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...
The Grandfather by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Steven O’ Brien
Grandfather Heaney dug deep
Into his country’s soil
Another man unlike him left home
To burrow through an alien forest
In search of enemies
The alien...
Khuda by Manash Bhattacharjee
Many times I passed by your house
On my way to see my grandmother
I paused before the large iron gates
Expecting to catch a glimpse of...
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...
Last Heron by Stella Davis
Last Heron
As the last heron goes, rooks
fall from the sky like old black rags
to carpet the new-laid field.
Six days now, six days and nights
without...
Last Heron by Stella Davis
Last Heron
As the last heron goes, rooks
fall from the sky like old black rags
to carpet the new-laid field.
____________________Six days
now, six days and nights
without rain...
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...
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...
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,...
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 Years Ago by Manash Bhattacharjee
            To Fady Joudah
I was waiting at the platform
For a train to Calcutta
In...
The Daylight Comes With Me by John Darwin
Leave the world alone and close the door,
seal this room from everything outside,
nothing else exists but these four walls;
we have eight hours and five...
The Veil by Manash Bhattacharjee
She walks past the wave
Of curious glances
An apparition eluding
Light and desire
Everything she hides from
Trembles in her body
She remembers the lures
In every street
But no street...
SYRIA by Ghayth Armanazi
SUFFER THE COUNTRY
Suffer the curled up corpses of the tortured
Suffer the cluttered ranks of the bound and the beaten
Suffer the pleading eyes of those...
Poet in Delhi by Manash Bhattacharjee
Can you rinse away this city that lasts
like blood on the bitten tongue?
~ Agha Shahid Ali
Delhi,
where parrots lift
the weight of tombs,
poets offer daggers
to deepen...