“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
– Albert Camus
Erika Nichols-Frazer is the author of the essay collection “Feed Me” (Sept. 2022, Moonlight Books) and the forthcoming poetry collection “Staring Too Closely” (Main Street Rag, 2023). She is he editor of the mental health recovery anthology “A Tether to This World” (Main Street Rag, 2021). She won Noir Nation’s 2020 Golden Fedora Fiction Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gone Lawn, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Emerge Literary Journal, Idle Ink, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Vermont, U.S.A.
Why I Speak to Trees
The scythe of a crescent moon
cuts shadows on my collarbone.
Night undresses me with
ten thousand pools of light.
An army of stars burns.
Branches peel mist
and unveil evening.
Plummeting leaves howl
against wind
in a language
only I can translate
you are smaller than you appear
Your grief will be a rudder slicing through murk.
No one, save you, knows its shape.
Another day, you would have seemed younger.
Your grief is deciduous,
returning faithfully after each climactic fall,
a constant against which to measure yourself.
I do not know your pain. I am a stranger here,
as you were, once.
Neither of us sleeps, I know.
Your grief a splint of metal, cold on skin,
held in place by wood softened with weather and age,
that leaves a mark and the muscle a little weak
no one can see it but you and me;
we speak the language of grief.
Your pain is smaller than it appears.
The Babushkas of Chernobyl
they call the grandmothers who
lived their whole lives in Chernobyl
and refused to leave after the nuclear disaster.
Even after evacuation, the babushkas returned.
The government tried to evacuate them again,
but Chernobyl was the only home they’d ever had.
They planted their feet in poison earth.
They swigged moonshine and swallowed
thick slices of hog fat, their gardens barren
in toxic soil. They stayed.
I want to know what it tastes like
to love a place like that, to have a home
to suffer for.
Digging for Cassava
Nancy, the farmer’s daughter, and I dig
for cassava, our knees in red earth.
Even now, in the fields, she wears
a crisp yellow button-up dress,
as if she is ready for school.
As our hands, stained red, pull cassava
from the ground and stack them in our
baskets, she says she wants to be a writer, too.
When I leave, she gives me a Polaroid of her
in her school clothes, looking serious,
with her address on the back.
For months after I return from Ghana,
while I begin college, I write to her and
send her my childhood books.
She tells me she doesn’t have any books
in her house, but she knows how to dig.
When you sleep
Your pelvis cuts a shadow
sharp as an oyster shell,
inviting my arm to slip and
hang, a full sail of skin
under your hip bones.
When you sleep I drape
my dreams on your shoulder
blades and slip fear over
your eyes, tucking you in
for a long night.
When you sleep your skin
whispers confessions to me.
When you sleep my breath
tells you fairytales, spinning
myths from my name.
When you sleep your eyelids
converse in flickers like the bare
lightbulb hanging in our closet,
daring me to answer.
My cheekbones snug in your clavicle:
You are more honest then.
Nadia Arioli is the co-founder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Their recent publications include Penn Review, Hunger Mountain, Cider Press Review, Kissing Dynamite, Heavy Feather Review, and San Pedro River Review. They have chapbooks from Cringe-Worthy Poetry Collective, Dancing Girl Press, Spartan, and a full-length from Luchador. They were nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 by As It Ought to Be, West Trestle Review, Angel Rust, and Voicemail Poems.
Salt and Pomegranates
I.
Fish are a kind of fruit,
in the land of scribble and belly.
Rotting in the Lethe, the
scales catch the half-light,
the bones from which the next
crop springs. Here, death hatches.
Two figures meet without
ceremony. The taller says
Here, we only gesture at organic
forms, but still it hurts to look.
The smaller says There is no turning,
back or otherwise. To turn
implies a change, and in
eternity, we cannot attempt a spin
or any kind of risk.
In my defense, the taller says,
I had to be sure. To be sure,
the smaller says, I had to defend
my agency. Yours is the
tragedy, mine was only foolishness,
and fools aren’t even given names.
I could give you one, says the taller,
trying still to enchant. I can put
it into song. The smaller
says nothing. Could I call you
Euridice? The smaller gives
no reply, but reaches in water and
and plucks a fish. She peels
the skin with her claws. She
brings yellow eye to outline
eye. Now we’re both dead.
Looking can be a no.
Salt and Pomegranates
II.
Fish are a kind of fruit,
in the land of scribble and belly.
Rotting in the Lethe, the
scales catch the half-light,
the bones from which the next
crop springs. Here, death hatches.
Two figures meet without
ceremony. The taller says
Here, we only gesture at organic
forms, but still ithurtstolook.
The smaller says, There is no turning,
back or otherwise. To turn
implies a change, and in
eternity, we cannot attempt a spin
or any kind of risk.
In my defense, the taller says,
I had to be sure. To be sure,
the smaller says, I had to defend
my agency. Yours is the
tragedy, mine was only foolishness,
and fools aren’t even given names.
I could give you one, says the taller,
trying still to enchant. I can put
it into song. The smaller
says nothing. Could I call you
Euridice? The smaller gives
no reply, but reaches in water and
and plucks a fish. She peels
the skin with her claws. She
brings yellow eye to outline
eye. Now we’re both dead.
Looking can be a no.
Salt & P(o)megranates
IIII.
Fish (are a kind of fruit)
in the land of scribbleandbelly.
Rotting in the L e t h e, the
scales catchthehal-flight,
the bones from which the next
crop springs. Here, death h a t c h e s.
Two figures meet without
ceremony. The taller says
Here, we only (((((gesture)))) at organic
forms, but still it hurts to look.
The smaller says There is no t/u/r/n/i/n/g,
back or othe,rwise. To t,u,r,n
implies a <change, and in
eternity, <we cannot attempt a sp!n
or any kind,,,of,,,risk.
In my de[fense, the taller says,
I had to be sure]]. To be sure,
the smaller says, i had to defend
my agency. …Yours is the
tragedy,,,, mine was only foolishness,
and fools arent even given names.
I could,, give you one, says the taller,
trying still to enchant. I can put::::
it into song. The smaller
says nothing. <<<Could I call you
Eur(i)d(i)ce? ?The smaller gives
no reply, /but reaches in water/ and
and plucks a fish. She p e e l s
the skin with her c<l<aws. She
b r i n g s yellow eye to outline
eye. Now we’re both dead.
L o o king can be a no.
Allan Lake once lived in Allover, Canada but now lives in Allover, Australia. Coincidence. His
latest chapbook of poems is called My Photos of Sicily and was published by Ginninderra Press. It contains only poems, no photos.
Lift
Divine plum danish
from Baba Bakery, then coffee
at Cafe Baal, which was awash
with joyous Brazilian bossa.
An unlikely confluence in this
punk, plastered, bat-infested
Australian city but the trinity
aligned and my gloom just
e v a p o r a t e d
like mid-morning fog
that finally remembered
it’s sunny way home after
a fruitless night out.
Michael J. Leach is an Australian academic and poet based at the Monash University School of Rural Health. His poems reside in Rabbit, Cordite, Meniscus, Verandah, Plumwood Mountain, Live Encounters, the Medical Journal of Australia, the 2021 Hippocrates Prize Anthology, and elsewhere. Michael’s poetry collections include Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020) and Natural Philosophies (Recent Work Press, forthcoming). He lives on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung Country and acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land.
Morph(eme) Moments
for Jess
when I ponder
portmanteaus
I remember
seeing so many angles of Brangelina
rewatching ’80s mockumentaries
playing games of Pictionary
staying in for staycations
escaping to seascapes
analysing data with Stata
working towards workaholism
overspending on weekend brunches
reading sciku
writing scifaiku
hand feeding cloistered camelopards
cuddling COVID cavoodles
growing a mo for Movember
feeling the flow of endorphins
emoting with(out) emoticons
paying (in)attention to podcasts
tuning in/out to the Twitterverse
rewatching movies…with Muppets
seeing so many new-gen Brangelinas
I remember
portmanteaus
when I ponder
Domnica Radulescu is a Romanian American writer who arrived in the United States in the early eighties as a political refugee. She settled in Chicago where she obtained a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Chicago in 1992. Radulescu is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Train to Trieste (Knopf 2008 &2009), Black Sea Twilight (Transworld 2011 & 2012) and Country of Red Azaleas (Hachette 2016), and of award-winning plays. Train to Trieste has been published in thirteen languages and is the winner of the 2009 Library of Virginia Fiction Award. Radulescu received the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Radulescu also published fourteen non-fiction books, edited and co-edited collections on topics ranging from the tragic heroine in western literature to feminist comedy, to studies of exile literature and two collections of original plays. Dream in a Suitcase. The Story of an immigrant Life is her first memoir, and it was released in January 2022. Radulescu is twice a Fulbright scholar and the founding director of the National Symposium of Theater in Academe.
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu is a poet of Romanian origin living in the United States and writing in three languages: French, English and Romanian. She has published numerous volumes of poetry in France, the United States and Romania. She received numerous prizes for her poetry such as the Grand Prix Noel-Henri Villard 2008, the Amelie Murat prize in 2013 and the Great Prize of Francophone Poetry. The volume A Cry in the Snow (translated from the French) appeared with Orison Books in 2018. Her latest two volumes of poetry are Traveling with the Ghosts (Orison Books 2021) and Vocabulaire du silence (Editions du Cygne 2022)
Poems from Vocabulaire du Silence (Vocabulary of Silence), by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
Translated from the French by Domnica Radulescu
les nuits sont calmes sur ma langue
les jours gelés
et en sourdine les vagues déplacent
les mondes
comme grains de sable
rien ne bouge
de ce côté
la page reste telle :
ensanglantée
une lettre monte
au ciel
une autre descend
l’enfer au bout
de mes
doigts
point fixe—
autrement
blancheur
l’encre
se dissipe
phrases non-dites
: je m’accroche
à ce vide
poème poème
intrusion
dans
le vide porte ouverte
porte fermée
d’où
sortent
ces flammes et
qui est là
pour
ramasser
les cendres
désabille-toi nuit de ta
noirceur fille
adultère d’un soleil disparu
mille ans de chaque
côté de ce désert — accouche
lumière dans les parages
de l’oubli
nos chants terrestres montent
au ciel les arbres s’agenouillent
et prient
musique la pluie
bavarde sur le toit telle
enfance
je m’endors
dans l’autre temps l’autre
pays où les nuits
sont plus longues nuits
de velours
et les aubes s’attardent :
cette page s’ècrit
à rebou
the nights are peaceful on my tongue
the frozen days
and muted waves displace
the worlds
like grains of sand
nothing moves
on this side
the page stays bloody
as it is
a letter soars
to the sky
another descends
hell
at
my fingertips
steady point –
otherwise
whiteness
the ink dissolves
unspoken sentences
: I am clinging
to this void
poem poem
intrusion
in
the void open door
closed door
from where
emerge
these flames and
who is there
to gather
the ashes
undress yourself night of your
darkness adulterous daughter
of an extinct sun
a thousand years of each
side of this desert – you light
give birth
close to oblivion
our terrestrial songs soar
to the sky the trees are kneeling
and are praying
music the rain
is talking on the roof such
childhood
I fall asleep
In the other age the other
country where the nights
are longer
velvet nights
and the dawns linger:
this page writes itself
backwards
Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals. She has also published another novel, In The Days of Ford Cortina, in August 2021.
Reluctant Recidivist
Slow to commit any form of crime
Faithfully deported to suitable lodgings
Hunting heads of the conscientious consumed
Matching like to like, as a jigsaw.
Not a race, therefore not racist. What I would give
For a standard textbook to judge others by!
Forget the stereotypes, bleached to the root
Vainglorious in circumstance tempers the cold.
Coat drenched on another’s chair
Dancing in time to a foreign clap
Eating meat, prayer, upon, consuming
With a wounded conscience looming small.
The days lengthen by degrees.
Controlled fasting becomes the determined.
Determined in eyes of the god of hosts
Killing as if we make an educated mistake.
Picking the chicks in a submerged ballroom
Where no light can escape, cross upon back
A journey towards salvation, a criminal’s death
Singing towards home, oblivious to danger.
Not my will, but yours. Killing the solution
If you’re not part of the problem, so what?
Green on red colors the recidivist spirit
An acreage of beauty redeemed for others.
All-Over Rash
Spilling vinaigrette, a hard or soft option
Renting a cause to consummate anger
A favorite to be upheld, never wavering.
Limerick Junction is closer to the mark
Burning kisses in an opportune mind
Sinking drinks denied to others.
Fear of women pervades the decorum
Of proper order, a coupling annexed
Watching for outside conquering.
A woman playing with fire stands erect
Eschewing caution in a hair’s breadth
Slipping kisses into drinks, procreative times.
Nothing, if not critical. Sinking into rivers
Tests your patience and social outlets.
A wasted exercise in compassion, after all.
Some white widow sledgehammers the day
A prisoner of purgatory bangs on the door
Seeking release from caring for fellow beings.
Splitting hairs, seconds, making a killing
Out of enjoyed events unencumbered by tears
Barbed and off-limits to the unwary.
Sleeping in a foreign bed, consummating need
Friendly invitations fall flat by persuasion
No option declaring your divine right.
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has
appeared in such publications as Poetry Quarterly, Literature Today, The Journal, Poetry
Salzburg, Modern Literature, South African Literary Journal, Home Planet News, and others.
His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures, Mercurial World, and Aurora California.
City Nocturne
I’m going to have it my way this time. It’s my turn.
What I see or feel can’t be quantified. Some themes
no longer resonate. I cook up metaphors and tropes
then tie them together with an invisible bow. Surely
blood pulsing through the brain allows me to form
an ambient environment in which to lay my claims.
I was there once other than in a dream. That place
since hidden comes gushing as words proliferate.
Laden with possibility spontaneous synchronicity
spurts out images in most unpredictable phrases.
Streetlights glare within fog-infused atmosphere.
Like ice melting darkness slides on greased rails.
Fuzzy night, memories loom, I lift my collar as
a cable car disappears over the hill in dank mist.
Stanzas take shape on my tabula rasa. Next to
the street sign lovers embrace, rapt amazement
as lips lock in a long kiss. The foghorn doesn’t
disturb the flight of gulls cavorting in liquid air.
Oblivious am I to passersby and beaming cherry
that spins on a cop car’s steel roof as it sizzles in
suffused luminescence. Skyscrapers stretch way
to heaven. I’m not in the Louvre and won’t drink
from an imagined fountain of youth I tell myself,
for too many lives are spoiled by excessive folly.
Below the surface lost Atlantis may be located.
The city abides me, it has seen countless lovers
during generations of its rollicking intoxication.
Waves swish up against the ghostly ferry’s sides.
The poem hasn’t coalesced yet but getting there,
just needs a little stirring and maybe savoir faire.
The moon yawns and from its wide mouth leak
shadows of tomorrow morning. Laughter streams
out of an apartment window as saxophone music
proliferates down a narrow alley. New love chips
away at calcified hearts. Revision is unnecessary
since a final draft appears to me clearly focused.
Divertimento
Sublimity and love merge,
a river that always flows
not fast, not slow,
never too high nor low.
At the delta lagoon
grown green with algae
a lone fisherman casts
from atop the levee.
It’s high noon in Dodge,
traffic a lamentable bog
has locals disconnected
from all but problems.
Rude conspiracies clash
with verifiable fact
gushing streams
of spooky anarchy.
At his apogee of fame
the failed general leapt
from seventeen stories,
landed with a splat.
This river will tame
the wild, heal the lame.
Just give it time,
it doesn’t drain.
Potential catastrophe,
panic and dislocation
if too much Greenland ice
cracks off, floats away.
Nothing more to say
about that except
for hip-hip hooray
the gang’s all here.
Leonard Tuchilatu (1951-1975) was a Romanian poet from Moldova, one of the former soviet republics. He died of an incurable illness at the age of 24, after being subjected to multiple disciplinary punishments during mandatory army service (the ruthlessness of the soviet military abuses is infamous in the post-soviet territories). Though virtually unknown outside Moldova, the poet has gathered a following among several generations of Moldovan poets. Posthumously published work: Sol (1977), Fata Morgana (1989), the anthology Sol. Fata Morgana (1995), and the bilingual (Romanian/Russian) collection Rapsodie (2001).
Originally from Chisinau, Moldova, Romana Iorga is the author of two poetry collections in Romanian. Her work in English has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals, including the New England Review, Salamander, The Nation, as well as on her poetry blog at clayandbranches.com
Artă
În simplitatea asta a bucuriilor
oare cine te orânduiește?
Plăpând par
în tremurul unei lumânări
pe jumătate arse
și scriu despre lumină, despre bucuriile orei.
Geamătul surd însă minte atât de nerușinat…
Și mă aplec încet, încet, să culeg
grăunțele unei amărăciuni adevărate…
Art
In this simplicity
of joy, who might sort you out?
I look frail in the shudder
of a half-burnt candle
and I write about the light, about the joy of this hour.
Shameless, however, the muffled groan lies…
And slowly, slowly I lean to collect
the grains of a truer sorrow…
Durere
Mă găseşti şi aici,
învelindu-mă cum ştii numai tu,
cum numai tu o poţi face.
Mă găseşti şi aici,
mut, cunoscându-te de departe.
Cine te-a urât oare mai mult,
cine te-a căutat pentru joacă
pentru a face bravură
şi nu numai,
şi nu numai…
Tu lasă-te în urmă râzând,
cum rareori ne lăsai,
şi nu mai fi
regină a grădinilor negre
Pain
You find me here as well,
tucking me in as only you know
how, as only you can.
You find me here as well,
a mute who recognizes you from afar.
Has anyone hated you more,
has anyone sought you out to play,
to fake bravery
and not only that,
not only…
Fall behind now, laughing,
the way you seldom allowed us
to do and cease to be
our queen of the black gardens.
Ore târzii
De câte ori
m-am întâlnit cu tine, cuvânt,
de atâtea ori
am rămas atât de singur,
că-mi simţeam sufletul
cum curge din mine.
De atâtea ori am strigat
până mi-am pierdut cumpătul,
ca să ajungă lumina
şi la căpătâiul celui din urmă
muribund.
Late Hours
No matter
how often I ran into you, word,
each time
I was left so alone
that I felt my soul
draining away from me.
Each time, I shouted
until I lost all reason,
so that the light could also touch
the forehead of the last dying man.
Charline Lambert was born in 1989 in Liège, Belgium. She is the author of four books of poetry: Chanvre et lierre (“Hemp and Ivy,” Éditions Le Taillis Pré, 2016), Sous dialyses (“Dialyzing,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2016), Désincarcération (“Decarceration,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2017), and Une salve (“A Salvo,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2020).
John Taylor’s most recent translations are, from the French, José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (The MadHat Press) and Philippe Jaccottet’s Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions), as well as, from the Italian, Franca Mancinelli’s The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008-2021 (The Bitter Oleander Press). He lives in France.
Toujours de cette langue
à chair de porcelaine
à tentation de falaise
en acérer
une joie de tranchant.
*
Toujours de ce corps
en volutes lascives
en délicats incarnats
en tirer
une salve d’invocations.
*
là
une salve
dedans
des esclaves
depuis
une salive
*
là
un feu fœtus
renâcle
à se dérouler
dedans
un fleuve
en son sein
des eaux insoupçonnées
depuis
devenu forêt
ce corps canalisant
ses foisonnements
*
là
la pollution
aggrave les saignées
des poignets de pierres
aux reins
dedans
le même sexe
excisé des lèvres
anéanties du poids
des lapidations
depuis
un désir élancé
immarcescible
dans la mer
*
là
le même soleil
allonge d’une lampée
cette bouffée arrachée
à la boue d’être
dedans
le vaste s’ouvre
en dorsaux où l’ample
déroule sa chair claire
depuis
le seul Soleil
ne grève les tempes
à la poussière : il pousse
à la racine d’êtres
© Une salve, Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2020.
from A Salvo
by Charline Lambert
translated from the French by John Taylor
Ever from this tongue
its porcelain flesh
its tempting cliff
whet
a sharp-edged joy.
*
Ever from this body
in lascivious volutes
in delicate crimsons
discharge
a salvo of invocations.
*
there
a salvo
inside
slaves
ever since
a saliva
*
there
a fetus fire
reluctant
to unroll itself
inside
a river
within whose bosom
are unsuspected waters
ever since
this body
canalizing its profusions
has become a forest
*
there
pollution
aggravates the bloodletting
from the wrists of stones
in the kidneys
inside
the same sexual organ
its lips excised
and annihilated from the weight
of the stone-throwing
ever since
an imperishable desire
leaping
into the sea
*
there
the same sun
lengthens by a gulp
this breath torn off
from the mud of being
inside
the vastness opens out
into dorsals in which ampleness
unrolls its bright flesh
ever since
the only Sun
weighs down no forehead
to the dust: it sprouts
from the roots of beings
—from Une salve, Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2020
Junaid Shah Shabir is a Kashmiri writer who pens both critical as well as creative pieces. He is presently pursuing his PhD at UT Dallas. His works have also emerged in Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, Jaggery: A DesiLit Arts and Literature Journal, Contemporary Literary Review India, The Criterion: An International Journal in English, IJOES. Through the short fiction and poetry, that he seldom finds himself writing, he tries to speak truth to the power and bear witness to the plight of ordinary people in contemporary occupations and political conflicts.
Navel-gazing
As I shut the window in a haste,
The warm bottle, on the windowsill, slid off;
And pushed the mirror to fall.
Here it lies, smashed and splintered before my sight.
I am staring at the fragments, shards, and pieces
That have quickly worked out a maze.
Looking into the broken pieces I see shreds of my own virtual self;
Scattered, withered, and tattered.
I can’t help but draw an analogy,
An analogy of broken mirror and human abstract;
Trust – once torn is arduous to mend.
Expectations – if not met, always hurt.
Pain – left uncured, makes us diseased.
Kindness – maltreated, creates a parasite.
Understanding – if not mutual, leads to chaos.
Love – when not requited, breeds infection.
Pleasure – sought in excess, mangles the soul.
Scattered pieces derange my contemplation,
And seek back my attention.
Hapless pieces no more an entity.
Watch out! Watch out! Hold onto yourself;
For once fallen, you crumble into pieces.
Useless!
You belong to none, and no one belongs to you.
Resuscitation
And our last tête-à-tête ended
with heartbreak and hopelessness.
We both said things we didn’t mean
She wept bitterly with regret and longing,
I acted stone-hearted and spoke indifferently.
In Kashmir, they build gardens over the
rubbles of their houses – when razed to the ground.
From this, I have learnt that Explosion is not
How the story has to end!
Azadi . . .
Where woman becomes a possession and not an entity,
Where man is known by his social stature and by what he owns,
Where being knowledgeable bears you no fruits while money buys you everything,
Where society is broken into fragments and narrow domestic walls,
Where the appearance mesmerizes while the reality is not known,
The essence is not your concern while the pretense is all that matters.
Where people conform easily and less is enacted out of conviction,
Where the next-door neighbor is a stranger but the virtual one is loved,
Where fundamentalism is in air and every second person holds a tape
To measure religion on the scale of pluses and minuses,
Where materialism runs down the line and love is but a cliché,
Where pleasing people is more important than pleasing God,
Azadi there, my dear, is a long way from here.
Dana Neacşu, a New Yorker expat, currently living in Pittsburgh has translated works of fiction from Romanian into English and non-fiction from English into Romanian. She is hard at work on a collection of stories about the 1970s Romania, the first decade in the life of her young protagonist, Trey. Her nickname extols the magical number three (trei) days one needed to survive in order to be. Their name was then listed into the public birth records.
Oh, Please!
His stench talks politely the language of a hangman’s knot ,
a tight noose around my neck.
The teasing smell of death.
Grunting with every step, he comes.
Windows open
Light steps hurry away ashamed of youth and health,
heads bowed .
He leaves us for a momentary rendez-vous with scrubs.
Another success story.
He returns.
The tango
with the summer breeze
starts too rushed.
Without skipping a beat he provides the chorus line “ Oh, please”
Oh, please! I add bending too low under the summer breeze.
Living room
Washington Square Park
Live jazz played on a grand piano
Drinking Madman Espresso iced latte.
A mother playing with her daughter as if she were a young, highly educated, white nanny: despite the music.
A badly kempt ghost, the piano man builds time with music and lovemaking blocks
the latter as spare as his dinner.
A dog barked and scratched
A child tripped and fell
I blinked
Sitting and waiting for all to pass by.
Daughterly love
“Why do you think, mom, everyone is out to get you?”
“Not everyone”, my smile stops the wordy defense
Only death, sweetheart,
And even she is not
That intent in getting me.
Pretending
I play the role of a mummy
Covered in palimpsest
Stories handwritten
In magic, invisible ink
Brain, heart, lower organs
All
Eviscerated
To survive
The daily routine
Marzia Rahman is a Bangladeshi writer and translator. Her flashes have appeared in 101 Words, Postcard Shorts, Five of the Fifth, The Voices Project, Fewerthan500.com, WordCity Literary Journal, Red Fern Review, Dribble Drabble Review, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Potato Soup Journal, Borderless Journal, The Antonym, Flash Fiction Festival Four and Writing Places Anthology UK. Her novella-in-flash If Dreams had wings and Houses were built on clouds was longlisted in the Bath Novella in Flash Award Competition in 2022. Her translations have appeared in several anthologies. She is currently working on a novella. She is also a painter.
What One Generally Sees Inside or Outside of a Classroom
Photo by Aritra Sanyal
A blackboard, with date, month and year written on one side and class and subject on the other side.
A duster. A few white chalks; some whole, a few broken. The broken ones are more useful; students use them to play or draw pictures on the desks or the dusty floor.
A door. Its lock is broken but no one fixes it because it does not need to be fixed. A chair where the teacher sits doggedly and watches over the students.
Rows of tables and benches. A window or two, where a boy or a girl is often found sitting with little or no attention in the class. The blue sky, the horse-shaped clouds, the trees, the green leaves, the grasses and the butterflies hold more charm to them. And one day, this boy or this girl may or may not become a poet who may or may not remember the window.
Boys wear watches. Girls wear ribbons and whisper in each other’s ears, giggling. Boys watch them with the corner of their eyes and try very hard to look indifferent but their hearts hum like bees near the honeysuckles.
A headmaster with more grey hair than black whose retirement is more fun-filled and eventful than his twenty or thirty-years of service.
A math teacher with a complicated expression on his face who gives students complex math problems and hopes they will solve them by themselves.
A science teacher who believes in science more than his marriage and secretly looks for another job in another school, preferably a private one.
An art teacher who dreams of holding a big exhibition in a big city; he falls in love with the new geography teacher who doesn’t understand art. To her, Van Gogh or Picasso are mere names, signifying nothing.
A peon who is slowly and gradually turning deaf; he has been ringing the school bell from time immemorial. He sleeps in a hut close to the school and often hears the chiming of bells in his sleep.
A dog or a cat that roams around the school wags its tail and sits in the sun. The pet has become an indispensable part in the indispensable syllabus of the school.
One or two mishaps, some scandals, a few fights between boys with newly grown moustaches, an expulsion, a source of great amusement. Gossips with long tails.
Final examination. Report Day. Sports Day. Summer break. End of School. The End of Story.
[This piece was inspired by a story titled “What You Usually Find in Novels,” written by Anton Chekhov, and translated by Peter Sekirin. It was featured in The Paris Review (issue 152, Fall 1999)]
The Prayer Room
Photo by Aritra Sanyal
I stand in the middle of a room. It’s empty. I look at the wall before me. Two portions divide the wall like two parts of a story: the beginning and the end. There is no middle, no climax, no closure, no plot. The English fiction writer, E. M. Forster once famously lamented that a novel must have a plot.
A plot shapes a story; it determines how a story develops and unfolds in time! Does a plot define a story too? I wonder what defines a room—its size, structure, colour or history? What history does this room carry? — it used to be a prayer room, that I heard.
The young tour guide with a small red notebook in his hand was showing visitors around the fort; a small group of foreigners with not so colourful clothes and two hippies with the most colourful clothes and hair bands followed him. I was not part of the group; I just happened to be there; I just happened to listen to their conversation. The guide mentioned some prayer room; I didn’t hear the rest of his narrative; I soon got lost in the labyrinth of this place, or was it his words?
I meandered aimlessly for a while, peeked here and there and then passed a long corridor with rose stained glass windows streaming warm tones across the marble floor, before stepping into this room. It has small holes in the walls like closed off windows. A small space inside each hole to store the holy books or maybe the candles.
As a prayer room, this place must have witnessed thousands of prayers and chants, candles must have been lighted here, wishes made, absolutions sought by believers with doubts in their hearts.
No longer a prayer room, the room looks different now; it has a different vibe now. Open to visitors, people come and write names, characters, numbers, equations on the green sandstone in the wall.
I stand close to the wall and stare hard; Ketan, Lucky, Vasu, Rozot on the wall stare back at me. Caught up in the whirlpool of thousands of names, I begin to lose myself, and I seem to enter into a colossal void where there is no beginning or end, where nothing is virtuous or sinful, and where time stands still, and forever. And this is when I finally make a prayer.
Red Fern Review 