Poetry | Hidden Time by Alan Zhukovski
They live inside the warmth of typing fingers,
inside the ghostly glass of hidden years
you wanted to implant inside this week.
The doors and windows to...
Social Contract by Rachel Willems
The politeness, not leaving any butter in the jam,
or jam in the butter, or shoes in the hall.
Not leaving any residue of who did...
Snowbound by Michael O’Neill
Snowbound
Carriages lit and still between the drifts ...
With each flake it took on a new form,
the city they seemed exiled from ---
almost a sad,...
The London Magazine Podcast | Episode 4 | A Discovery of...
We were recently contacted by Reverend Christian Mitchell of the church of Heathfield in rural Sussex, who had made a remarkable discovery. In one...
We Wait for Poets by Manash Bhattacharjee
prophets have retired
so do not wait for yours to come to you
~ Ashraf Fayadh (translated by Mona Kareem)
In our country, a prince,
Dara Shikoh, had...
The Teacher by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Upal Deb
He wasn’t a blackboard
Framing flightless birds
Not a classroom figure
Offering the curriculum
To rows of bored faces
He sat on his bed facing
The window Van...
Partita, 1968 by Hannah Lowe
Partita, 1968
When the tabla and double bass are really moving
the raga in full swing
I think of when I used to run for hours, for...
At Aya Sofia by Edward Lucie-Smith
Today it’s snowing, snowing
In Istanbul,
Stamboul, Constantinople,
New Rome, Byzantium.
The city has mislaid its Jews
And most of its Greeks.
The bones of its Armenians
Are long scattered.
Somewhere far...
At the Nursing Home by Leland James
—inside an old man vacant by the window
Hold me occasionally for the light is fading
and I can no longer see the hills that once
rose...
Onion Music by Mark Fiddes
I grow lighter for you
with each striptease
from skin to skin leaving
a glimmering bulb
a milk light by your bed
for you to undress by
or find your...
Exile by Manash Bhattacharjee
Exile
“I rested my mouth on your memory”
~ Yannis Ritsos, from Diaries of Exile
Night arrives like a cart
You push it with motionless hands
There is darkness
But...
Questions Concerning Aristotle’s Tomb by Manash Bhattacharjee
An archaeologist in Greece unearths Aristotle’s
Tomb; others dispute the evidence.
If Aristotle’s ideas are consulted, the archaeologist
Needs to prove, the tomb’s where he claims it,
Not...
Giggles by Evdokia Charalampous
With her eyes closed
she has been staring at the lamps on the ceiling for days.
By now they must look like Sufi dervishes
whirling in white
to...
Poetry | Atlantic Palimpsest by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
-for Heaney and the Peace Bridge
Grey and greying sky
reflected in choppy body,
as our matching heron
performs his balancing act for all to see.
The Donegal hills,...
For Calcutta by Manash Bhattacharjee
As I leave for Calcutta
I think the city
Always that other city
Its river Ganga
Always my other river
Howrah Bridge
What a colonial cradle
A Raj suspended
Kipling's imperial joy
Hoogly...
Towpath by Neil Burns
I
The Lagan - a muddy silt river -
Barrel of roll-tide, ribs of clean branches
Poke up water jutting. On the towpath
I glean a warm wet...
Caries by Fiona Sampson
Little hole little well
of dark staining the lacquer
of my tooth little confessor
coming close and coming close
why are you pursuing me
interrogator of the nerve
in its...
Stripping Gaza by Manash Bhattacharjee
For Najwan Darwish
A lucky three-year-old
Is Saher* Abu Namous
If Gaza didn’t explode
The world would have
Known nothing of him
Now he is all in reports
One among the...
October by Lydia Towsey
October
Pizza bruschetta gold dress Rioja
Autumn is here and Winter forgotten
Walking through town arm in arm with a lover
Moon in the sky and leaves good...
Five Bullets for Sabeen Mahmud by Manash Bhattacharjee
“Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?”
~ Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze
Sabeen had a list of crimes to her name –
She ran a...
Flash Fiction | Never Fall For That by Rebecca Lilly
"Clarify your intent," — Lama Chopra, our
meditation teacher, rang the bell for us to
sit — "the Reaper was once an old friend."
My...
Madonna and Child by Hugh Dunkerley
Don’t believe the lies:
Joseph was a randy little sod.
That’s why we had to leave,
go back to Bethlehem
where he told his family
I was pregnant with...
Different Faces by Manash Bhattacharjee
"I wonder sometimes where people store all their different faces."
~ Trina Nileena Banerjee
The face he wears every morning
Reminds him of his mother
Combing his hair...
Poetry | Woman by Manash Bhattacharjee
Woman
“It’s easy, impossible, hard, worth trying.”
~ Wislawa Szymborska, “Portrait of a Woman” (1976)
She is intimately attached
To night and day.
Only...