Exile by Manash Bhattacharjee
Exile“I rested my mouth on your memory”
~ Yannis Ritsos, from Diaries of ExileNight arrives like a cart
You push it with motionless hands
There is darkness
But...
Evening Light
Evening LightBrave bat in a bowler hat
Blood shot eyes question
What time does this light
Depart?The light descends elsewhere
Its shadow rising here
The bat changes into an...
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...
Five Bullets for Sabeen Mahmud by Manash Bhattacharjee
“Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?”~ Jimi Hendrix, Purple HazeSabeen had a list of crimes to her name –
She ran a...
The Cult of Isaac by M. G. Stephens
THE CULT OF ISAACWe all know about Abraham, the great
religions emanating from his skull,
but what about Isaac, where is his world
taken into theological thought,mulled...
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...
At the Nursing Home by Leland James
—inside an old man vacant by the windowHold me occasionally for the light is fading
and I can no longer see the hills that once
rose...
Green by Chris Woods
My Kodak Brownie didn’t work
but I have a picture of the green dress.
The film was black and white,
my memory is colour.We’d eaten our lunch...
Different Faces by Manash Bhattacharjee
"I wonder sometimes where people store all their different faces."
~ Trina Nileena BanerjeeThe face he wears every morning
Reminds him of his mother
Combing his hair...
Two Hundred Twenty a Kilo by Nabarun Bhattacharya, translated by Manash...
(Homage to Karl Marx)Nabarun Bhattacharya
(23 June 1948 – 31 July 2014)On the floor of a slaughterhouse
A butcher’s leg slips in the blood
Crows go raucous...
Stripping Gaza by Manash Bhattacharjee
For Najwan DarwishA lucky three-year-old
Is Saher* Abu NamousIf Gaza didn’t explode
The world would have
Known nothing of himNow he is all in reports
One among the...
The Grandfather by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Steven O’ BrienGrandfather Heaney dug deep
Into his country’s soil
Another man unlike him left home
To burrow through an alien forest
In search of enemiesThe alien...
Khuda by Manash Bhattacharjee
Many times I passed by your house
On my way to see my grandmotherI 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 HeronAs 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 HeronAs 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 DebHe wasn’t a blackboard
Framing flightless birds
Not a classroom figure
Offering the curriculum
To rows of bored facesHe 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
SnowboundCarriages 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
OctoberPizza 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 JoudahI 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...