A short story by Yuri Kageyama I have not spoken to my sister for years. She is the only sister I have. I’m not sure that makes our growing apart an extraordinary loss in a human connection, or just the loss of one person in an array of such connections. I usually don’t worry about…
By Indrani Talukar The door is locked. But she can hear Bahadur’s voice lilting like a feather caught in a breeze. “Bibi!” He knocks thrice. Typical of him. Opening the door, she puts out her head hesitantly, knowing fully well she will not see anyone. Anyone other than Bahadur. “They need more jars of apple…
Hangman Days Unbearable, the world that broke into time.Unbearable, the just-born certainty of distance. ……………………………………………………………–Susan StewartAll I wantis to be told………………………..take your time that the lineisn’t dead……………..instead as soft…………….& malleable asthe forests I hidebeneath my tongue that objectsare no closerthan they appear dead dogs…………….hospital bills………………………..slowing senses ………………………..it’s not that I don’t………………………..look up at the sky………………………..&…
Excerpts from the Epic Hindi Poem Kamayani (Translated from the original Hindi into English by Usha Kishore) _____ Excerpts from Canto I: Chinta (Thought) On Himalaya’s spiring summit……………sheltered under shadows of stone,the lone man, with tearful eyes,……………discerned the swelling deluge. Below was water, above ice;……………one fluid, one frozen.One elemental prime – call it……………what you may,…
The Tenth Edition of Life and Legends is a team effort and the labor of love. I want to thank our new team members, Lopa Banerjee and Megha Sood, for diligently working side by side with me to pick the finest pieces of prose and poetry, and Nirvan Chitnis for presenting everything elegantly on our…
Forgiveness, I Am Eclipsed forgiveness, exploding stars, breaths,Faithful embers in the midst of shadows.Forgiveness at our fingertipsCaptured by the smoke ofA train travelling down tracks,Past the house where I lived,With a piano where I prayWith my fingertipsOf forgiveness,And let colors immobilize meIn a world of sound. I have walked down the highway,Feet dragging,Without a coat…
Supplies I Will Require Before Seriously Considering the Job *Forthcoming in Dear Selection Committee (JackLeg Press, May 2022) _____ Family Tree My mother was a lake ………… full of water lilies, my father was a bridge………… between the bardo and heaven. He tossed me………… to his shoulders for the parade of grandparents………… at night: Orion…
A Bucket of Hot Water and Salt
Conscious of my blessings where water poured out of a tap
Even if for two hours a day, the man with the camel skin bags was ready, if it didn’t, I passed the *ghamelas full of mud from the top of the hill, Down the assembly line to the bottom, Baked in the sun, and exhausted in every limb I returned home to water and love.
We rarely meet someone so genuine, radiating, and accomplished as an individual and professional like poet, novelist, and professor Melissa Studdard. I came in contact with Melissa Studdard through social media and read her work for the first time when I published her poems in Life and Legends. I immediately felt a connection with the…
Awakening The incidence of flightwithin flightwas, for crow,an audacity unspoken.Dreams of this plague,a prelude anticipating hope.For crow, the truth,unvarnished as truth’s manifesto, was lostin winged translation. Lostin archives,where hope trained in narrative,crow deferred to truth,at times, when truth was allhe had, obscure—reminded himof living,tasks, of the vital and the vincible—but oh, crow longed for the daywhen pursued by the very…
The struggle to give everything away Inside the ferry’s heartbeat, we fold ourselves like prayers, sheathed in metal, plastic and flesh, part animal, part technology, it is the thoughts that rise like snapping turtles, rocked by the Aegean green. I want this to be the end of it, a wounded winter amidst the very summer…
Nocturnal Fear I listen to the smooth rowing of his breathfrom one shore to the other side of dreams,consciousness, a gently rhythm of sloshingwater fills the bedroom like music. I panic when it deviates its coursethe lengthy pause of a median size rock.I fear the boat not reaching its destination,getting stucked in the middle of…
