing.

            The spotlight swoons across my flute and ignites trickling mirrors in the valves. I see a man, short and portly, standing at the front. He waves a familiar white handkerchief and his presence gives me a pleasurable jolt.
            I hold the flute like a fine sword, feeling a brassy thrum beneath my fingers. The lights dim, signalling my introduction.

            ‘This piece,’ I announce, ‘is for my father, the flautist Albert Pewty who has come here, at great risk to himself, to hear me play Satie.’
            He remains standing, a tweed apostle, and the smile he illicits transforms my piece from perfected mournful practises into notes bent warm and sweet. The performance is long, accompanied by piano. I dimly hear my own playing over the roar in my head.
            Behind my body the concert‘s highlight appears: an enormous silver moon born from moulded ceramic and tiny shards of glass, thick like the bottom of a vodka tumbler. It lowers before the backdrop and lights hit it on all sides, sending moonlight in every direction.
            I see my father sit abruptly. His face is shadowed and he lowers his head to rest on his chest. I end my piece, arms lifted level with the flute, an unusual and ungainly stance but one that allows my body help the music collapse into finish. I lower my shivering arms and bow.

            When there is relative quiet on the other side of the curtain I return to the stage. Looking down I am surprised to see my father still sitting in place.

            ‘Dad!’ I call out. ‘I can’t believe you came.’ I rush to the edge and drop down, sit beside him. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

            He doesn’t look at me. I reach out and touch his lapel, run the finger down his body, feel the warmth of flesh under his clothes.

            ‘Answer me.’ I look down and see his handkerchief on the floor, a footprint across its body. ‘Dad?’

            He is dead at sixty three, captured in the final happiness he feared. I bow my head and press it into his neck. I wonder why he is so warm and I so cold.

            ‘I’m glad you came,’ I whisper.

            The jazz saxophones were swinging, punching out a fast paced version of Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker’s Street’. The vocalist, a young man, was perched on a green stool, thin black moustache pointing at the drums balanced across his knees. I sat, head on chest, nodding out of time.

            ‘Vous desirez?’ The waitress repeated herself three times to my silence before giving up and leaving a menu on my table.

            A woman opposite me lifted dark eyes to meet mine. She was wrinkled and very beautiful. There was an aura of contentment around her greying hair.

            ‘You’re sad,’ she said in a thick Spanish accent. ‘Would you like a drink?’

            I lowered my head and nodded weakly. ‘Thank you. A vodka.’ I paused. ‘Actually, absinthe.’ The woman called to the waitress and she soon appeared bearing two glasses and a bottle.

            ‘Voila, Madame.’

            ‘Why aren’t you with other young ones, enjoying such a beautiful night?’ She looked up at the moon, now full, hanging above her silver-tinted head. I took the absinthe in my fingers, steeled myself, and swallowed.

            ‘I’m not much for company tonight. But thank you.’ I gestured with the empty glass and she dipped her head.

            ‘Drink, talk.‘ She sipped and threw a hand across her glowing head. ‘After all, you’re in ‘L’amour’.’
            I turned my head to look at the peeling wood sign. The blue window shutters banged in the breeze. I clapped my hands together and laughed. ‘Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?’

            The woman went to refill my glass.

            ‘No!’ I cried involuntarily, placing my hand across the rim. ‘One is enough. Just one.’

            Her tongue reached out to caress her bottom lip in slow contemplation. ‘It is a beautiful night,’ she sighed. ‘I have met a beautiful, sad man. But I am happy. If I were any happier, I would die.’

            I don’t hesitate. ‘You probably will.’

            ‘What an end to the world.’

            The drums fell away and one single saxophone carried the tune. The same rough voice sang only to me. Felt only me.

Heather Taylor Johnson moved from America to Australia in 1999 and since has received a PhD in Creative Writing, has had a poetry collection, Exit Wounds,  published, and has discovered that reviewing poetry is a fantastic genre to work with. She spent all of 2010 living in the Colorado Rockies with her husband and three young children and though she couldn’t leave the subject of ‘home’ alone in her writing, she also found that mountains were very difficult to ignore.   
 

While A Flock Of Seagulls Flies North

Tree stumps wide as the length of my body

and as long as yours

touching mine

from head to toe

scatter this beach;

its perimeter the outline of a powerful tide.

Without you there would be no ex-pat.

Without me no working visa.

We inhabit this earth as if it were our own.

Trying to imagine this ocean carrying

great trees of small forests in such a rush

of movement and moons

depositing them on foreign soil…

sand, not soil

but then you and the beauty of this drowned-out colour

and washed-out texture, how the stumps broke apart

from roots and limbs to rest on this beach

are just the reasons I am here.

The reasons I move, then rest.

Amongst It

Our nine year itch moved us to the mountains.

Small town, big earth

we breathed it every day:

snow

snow falling

snow sifting, resting, misting upwards

from a sexy wind.

Our waterless lips

were constantly parted

constantly wanting to lap it up.

We became so spontaneous the frozen waterfall

we walked upon, ad-libbed and perfect.

And the night in the lounge after Sunny’s party,

the mess, wood stove, us.

Riotous snowballs melted down

the backs of our knitted necks 

and the jolt, the stagger, the interchangeable

skin and liquid ice (liquid ice

and incredible skin).

Something fleeting about it all.

And those mountains –

their permanence.

When we finally looked away we breathed;

it was evergreen, deer dung and snow.

In the end we became asthmatic

because after the mountains

my    eyes    found    yours

and then we gasped

forgetting to breath

forgetting the snow

forgetting even

the mountains.