May & June 2019
Vol IV No III
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
Tip: if it is underlined it is a clickable link.
Note: drop downs from the menu below sometimes take a few seconds to load.
Published bi-monthly
International Poetry الشعر শ্লোক ကဗျာ ליבע ਪਿਆਰ өлүм கவிதை บทกวี ποίηση költészet 詩歌
with Vera Ignatowitsch
A Courageous Woman Boils the Bananas
a courageous woman boils the bananas
and watches her people on a Haitian mountain
run away behind her dream
with curly hair and hidden pain
she bribes the sun with her smile
to dissolve the hot and murmured
“Amen”
a courageous woman boils the bananas
and never experiences their taste
always surrounded by tents, always hungrier,
many secrets there, in her chest
counting the footsteps in the sand
revealing how many people are lost!
the Haitian girl plants the corn with her father on high
she tides his body with the robes, she tries her best,
to make our life better
what should we do?
if we truly suffer through our ages
if all our times are blue?
a courageous woman boils the bananas
and touches her baby skin
“Work . . .Work” a sound cries in the space, cried by men!
she tears the tent with a huge passion
she never understands what station means
where everybody needs to dream, to travel
but this isn’t her reality level
a courageous woman boils the bananas
and watches her people on a Haitian mountain
run away behind her dream
with curly hair and hidden pain
she bribes the sun with her smile
to dissolve the hot and murmured
“Amen”
Amirah Al Wassif is a freelance writer. She has written articles, novels, short stories, poems, and songs. Five of her books were written in Arabic, and many of her English works have been published in various cultural magazines.
Life Insurance
Life and its situations
Are like an important document:
Read the terms and conditions
Carefully before signing it.
Inbuilt Stuff
This life is autumn
And I am a tree
Whose leaves are shed.
I stand naked
Worrying about the fate of the leaves.
Surreal World
The reality of
These green blades
Is calling me
To join them
And shed
All my doubts and expectations.
The Game of Bones
My heart is a gambler,
It plays with me.
My mind is the victim
Who has to be
The one paying expenses.
My body is the player
Who silently watches the game.
My life is a street
Where everyone plays.
A person who turns her blood into ink, Annu Punia is a 17 -year-old Indian girl who writes poetry to connect to herself, and to relive moments through poetry. This is her first publication.
Reminders
Before she skipped over, I was gazing
into the usual sea one sees, breathing
my usual breath, shallow, slow.
That day
I had been living my usual day, except
that I realized I had been walking a long time,
on a stony, twisty path.
Staring at my bruised feet, I had been questioning
the wrinkling tide, the setting
sky, the light hiding behind
the distant hill.
She handed me a shell, tubular, scabby
its knobbed spots sinking
into my fingertips.
I cupped it between both hands and peeked in
as if it might escape. It was still
cold from the wet sand, She
was already gone, tiptoeing lightly
toward the glittering sea, orange-kinetic halos
twirling up from behind the hill. Her own
shells clinking a dance in the concave
of her stretched out shirt.
“Thank you,” I sang,
and she thought
it was
for the shell.
First published in Poetika Literary Anthology 2018 by Kasingkasing Press, Iloilo, Philippines.
Anna Teresa Slater is a high school literature and drama teacher from the Philippines and a postgraduate student in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. She lives on a farm with her husband, dog, and cat.
Crows Filled the Sky
In the autumn of my life
Death spread like a plague
Her hair curled like colourful leaves
The tender touch of her breast
The cold wind blew my head
Off my shoulders
Crows filled the sky
Birds sang in a skinny grove
The sun threw an orange into
The ocean
Blue like her eyes
Still and turbulent
The sweet love the sun made
To my skin
Mohamad Kebbewar was born and raised in Aleppo. Immigrating to Canada at age 19, Kebbewar earned a degree in history from Concordia University before becoming a graphic designer.
Chaos
A brief history of humankind will show
The cinder-trail of overreaching dreams.
Mostly, we keep our chaos bottled,
Settling for a little warmth on cold nights.
But the universe, they say, is expanding,
And not easily contained.
Everybody only asks for three wishes.
Ruchira Mandal writes poetry, songs, fiction when she finds time from grading papers. She lives in Kolkata, India, loves traveling and dim sums, and has been known to talk to herself on occasion.