King is not well Polished floors, closed doors, clean ceilings, and patched windows stare at the raped halls. Raped halls. People ran, dirty feet pilfering. Then came, the disjointed band. Legs up-down, up-down. Arms stiff-up-sideways, stiff-up-sideways. Hollering, bellowing lies. Megaphones being charged with diesel generators inside soon-to-be culpable throats. Throats that are so dehydrated they…
Poetry: Cameron Morse
Air Quality Index Streetlights flounder in dense fog red smear of warehouseporchlights dimmed orange the color of aggression * Inflamed brain on screena man holeto the sewer below steam lifting through snowits wet iron disc unhealthy for sensitive groups * Hollow out a hole for meplease I know my anger’s out of character Just tell…
Poetry: Sanket Mhatre
Instances On a Sunday Afternoon 12:25 pmThe road unfurls in tandem with the skyas parched as a loverholding the grey void in his arteries…….–…….smelling first rainsA prisoner awaiting an ambrosial embraceIn this evermore season of deep prolonging 1:10 pmClouds are inverted commasCarrying the weight of unspoken wordsMarinated in green…….–…….her attire for a swollen worldhaemorrhaged by…
Poetry: Ken Massicotte
We Will Cry Such Tears He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said. Yes. We’re still the good guys.Cormac McCarthy, The Road We will cry such tears as will break the heartsof stone angels. It is not impossible thatI would help them seek revenge.You…
Poetry: Elizabeth Marino
WHERE ARE YOU FROM? I am a poet from Chicago.If music can be carried place to placeand one constantly moves, it’s hardto hold what is needed. Objects dropfrom my hands. I am from the Americas.You say you have people here? Home to home, each time something islost and almost replaced. A drumbeat continues.Things gathered up…
Poetry: Diana Manole
Blind Date with Salmon and Cultural Differences He buys me an avocado salad and a salmon skewereyes my skewertakes someeven though it’s cooked to death—death as an appetite spoiler: the death of Aristotle,his 16-years old cat when it tried to follow his car,as he was leaving, after dumping it at a farm.“Toronto apartments are too…
Poetry: Gopal Lahiri
Requiem I nurse cold evening in my soft palmeach star drops a haiku that hangs on the treetop, the moon slices into a half, The mirror the old memories the long darknessfall inside and the gas lightshines at the corner of the street, Shooting stars cross the courtyard,the last time whispers forget to stealthe shy…
Poetry: Sreekanth Kopuri
A Bazaar Scenefrench peta square, Machilipatnam The first tuk tuk un-tucks the village women,arranging the cane baskets of fresh vegetables along the pavement, thefarm-fresh colours smile, like the prisoners being released but,only draw the cow, the same trespasser again they whiskoff she humbly moves to the just arrived Huassain’s pushcart of bananasfor consolation and gets…
Poetry: Neera Kashyap
A Wind Murmurs I cannot give up on my madness for she will not let me. My body a wavering curtain of decaying flesh, my mind a caged wounded breathless animal. Steeling her shoulders, rooting her feet, she is a tree, gnarled, bare, breathing, letting wan light into the cage like a godly shaft, challenging…
Poetry: Tim Kahl
The Ignored Fresco The future of this valley has faced off against the Depressionand it has won the finished product of an education. A man holds up a black sphere to teach its musicand hints within it is a bomb to blow up all ignorance. Two pause in the opening and turn to go down…
Poetry: Lowell Jaeger
At the Nursing Home Offered the old folksmy poems. SaidI hoped we could talk and share. In our circle of chairs, allsat quiet, maybe confusedor shy. ………..Except onewho struggled to speak,lips quivering, his tongueslow, his wordsmisshapen. Still, light shonein his gaze, his fierce intentionto gather the shatters inside,a stutter of something he ached to say….
Poetry: Fazlul Haque
Nothing but Dust and Ashes INow I adore my days in exile.Everybody expected my stay in hell,My lonely departure to an unknown destination.At the call of winter, my favorite season,I left the stirred land with ShonkoGhosh.I crossed the river of sugarcane,went up-stream and far beyond . Today my exile square is dazzling with distant sunshine.The…