"Meanderings" by Sandhya R

Winter Issue #3

december 2010

Poetry

Nguyen Quang Thieu A Book of ReminiscenceJanuary Reminiscence Wrapped in a damp blanketa road bordered by dog rosesleads out to a village graveyard. A New Year offering gone astray,An old woman rises from her sickbed,opens a door and look cautiously out. In the yard a solitary dog is trying to shake itself free of its hard coat,It is dreaming of the day it will travelbeyond the borders of light. Hope pours itself out again and again into January's cold silence.Spring hides its face,sends a butterfly out searching. The last full day of the month.A village widow returns from the graveyard,Spreads a bouquet of dog roses Quietly down on the floor beside her. February Reminiscence It is the month that gives the Thuoc Bac* smell.My grandmother's fingers, deadly pale, crawl along the edge of her wooden bed.It is February, February, and I remember a cry,A grandmother's paper money yellowed and smeared. In the darkness of childhood, I hear a voice rise up from my grandmother's dampAnd mouldy room.The oil in the lamp of memory is dry and the wick crawls in my ear and sobs for moisture. It is the month my grandmother asked to have her hair cut.When my father took her hair and buried it in a field.The grass above the grave of my grandmother's hair grew a lush green in the dark.I ran from my grandmother's bedside and mourned for her hair in the field. Month of rheum. of coughs caught in the throat,Month when the shadow of the old house rises again in the gardenAnd the Thuoc Bac smell swirls proud from the kitchenRestoring life for a moment an old woman who died so youngA thousand years ago. *Thuoc Bac: Chinese medicinal herbs.March Reminiscence I still hear the voices of the old storytellers,Their stories treavelling the dark fieldsof the countryside at night. In a field of white houses, one white house shines bright. There, my mother's been dozing,an old familiar pain gnawing at her stomach.Twenty years,She's been dreaming of a house with white swaddling cloths on a line.She's lost her way,forgotten which road leads backto the house where I was born. At night, I, too, wander,seek that same dwelling place.But all I ever find are endless fieldsAnd other white houseswhite swaddling clothes draped across the sky,and babies, carefully numbered,Lining the roads. Against our desires,Each night as sleep arrives,A someone,Paints all the worlds houses bright white again. April Reminiscence Like thunder over the fields or dawn spreading across the dikes,The season of lilies stretches out beneath the endless sky.So many years we have been waiting for someone (a death) to returnAs one by one the old troupes crept away. The silence they left behind seemed to say: nothing was ever born on this land.Yet now a house goes up and the night winds blow through it.Coins announce the rebirth of old names at a baptismal rite.Again there's enough oil to keep a flame burning all night. All things once more fall into their places for the spring rite.I grasp a trumpet and stand behind a curtain of light.In far off fields, white-haired troupes have begun playing,ready to give one last concert at the grave's edge. All Aprils customs (April roads disappear) abandoned but this last one.One by one the solitary trumpeters come and surround me.I stand on the path taking the place of all those troupes gone before,Whose instruments lie buried in dark forgotten fields. The names of the dead echo off the grave stones then fall silent forever.At the edge of the world new shoots grow up.A falling star tumbles from the sky and lands on my forehead,Its light seeps into my blood and bones. The night trembles at the sound of all the trumpets tuning up.I am the last player left; I step forward into the light. In an ancient rite of land and sky, I lift a trumpet up and raise my eyes.Across all the fields of the world lilies bloom into life. Dawn comes.Author of four books of poetry, four novels, and two short story collections, Nguyen is considered by many to be the most prominant northern Vietnamese poet to have emerged since the American War, which ended when he was in high school. His book The Insomnia of Fire (1992) won the Writer's Association National Award for poetry, one of Viet Nam's most prestigious literary prizes. Born in Ha Tay Province in 1957, Nguyen Quang Thieu now lives in Ha Noi, where he is editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Van Nghe Tre.

Daniel Elias Galicia Waiting In Memoriam Take this from me, God. - Mary Lu Franco, December, 2009 My mother lies dying in the living roomunder a morphine dream, her hands and feet swell with pulp,her thin grape skin perspires.She's not my mother anymore: eyelids bat open,pupils like beetles panic below each lens,and moans press her head into the pillow.She's choking on her own life. Am I a horrible daughterto wish the owl at her window would finally take flightwith her breath in its wings? Lord, when it's time, let me go outafter small goodbyes, like my grandfather, who walked to the porch for one lastflower of cigarette smoke. Tonight, as we break down and struggle with laughter,resting our beers on the table, help her let go. Let her stiff arms have rest.Help her fall as quietly as a petal into the dark waters of your heaven.Weeping in the Shower Minutes Later We were only simulations, or so I thought,in his room that locked us in blue TV lightwhen we both shuddered for the first time like curtains taken by the ceiling fan:the two of us who for nothing in those late hoursheld each other on the roots of our tongues.Daniel lives in Santa Barbara, CA where he works as a teacher of ESOL. His work has appeared in Mezcla: Art & Writings from the Tumblewords Project, Sage Trail, and Newspaper Tree El Paso. Most recently he read with poet/writer Luis J. Rodriguez at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA. In April, he organized a poetry reading to benefit Haiti Soleil (http://www.haitisoleil.org/) with Santa Barbaras Poet Laureates.

Arielle Nelson Town Beauty I follow the tracks past the park where swings hang limpon rusted chains, squealing in protest against the wind. Ahead I see the curve of an iron gate slashagainst the hard sky, and the headstones beyond itjut out of cracked ground like a crooked smile. The town beauty went for a walk one eveningthree summers ago. Her clothing was founda week later covered in honey and hangingin a tangle of trees near the old mill. She blurs in my mind until only her dark eyes remain focusedin memory. Or her hands, thin and pale on the kitchen table.Now the church is always empty. The sprawling cemetery is fullof remembering, and fake flowers growing out of stone. A white rabbit huddles near her empty grave, soft and slight,just its wet black eyes flickering against the stillness.I imagine it's watching me and knows. For a split second it's as if nothing happened.A train slices through town like a sly knife. Visitor Soundlessly, she is pulledalong the dusty road,past the abandonedwater wheel that churns the calm river into a frenzyand she remembers her roomfull of photos and dresses and dolls,a burn, a blanket,a comfort now gone. Her wrists feel the sting of rope the way it prickles her palms when chasinga bucket down the well and she loses the lightas a hand covers her dark, darting eyes. Later, her mother grievesnot feeling the heatof the young girlcoming down the stairs.One left of spring I sat on the balcony of the sagging apartment complex and held onto the skeleton of a rust-worn chair to watch the clouds uproot the rain and spill it across my eaves.My shadow stepped lightly through the open door, silently we sit side-by-side and stare, alert and still and aware, surrounded by the snaking streets and rivulets of water sliding past our feet.The rolling clouds smothered the horizon as the day bled into night; no lights on the street corner, no curtains on the window, just me blurry-eyed and tepid like forgotten bathwater, indifferent and thirsty.Look at the weed, the shadow said, there was a puddle in the street, wide as dark expanse of blue whale suspended in silent waves; stomach empty as a drum; I leaned over the railing:It was my wildflower Arielle is not a mermaid, nor does she play one on TV. She is the current editor-in-chief of Oyez Review. Arielle earned the 2009 Laurie A. Lesniewski Award for Creative Writing. She spends much of her time roaming the halls of Roosevelt University hot on the heels of her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, but in her off hours she enjoys flexing her poetry muscles and playing with her pet rats. Her most recent work can be found in Ghost Ocean Magazine.

Jane Wagner Missing At first, a small lapse. Nothing more.You held up an apple, searching for the word. Struggling to name your favorite fruit. By the next day, your confidence back, you grabbed words as if you owned them. Threw them aroundto show them who was boss. But your words were wrong. You called a box of candies a horse and offered horses to the nursing staff. Your doctor called it brain salad syndrome.Such a random tossingof my mother's brain,mixing up her memory,altering her politics,removing her passion,her wit,her.Jane's poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Pearl, Rattle, and Spillway. She edited an anthology on divorce titled We Used To Be Wives: Divorce Unveiled Through Poetry. Jane has lived in Houston, Texas for over thirty years, now occasionally living in Oslo, where her husband works.

Himali Singh Soin The Cherry and The Spoon and The Cherry and The Spoon Ode to Claes Oldenburg You driveFrom east to westIn a small red car withNothing but a spoon in your pocketInto whose mirror you scour the cornExpanses; from whose slick surface you scoop up a Cherry andNibble on theTops of a ghostly cakeYou take accidental bites ofThe sky, or the earth depending on theWay you look at it. As you munch away your spoon Grows growsThe earth and theSky slide slip into aSilver centrifuge and you, alas,Miniaturized, reach for the clouds whichDrown in the shallow concave spoon puddle. Plus, with The cakeLong gone, the cherryIn your mouth is not soRed cold and so sweet anymore.You leave the spoon behind upturned, the skyAnd the earth bend grow smile: chuckling folliesOf travel, palindromes of their previous selves.Waiting for Odysseus Conjuring home con-juring eternityRail movements mindMovements shiftingUs from here to thenDisequilibriumDislocation: disillusionment of now. The tramp, the trudge, the holler sounds his returnHe's limited by rail windows and mind proseIn between lies infinity without beginningIn stasis lies kinesis, in constraints: freedom. So Penelope her robe delayed andHer dear Odysseus was never betrayed.Himali is a poet and ideator with a degree in English and Theatre. She likes taking photographs of peeling walls and pipelines and wondering about rebirth. Recent poetry has been published in Kritya and New Quest.

Paras Sharma Personally. I. Don't. CareOver the last two years,I have grown,Personally,and InterpersonallyI have developedAll over againLike a psycho-socio-eco-anthro-geo-politico pubertal growth spurt,Now I am a well rounded individualMy mind has curved at all the right places,Ill shamelessly flaunt my statisticsAbout how 70% of the nationLive off less than $1 per daySomeday I'll write a tell-all dust-jacketed bookAbout the dusty forgotten plains of this countryWhere people have no water, no toilets, no electricity,Just cows and fields, and cows and fieldsAnd dusky damsels, who are the true Indian beautiesUneducated, uncomplicated and unbridled in their sexualityI'll describe in detail their kohl lined almond shaped eyes,Throw in a million mentions of Vermilion,And scores upon scores of red-green-yellow glass banglesMy book will be a hitAnd earn that $1 dollar several hundred times overMy aura will attract one and all,I will brim with compassion,And sweat unconditional positive regardAs I walk the street,Dogs will wag their tails happily,Cats will dance with joy,Birds will chirp with glee,The depressed with will be filled with mirthWhen I spout, I understand what you're going throughMarriages will be repaired,Property disputes settled,Children will never argue over the window seatAnd eat their vegetablesNo one will throw samosas out the windowIn a fit of rageI will unravel deep dark secretsBased on housetreeuncleauntydoggie drawingsAnd people will say OMFG! I never saw it that wayI will start an alternative therapyBringing together the best of Freud, Ellis, Rogers, Beck,Buddha, Rumi, Kabir, Plato, Socrates, Baba Ramdev, Osho,Mithunda, Vengaboyz and Chetan BhagatI will hold healing seminars for the massesAs long as the masses can pay a non-refundable 4-day cover fee,And congregate in air-conditioned seminar hallsMy assistants will be intelligent yet beautifulGirls who can totally look hawt if they tryBut they never will, and so people will flockTo my seminarsTo see my assistants who are intelligent not hawt,How dare you think we objectify women?Chee chee, shame shameWe will wear Fabindia creations in white, off white, pale,Yellow, khadi, or slight variations of the sameThen I'll start an Institute and train young mindsAnd usher them into theirPsycho-socio-eco-anthro-geo-politico pubertal growth spurts,And then the cycle shall be complete!Paras Sharma lives in Bombay and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Counselling from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. His works have earlier appeared in JAM Magazine. Most recently, he, with the help of some of India's most creative minds, started Madness Mandali - A Collaborative Artists Collective, in 2010.

Duane J Jackson The Gardener His missile silos spread like seedon map-like flower bedsof hardened clay traversed by snakesthat leave deep magma clefts. His amplified, explosive laughprompts pitchfork-rains of deathwhile rattled human-humus cloudsbring war-time buds to head. Twilight The buttery sky of twilightpeppered with the specsof blackbirds, spreads like paste uponthe Earth, its crusty bread. Meteors Meteors - the finless fishthat streak black seas of pearl,are freshly born from roe of dreamsthat bubble from the earth. In frenzies formed of flaming shoals,they snap like fireworksand span imaginations sleeplike floating chandeliers. Standstill Minutes The Minutes march to prison. Time cracks its whip of ticks. The winding watchman whistles, To jail for standing still. With seconds in their bellies,they foot thump off my wristinto a cell of crucibles -my sweet accomplices.Duane is a freelance writer and poet from Kolkata. While he is not writing he enjoys reading mythology, listening to rock, folk and world music and stocking his aquarium with cichlid fish. His publication credits include Danse Macabre, The Scrambler and Indigo Rising Magazine.

Barbara Emrys UntitledI never see Nebraska until I leave town.Among tall trees, motley houses, abundant franchises,I could be anywhere in the middle land. Beyond the city limitations slices of horizon emerge,big jigsaw pieces of sky. I drive out to Cottonmilljust to see storm clouds banked back and back and backto the ends of the world,and the end-of-summer grasses beaten by thrashing air. That's where I live.OzymandiasThis is the head that set off Shelley,Percy Bysshe, long beforeit arrived here in the British Museum.He was between poems and love affairs,and the great stone visagewas tabloid novelty, newly purloinedfrom the lone and level sands. Percy's poems flauntedevery authority, gods oldand current, and this one toopredicted the demise of arrogant rule. I used to admire the piece.Once years ago I saw an exhibitof Shelley memorabilia, a tiny monumentwith the guitar he gave Jane Williams,one of his flirts, and a lockof his still-red hair. I have to admitthese objects gave me a lumpin the throat chakra, but even thenI'd read their letters and knew howhe flitted on, looking for a new stone head.Everyone who was anyone once lookedon his poems, but only English majorsrecognize the surname today, and think it's Mary. Meanwhile the head of Ramses still commands,even walled in by tourists. Japanese studentsflash their phones at his stern features.A bearded man lifts up his son for a better view.Barbara's work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, recently including Danse Macabre, Dark Valentine, and Louisiana Vampires (Barnes & Noble). She teaches writing and popular literature at the University of Nebraska-Kearney and is the author of Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary, and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel (McFarland, 2011).

Arka Mukhopadhyay A Song for J. I. I remember your body like the foldsOf a well-known landscape, notThe word but the thing-in-the-thing, the eyeOf the finger, the forest coiled and awakeBeneath a Cyclop's moon, the wolf's gazeSweeping across centuries sleeping beneathAn immense whiteness of snow, the broadCrescent of your shoulders and back, strongLike a mule's, a fertile river valley, nursingCivilizations for six thousand years, yourBreasts the brown of dust, sad as a song inA forgotten tongue, your pubis the mid-day darkOf mountain pines. I learn up each line and Each hieroglyph of the whole of you in a dialect ofTrade winds. Scrawling you across the masts of Chozha ships,Across fields of paddy and mangroves rumblingWith tiger-talk, in the mango and jackfruit grovesOf once-upon-a-time villages, in conch-shell blownSunsets, in the yellow dream of mustard fields andRhododendrons in the wind. The raga I Sing you in is the evening pink of a child'sCheek on a Himalayan November, itsNotes the rise and fall of the Dhauladhar's icy breath,The curve of its glissandi the emptiness ofSpaces made by meeting, its crescendo the Whirling oblivion of a Sufis urs, the dissolutionOf eyes and hair and hands and teeth and Sight and perception and wisdom and desire andLips and breasts and history and Love andNothingness unto nothingness with theSlow inevitability of the tinkling bells ofCows beneath a mountain sunsetGoing back, going back home. Leonidas Watches The Sunrise All that I have done was for this day - This red sun was the mark my spear soughtWhen first my infant hands hefted it. Through all the years my feet have walked the earth,These rocks were the throne they walked towards.Here, under this sky I bear no maliceTowards the Mede - He and I are dancers In one dance. This light cleanses him and meAnd but that which is to do, remains.In the dawn - wind I hear my ancestor - He tells me that this, my one deed, shall standBeside his twelve. My men are stirring,I stand apart, my face lit by the sunThat rises now, and will not set for me.Arka Mukhopadhyay at this moment in time is trying to speak with Jerzy Grotowski. He lives in the courtyard of Hazrat Nizamuddin, among other places, and travels with Ulysses the Baul. His poetry has previously been published in New Quest, Drunken Boat, and a few other places, and he won the TFA Award for Creative Writing in 2008. Some of his poems, including the two that appear here, were also shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2010.

Sumana Roy WaitingI wait for matching blouses,for restive chloroform,for jokes to endinto creases of laughter,for The End on amnesiac screens;all these to smuggle your sighsinto my gunshot of waiting ...I waitfor footfalls on holy books,for monk-hearted ants to get drunk,for X-rays to grow hermit flesh,for public-scented halls to crush you with scandals of tongues;all these to pull your prayersinto my staircase of waiting ... I wait for the sun to vinegar fingers,for snow to coagulate dreams,for gossip to acquire breasts,for balloons to babysit brother,for death to steal a camera's morality;all these to subtract youfrom my greenhouse of waiting ...Tea I'm Socrates in my marriage:I ask questions,she breaks and bites,like biscuit between teeth.She seeks wetness:milk, orange, moon-dew,and pulls a spit-threadthrough a brittle button. Morning arrives,a ticket counter,to our amphitheatre. Beads of hemlock night drop between her legs.Leaves flirt in a teapot:shy circumlocution. Sugar? she asks.The spoon turnsinto a panopticon.Sumana lives in Siliguri. An early draft of her first novel, Love in the Chicken's Neck, was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008.

Isawanda Laloo Winter in the City (A series of seven haikus set in Shillong) Dappled specks frolicgolden on the wall, the lacecurtain feebly sways. The sweet scent of pinedenuded, cacophonyof soul-barren streets. Cast iron pot ona charcoal fire, smoked beefsimmers splutters smells. Our black gold rendersthe earth sooty, the fish few,their pockets full. The year ripe with ageand cloaked in leaden chill, whenthe old rest their heads. Silver bells adorna craggy tree, cheer beleaguerschill penury. Form and substance feud,there, my cherry blossom sways:succour from pithy lays!Isawanda is from Shillong. When not studying or fretting about the future, she writes, listens to her favourite music, and spends time with her folks at home in Shillong. She writes infrequently at isawanda.com.

Peycho Kanev Lead off I am still in the old dingy neighborhood,waiting for the skies to turn into cashmere.Ice-cream trucks play baroque symphony,and the brown kids outside chase each other in the dark with some whizzing lightsabers.If I try to fry something I will eventually burn it,and the avant-garde words from Cummingss is 5crumble down on the wine-stained carpet. I attentively prowl the streets late at night,stalking the shadows that are drawing nearer.Concealing myself in the Serbian liquor store,where the celluloid shop boy sells me bottles full of canned laughter. It will be like thisuntil the end eventually no coke or grass,just this indescribable window in my head,lisping in my good ear Times must pass. The scheme of all The impossibility of this morning issodden with false promises for the nearlyfuture:the gondolier in Venice runs the boatand sing canzonets for the lovecouples in the back:the matador in Pamplona points the swordbetween two black eyes,between the sun light,and one sparrow on my windowsillThe sparrowtries to wake me up with its happy tunebut I wave my hand,my shaking hand,and it's gone;drowned dreams for dying love and drowned treesand dying elephants,as the leaves outside keep pile up on my door stepand I got up from the bed and open one greenbottle - and maybe Hemingway has done the same thing?Peycho has been writing poetry for the past 10 years. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines such as Poetry Quarterly, Ann Arbor Review, The Catalonian Review, The Arava Review, Walnut Literary Review, and Midwest Literary Review among others. His new poetry collection Bone Silence was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

Anthony Verouhis Ode to the voice of Hubert Selby Jr. I have to go away, inside a tuberculosis dream, a morphine bubble that saveswhen breath is in short supply.The grime of the gutter and my midnight sidewalk street silhouette that gets overlooked by oncoming cars.Hope, in the humid, polluted springtime NY air,In the way another's touch is always warm and sticky. Thieves and hoodlums in narrow corridors of pungent homosexuality.Dreams of female kisses and freedom.Cigarettes and the foggy stench of sweat,And the brutal laziness of a city summer. I have in my body, my future death.My future pain, my present symptomAnd the seed of regret planted one day long ago.It simmers and it pops and sometimes leaves a scar. He's a son of a bitch, but he's a cutie.I spit, take in the sceneAnd hope that someone mistakes me for a person they can fix,That needs taking care of One of these days, I know I'm due some luck. The Last Days of CarnivalA slimy trail of human stench and joy filled the streets. Unfathomable melancholy hidden underneath painted faces and howling whistles from air that flung out of weary chests. There was music and laughter. A celebration in between the decay of city filth. Of dumpsters with animals within and people dancing to rhythms arcane, beats that resembled syncopated hearts. People cursed and children cried and lovers loved with the passion of sworn enemies. Streets lined with floats, crowds aboard them, in between them and on their sides. A slow moving wave through parked cars that had amassed plastic cups and wine stains that trickled down windshields from their tops. Drama queen tears that dripped onto the pavement and joined the puddles of alcohol and urine, dirt and shallow city pools that always ran down highway crevices into the grime of the gutter.We danced together amidst the immigrants and the aromas of their delicacies slow burning on makeshift sidewalk stoves. Among the junky ghosts that stood up against the walls of the doorways to the old apartment buildings on either side of the street. Some of them euphoric, some with the shakes and others cooking to the hum of oblivion dancing in a vein of anticipation.Shopkeepers stood at their shops entrances, clapped and cheered and bounced their feet to the beat, the infectious beat of carnival sounds and the arousal of human meat. Mustaches and eyes of old men dripped with desire as women wrapped their legs around the waists of their lovers in plain view. In the open where all could be seen we groped each other over and over. A festival of lights and sounds and olfactory cuisine that filled us with disgust as we kissed and held each other close. We held just like everyone else held someone. A friend. A stranger. A lover. An enemy. A customer. A dealer. A pet. A prisoner. And if a living thing was not available a hug could readily be found. Some squeezed streetlights, others huddled on stairs and spooned on them the way humans and cats do.Tourists marveled at the sights of decay and dimensions through their photographic lenses. A pantheon of relativity digitally recorded and soon to be recalled in the quiet warmth of a foreign suburban home. Where red wine and conversation takes the place of bestial sexuality that produces uncontrolled grunts and orgasms and dead skin collections under nails from scratches.Passerbys stopped and stood in awe at the dust that rose from the ground with each chaotic thump of foot on pavement. Thieves wished for a deformity that would bless them with eight arms and hands to swipe and steal and extricate the riches of the fools that drank and sang and blew their carnival whistles and wore their masks over their worn down faces. We wished that this night would not bring the eventual rise of the sun but an end of days delirium, a midnight massacre of sobs and slaps and barbaric declarations of love.When we finally escaped the main promenade we made our way through filthy alleyways, little narrow hideaways and dim lit backstreets that bubbled. Our hands clutched one another's as we drifted and took in the scenery. Of priests walking their dogs that defecated on sidewalks. Women with skirts lifted and panties dropped urinating in the shadows. Drunkards sleeping in their vomit with a smile clutched around their bottle. The birds that hung on the branches of trees, shocked from the sights and insomniac bats that reveled in the plentitude of chaos. Our eyes overfed with disorientation and excess blinked uncontrollably to keep from drying shut. When we found a grassy hill we decided to lie down on the moist midnight earth and rest. Fully clothed, mid-winter and manacled by the chill, we held each other close and fended off the cold of the ground with our heat.And thus descended into deep deep sleep.The kind one wishes to never awake from.Anthony is a writer/English teacher living in Athens, Greece. He was born and raised in NY but recently returned to Athens to be closer to friends and family. He has had his work published in three small literary publication in the States.

Mark Jackley Old GloryAngled on her poleat forty-five degrees,poking out from a country fencelike the head of a horse,she is waiting to be whipped by the next storm. All the men will stamptheir feet and gallop madly. Grace When I use the wordI'm not thinking of the wayyou discreetly daub your rose-petal lipswith a linen napkinin your slender fingersbut how the watermelon,resembling a misshapenplanet fallen fromthe heavens meets the knife,splits into a dozengrins and spills its seedslike black stars. Late at Night It is not lost on meas I soak in the tub,a book in hand, a little whiskeyin a glass, the windis muttering like someone reading under his breath, and my hand is shriveled up like a wet page.Mark Jackley is the author of two chapbooks with a third, Cracks and Slats, forthcoming from Amsterdam Press, and a full-length collection, There Will be Silence While You Wait, on the way from Plain View Press.

Tapo Mandal MunirkaI never imagined it would become a pilgrimageMunirkaA place to wander around inIf I missed myStop because the bus was too crowdedJust trying to find the next one backTo where I should be.Yet a stormy summer was spent underMunirka skiesWith every future moment a strangerTo the present oneNever knowing which one would be the lastAs time after violent time I turnedMy back to Munirka and sworeI would never again stepFoot in that blasted pocket Of this merciless cityAnd then took angryAuto-rickshaws there after workOr at some unearthly hourWondering, as alwaysWhen, and how,It will all end.It wasn't the fruit treesYou climbed as a childWhose name I couldn't ever getOr the dirty parks with lurking bee-hives.It wasn't the crazy animal I loveWho sees me as a biscuit vending machineAnd leaves paw prints on our conversations.It wasn't theHam toasties for breakfastComputer that would never workGOI internet, likewiseWaterfall stairsTerrace when it rainedOr your cramped, exotic bedroom(which will appear in Faraway dreams, a den of candles,Colourful bottles and strange perfumesI will never forget)That made me Keep taking the wrong turnAt Africa Avenue and coming back...To you? Well, to Munirka, at least.Maybe it was the timeSpent in candle-lit heatTrying to understand why we were even thereOr under the roof where the UFOs land at nightToo ignited by the rain To lock the right doorsOr the trysts with your parents'Bedroom (where the doorLocks itself and seals Trespassers in -What is it with locks and us?)Or that creaky bastardOf a couch that we brokeand fell off of, orThe movies we never watchedThe thousandth deliveryFrom the same pizza place(Because we could never decide on Dinner before midnight)The lavish PWD breakfastSpread at noon(Talking about the promiseThe day held, the placesWe could go, whenThe violent heat of the afternoonAnd a stray touch that lingeredToo long, decidedOur day for us)That kept me in the Baleno in your parking lot(Our chosen "neutral ground")On those muggy summer eveningsLooking out at the pink skyAnd wishing we could fuckThis pointless fightAnd spend a few hours somewhere Talking about absolutely nothingAnd feeling likeWe had the best time ever.All that happenedin MunirkaAnd it seems like a long time ago.Yet now turning awayFrom Munirka when I driveGives me the feeling thatI'm lost.But there are photographs on your fridgeOf everyone but meAnd MunirkaWill only welcome thoseWho are close enough to visit.MunirkaA place no one knows of"Do people actually live there?"Yet forever imbedded in my headNever on the mapUntil you said"I live in Munirka"Your worldThe only home you have ever knownYou asked me to stayBut you live too close to the airportAnd all those low-flying planesReminded me thatI was born to fly away.And a long time from nowIf I ever missMy bus stop againAnd find myself in MunirkaMaybe the roads will seem strangely familiarAnd I'll hear youOn the phone in my head"C for Calcutta,A for America" (Or E?)And, again wonderingWhen, and how,It will all end,Find myself in front of your door.Tapo lives in northern Japan. He teaches children during the week and DJs at clubs on the weekend, taking time to travel all over Japan and Asia whenever he can.

Nguyen Quang Thieu
Daniel Elias Galicia
Arielle Nelson
Jane Wagner
Himali Singh Soin
Paras Sharma
Duane J Jackson
Barbara Emrys
Arka Mukhopadhyay
Sumana Roy
Isawanda Laloo
Peycho Kanev
Anthony Verouhis
Mark Jackley
Tapo Mandal

Prose

Egon Schiele

Photo Essay It's like a time machine. Every step that you take towards this city, it manages to convince you to sit in its very special roller coaster which will take you for a trip, a trip which you could never dream of, something one would never expect in this day and age. The city looks older than it claims to be. Old hippies from the sixties still hanging on in anticipation of a change, which a normal nine-to-fiver would never know about. Then there are the holy men in their own trance, some in search of money, some in search of popularity, and some are just there, hanging on like most of us. The unsatisfied and curious young mind in search of philosophy, literature, music, peace, drugs, people, change. To describe Benaras as full of life would be an understatement. It's not only full but overflowing. An overdose of different people, cultures, races, values, habits, ideas, interests and everything else that one can think about. It's this very amalgamation of things that sets this city apart from all the others. As you cruise through the narrowest of lanes, you are bound to come across some very interesting characters, from the radicals to the orthodox, the French speaking fluent Hindi, the English having aloo paranthas or the Russians dancing to Bhojpuri music and a Nepali boy doing the waltz with a Cambodian lady to Bollywood tunes. It may seem strange to you as you read this, but the moment you enter the beautiful world of Kashi, it seems normal. People are accepted for the way they are. Even through its intense chaotic structure, Benaras somehow manages to embrace you, to welcome you with open arms. Devraj is a freelance photographer from guwahati........ he travels to capture.

this ancient city by devraj chaliha

Sketches

Me an der ings by Sandhya Ramachandran

Local

Snippets from around Argos by Harris Dousemetzis

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