November 2016
In this issue
Contents
The AC/DC Dark -for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”
In my fully charged battery life youth, my bedroom blazes nightlight electric, my nursery rhyme records spin twilight warped, the gorilla’s cymbals clash a flat..
For a Poem
Translated from Bangla by Md. Ziaul Haque. I go near a tree and utter: Oh kind tree, can you provide me a poem? The tree..
Notes from a Himalayan Village
A constant hammer on wood and a distant conversation. Two voices, two villages, Separated by a river that scorns The silence and floats into my..
Cartography of a Broken Town
i. a city of stuttering street lamps, sinking paper boats & swirling streets, you were born into/ shadows possessed you till you laughed at your..
Oh Freedom
Translated from Bangla by Md. Ziaul Haque. Freedom, you’re The classic verses of Tagore, timeless lyrics. Freedom, you’re Kazi Nazrul a great man with thick..
Inadequacies and Reassurances
I will sleep tonight, I tell myself Despite the insomnia that developed After you left, like the filth that washed up— Mainly broken bottles of..
Shit poetry
Shit poetry went for poetry festivals sponsored by corporates drunk champaign wrote about rain flowers, cherry tree, birds, butterflies, clods, love and sex in the..
Mother Tongue
“If you write in English, you cannot know your own emotions.” ~ a poet I once met Mother’s tongue. Say it slow to staunch the..
Riches
Translated from Bangla by Md. Ziaul Haque. When I stand the wall reflects the shadow, My very own shadow. Two eyes are there Behind the..
The Moon Machine Begins
They’re selling the projected lightshow pyramid scheme selling the world one way tickets to all tomorrow’s parties they come wrapped in self-reflexive electrical tape hand..
Grandmother Boogie
My grandmother sang the song from Jaws Show Me The Way to Go Home fire danced a double Dutch Yiddish hopscotch pinkie ball capoeira smoked..
Technicolor Sweet and Sour Grapes
You said yes because you believed it would flood you with shiver broken glass blizzard colored not ash showered Schindler but 2001 What Shall We..
Trespass
Every day, before I begin my rounds, I stop at our home’s shrine to Zheng He, the one whose voyages over 300 years ago started..
The Fruit Grove Girl
I’m not sure why I didn’t tell Grandma about the girl sleeping in our fruit grove. It was around midday when I found her. The..
Insomnia
Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato..