Special Edition: Abstract Articulations
Special Edition Authors: June 2025
Contributing Authors
Showing posts with label Abstract Articulations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abstract Articulations. Show all posts
Special Edition: Namita Rai
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| Namita Rai |
Damaged Not Destroyed
The sculptor hammered day and night,
Resolute to breathe life in the granite.
The chisel glistened with sweat and sighs!
As it engraved each suffering on the Sun cursed granite.
The pain was dark and deep, humiliation sharp as ridges steep!
Exploitation had left them distraught in grief,
Nature's wrath connived with man's manipulations,
Pride dried and cracked by droughts,
Spirits damp by floods,
Earthquakes shook their foundations,
The Sun darkened their aspirations!
No wonder!
Greed, might, and fate conspired to annihilate the deprived race!
But resilience breathed and sustained through,
Causing a stir in the faint spirit anew.
Tourists flocked around the sculpture to bask in their past Glory,
Failing to see a race rising in the granite story,
Rewriting boldly the history of resilience in the face of gory,
The sons of the soil upright, tall.
The Sun crimson with shame hid low in the horizon like a tight ball.
Tears trickled but his eyes smiled,
With joy in his voice cried, "Now my art has actually been defined, why? An exploited race can be Damaged Not Destroyed".
He left the site
For the world to observe and decide,
How resilience survived the might.
Not just to capture the sculpture in their cameras,
to keep a memory of their vacation alive!
Special Edition: Michael Burch
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| Michael R. Burch |
Unbent, unbowed
Unbent,
unbowed,
we
remain, at heart, human,
believing in love
until
the final cessation
and beyond…
***
Archaischer
torso Apollos (“Archaic torso of Apollo”)
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
translation
by Michael R. Burch
We
cannot know the beheaded god
nor
his eyes’ forfeited visions. But still
the
figure’s trunk glows with the strange vitality
of
a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates
dynamism. Otherwise
the
firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor
the centering loins make us smile
at
the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise
the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy
of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting
procreation’s triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy
of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like
an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.
Special Edition: Aparna Pradhan
 |
| Aparna Pradhan |
Damaged Not Destroyed / Learn to Embrace
I learned to soar high from birds in the sky,
To flutter with grace as the butterfly’s fly.
I hummed the tunes of the bees in the golden light,
To chirp at dawn a song of delight.
From oceans depth, I grasped the cosmic soul,
The silent strength that made them infinite and whole.
From the sun I learnt to spread light and shine,
To keep the darkness aside with light divine.
The rivers flowed and whispered low,
Keep moving ahead, never fear the flow.
The flowers taught me smiles never go vain,
Smile without fear through joy and pain.
Yet failed to truly see,
The deeper truths in nature’s humble plea.
To be patient, gentle, kind and bend,
To care, heal, nurture love, and to mend.
O human, learn from the steadfast trees,
When the roots are hurt the branches grieve.
The leaves and flowers fall and weep,
Their sorrow runs strong and deep.
Learn and embrace like Nature does,
Give selflessly to the world without a fuss.
Serve whole-heartedly it is still not annoyed,
Replenish Nature – it is damaged but not destroyed.
***
рдЖрдУ рд╕ीрдЦें
рдкрд░िंрджों рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рдЙрдб़ाрди рднрд░рдиा,
рддिрддрд▓ी рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рдЗрдард▓ाрдиा,
рднंрд╡рд░े рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рдЧुрдирдЧुрдиाрдиा,
рдЪिрдб़िрдпों рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рдЪрд╣рдХрдиा,
рд╕ाрдЧрд░ рд╕े рд╕рдордЭा рдЧрд╣рд░ाрдиा।
рд╕ूрд░рдЬ рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рддрдо рдХो рд╣рд░рдиा
рдирджिрдпा рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рдЕрд╡िрд░рд▓ рдЖрдЧे рдмрдв़рдиा,
рдлूрд▓ों рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦा рд╣рд░ рд╣ाрд▓ рдоें рдоुрд╕्рдХुрд░ाрдиा।
рдкрд░ рдлिрд░ рднी рди рд╕ीрдЦा-
рд╕рд╣рдирд╢ीрд▓ рд╣ोрдиा
рдк्рд░рдХृрддि рдХा рд╕рдо्рдоाрди рдХрд░рдиा,
рдиिрдЦाрд░ рдХрд░ рд╕рд╣ेрдЬрдиा рд╕ंрд╡ाрд░рдиा,
рдк्рд░ेрдо рд╕े рд░िрд╢्рддे рдиिрднाрдиा।
рдП рдоाрдирд╡! рдкेрдб़ों рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦो рд░िрд╢्рддे рдиिрднाрдиा,
рдЬрдб़ों рдкрд░ рдЬрдм рдЖрдШाрдд рд╣ोрддा рд╣ै,
рдкीрдб़ा рд╕े рдЯрд╣рдиिрдпां рд╕ूрдЦ рдЬाрддी рд╣ैं,
рдкрдд्рддे рдЭрдб़ рдЬाрддे рд╣ैं!
рдк्рд░рдХृрддि рд╕े рд╕ीрдЦो
рд╕рдмрдХो рдЧрд▓े рд▓рдЧा рдХрд░ рдЬीрд╡рди рджेрдиा
рдиि:рд╕्рд╡ाрд░्рде рднाрд╡ рд╕े рд╕ेрд╡ा рдХрд░рдиा।
(Translation by the author of her Hindi poem for the themed call.)
Special Edition: Nivedita Roy
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| Nivedita Roy |
Apologies
It is a gurgling sound in the throat
Sighs escape like vapor
It sinks into the heart
Leaving the heart bereft of all hemoglobin
The gut knots into thunderous ball
squeezing my whole existence
The remorse, the regret pricks like a sharp needle
Apologies choke my whitened heart
Fearing they shall never arrive
I do forgive and move ahead
Though I may not forget
These encyclopedic experiences educated
my naivety
My boundaries are well defined
The escaped gurgles are not at peace
It is those unshed tears battling my soul
And ubiquitously reveal themselves
Those appearances of the rolling brine
Uncontrollable unconditional surrendering
They wish to travel to their horizons
The weaned out of the froth of my eyes
Rolling into eternity
Staining my spotless cheeks
Shivers of aching tears reduced to whimpers
Sighing with a momentary relief
Shutting my arid eyes
I travel into nothingness.
***Special Edition: Sankha Ranjan Patra
 |
| Sankha Ranjan Patra |
Broken Zeal
Not predictable life
But a precious one ,
Moments make it
shudder on a sudden
Like violent storms
To uproot all at once
But fail if sturdy is earth.
Who can break me?
How much dejection?
I know not that,
I just look at the future.
How much rejection?
I know not that,
I just look at a lover.
Both rush towards many
With hope and love,
But time changes both,
So useless to be thinking,
To mourn in the morning
But to rise up to raise words
For the rest of the deeds.
My will is still within
Though I am broken
From the inside too,
All reflects the outlook
And remains the shape,
Not invisible then,
Curbed and cumbered.
My heart breaks
From time to time
And many a time,
But little of the zeal
Within me alive still,
Enough to be happy
For fight in future.
***
Special Edition: Pankajam Kottarath
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| K Pankajam |
Greedy Growth of Hopes
Hope and resilience are in her blood
and greedy are their growth in her mind.
Her heart is not bound by any spiritual cult
It finds its own ways to ease and exult.
When gloom sits down deep slurping salaciously
from the blistered pools of passivity
She clings to its flimsy folds and float
till the light of liveliness slowly, but surely unfolds.
Poets, you have in you great vigour of mind
allow it not to sap in sloth or sink into the mud
else it rots like iron rusting from disuse
and allow doom or gloom to vanish into the seas.
Same is true with her dreams and desires, unwavering
To shake them, one needs to chase up to their verges.
***
Sinking Discords
Hard she tries to untangle the knots in her thoughts
A discord once born breeds in unlit bends fast,
leaves its scars those refuse to fade out from hearts
prompting thoughts grow beyond bounds, unhinged.
To destroy the roots of deep-grown hurts, tough
Hard though, not impossible, she gathers herself.
How to reach the fort of success alone in her thoughts
and steadfast in her resolve to win, she ventures out.
What if it is at the farthest end? Resolute not to quit.
Hurdles to fade away in the force of her new-found grit
for the road-map of victory is clear and distinct
she gains momentum, nothing to distract, thwart or prevent.
Wearing heart on her sleeves and faith in her guts
she moves forward battling the winds of baffling doubts
upon which coiled discords sink to the bottom, never to revert,
thunders and storms slowly settle down in her heart.
***
Bridge of Belief
Sun and moon guiding day and night
Why at all a doubt when start is fair, if not smart.
Wish I build a bridge with belief,
between imagination and truth
pushing back reeking flaws of the past
and as I cross it from this end to that
doubts dissolve; destiny disappears
transpiring to widen the horizon of my dreams
my feminine inklings fly away in their force.
As passion and precision manifest in success
the whirlwind of vile thoughts I try to suppress,
to keep cool within and outside, I thrive,
hold the infinite flames of my hopes alive.
My desires intense, goals modest
vision clear and on ways varied, as I meditate
chances emerge multiple to choose from the best,
When fear of failure is forced to take a back seat.
***Special Edition: Ritu Kamra Kumar
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| Ritu Kamra Kumar |
Canvas of Endurance
I might appear a fragment, a form undone
No limbs to gesture, no voice to claim grace,
Frayed at the edges, the colors run,
Yet, within my silence, a sacred space.
I never begged to be beautiful, pristine,
Not a portrait hung in opulent halls.
I was carved in chaos, in-between,
A relic that rose though time withdraws.
Cracks map my face like rivers of gold,
Each one a wound, but also a seam.
Kintsugi of spirit—resilience retold,
Restitching loss into the fabric of dream.
No tempest could tear the core of me,
No careless eye could erase my frame.
I am a memory that refuses to flee,
An unfinished psalm, not seeking fame.
Breath may falter, and flesh decay,
But the soul—like Lear in storm—will cry
Not for pity, but for a rightful way
To live with truth, not the mask or lie.
I have wandered through forgotten frames,
In galleries where ghosts once wept.
I’ve heard the hush of unspoken names,
Where light on ruin silently crept.
Still, I stand, though bruised and bent,
A lighthouse etched on night’s own skin.
Each scar—a syllable, each tear—intent,
Marking the place where I begin.
Who dares destroy the will to rise,
The hunger to hope, to still implore?
Even Icarus, scorched by skies,
Dreamed of wings that could soar once more.
I hold no symmetry, nor gilded guise,
Yet in my shape, truth dares to dwell.
The canvas flawed, the frame unwise
Yet within, a universe rebels.
So, mark me not for what I lack
The missing brush, the faded hue
But for the will that won’t turn back,
For the art that keeps breaking through.
***
Crown of Clay
Ah, what a pitiful plight I parade
Once poised to reign, now razed in regret.
My mind, a maze of murmuring greed,
Spun its schemes to scrape the skins of need.
I dreamed not of love, nor of lore,
But thrones carved from the ribs of the poor.
Each coin, a conquest, each breath, a bargain
I bartered souls for a fleeting dominion.
With fingers forked like serpent tongues,
I pricked their peace with thorn-tipped wrongs.
A hound, I howled in hunger for more,
Draining dreams from every door.
My veins, once veins of velvet pride,
Ran red with ruin I could not hide.
Empires rose beneath my tread
Built on backs, and broken bread.
But now, behold—I stand alone,
A shadow beneath a shattered throne.
No sceptre now, no silken lie
Only the silence of a stifled cry.
I see Ozymandias in the mirror’s glare
His crown cracked, his kingdom air.
Time’s tide took all I claimed,
Etched in sand, my sins unnamed.
A lesson etched in blood and dust
No gold survives the grave’s rust.
The guillotine waits—its whisper near
Not of death, but of truth severe
Let me rebuild with bruised hands,
Sow light across these scorched lands.
Not for glory, not to reign
But to cleanse the crimson from my name.
***
The Thorns of Thistle Time
Oh, what a thorn-throttled time I tread
The sky once sapphire now sags with dread.
Where went the breeze that once kissed my brow?
Where sings the sun that bathed me—then, not now?
Love, once a lullaby, lost in the din,
Now silence stalks my soul within.
I watch the world, a wheel without wonder,
Its heart a hollow drumbeat of thunder.
My God! What ghostly guise is this age?
No kindness kindles, no wisdom sage.
Humanity’s halo, tarnished and torn,
Wanders weeping, weary, and worn.
I pass unnoticed—scant steps, no glance,
Wrapped in rags of a fading trance.
Misery, my sister, holds my hand,
Leads me limping through loveless land.
Why, I ask, do I wear such woe?
My worth—whittled, a whisper in snow.
Yet even Pandora, with palms unfurled,
Left Hope cradled in a cracked world.
I gather my grief like scattered glass,
Each shard a story, a soul’s bypass.
I knead my ache into mortal clay,
To mold a dawn from this decay.
O Courage—come, with calloused grace,
Cloak me in fire, let me face
This frozen fate with fearless flame,
Let scars be stars that spell my name.
For I may be fractured, but not yet done—
My ruin, a relic kissed by the sun.
I rise again—not crowned, not clean,
But burning brighter through what’s been seen.
***
Special Edition: Radha Chakravarty
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| Radha Chakravarty |
Singed
wings singed by fire
moth heart still aflutter
for the flame
***
Silent stories
lingering inscriptions
on memory’s skin
scars tell silent stories
of battles fought
resilience
survival
and wounds that healed
***
Special Edition: Rajnish Mishra
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| Rajnish Mishra |
Abstract Concretized
What are you?
At first, I’m a little irritated,
as I must answer that question
and I’ve barely known you for a minute.
I think that you are a piece of burnt
metallurgical coke, painted dirty yellow.
If only,
I could close the description here!
As I gaze at you, I discover
the outlines of an athletic male’s torso
hidden within your folds:
two shoulders, a taut neck with a prominent
Adam’s Apple – that made me declare it male,
and a tapering waistline justifies ‘athletic’.
Now I ask: Who are you?
Shall I confidently declare you an abstract
human torso? Your invisible face kind of half-smiles
and I know by the twinkling in your imagined eyes
that it’s not so simple. Are you a fragment of
that statue in the male Shelley’s poem:
the mighty Ozymandias? Ah, I’m not sure!
Are you Achilles? For long have we made
your shield in our mind – the shield that
Hephaestus made as Thetis stood marvelling.
Twice, we’ve enough details on it to make
it twice from the scratch.
The mighty Achilles, then? Ah, I’m not sure!
You must be someone important, I’m sure. Or else,
why would they set you with a museum
base and put you at display, for visitors to observe
with rapt attention? Yet, the question remains:
What are you? Who are you?
***
Lines Ekphrastic
Observe a work of art, then make
another. It’s a feat of the intellect;
a linguistic exercise. It’s ekphrasis.
It’s a place where visual meets literal.
It’s the sum total of ‘n’ moments
of abstract creation concretized on
page or screen, or of the concrete
translated into abstract, then to concrete again.
Its roots go deep, long back
into the pages of history, drawn up to
that denouncer of the poetic art,
the banisher of poets from the Republic.
Works of art, painted or sculpted,
inspire poets: the father artificer’s master artifice,
the young master’s Grecian Urn, and this piece
in your hands come to my mind, and few questions:
Why is it done? What does the poet want?
To make the object of attention appear
sublime maybe, to improve on reality, possibly,
to bring the immense powers of the reader’s
mind into play, probably. To force the posterity
to compare the description with the described
one day, with the second creation that sometimes
comes centuries after the first.
***Special Edition: Snigdha Agrawal
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| Snigdha Agrawal |
Dadaji’s Charpai
It had always been there, under the neem tree in the courtyard, its sagging belly of woven coir rope, stretched thin over time and stories. It wasn’t just furniture but a fixture of life, a net that held generations of births, deaths, and life dramas. Once a golden twist of copra fibre, the coir ropes had darkened with years, absorbing oil, sun, laughter, and loss, like skin absorbs time. It groaned when sat upon, creaked when Dadaji shifted his weight or when a child bounced on it mid-game, but never once did it break. That old thing had the stubbornness of a mule and memories archived within its tapestry.
Amrik was only a few months old when he first lay on that charpai, soaked with mustard oil, slippery as an eel, glistening in the winter sun. Dadaji had rubbed the oil in slow, concentric circles, flipping him over like a paratha, so that no part of him missed the warmth of the January sun. The charpai meekly took it all: the leaked urine, the sudden projectile vomit after too much milk, even the baby poop that managed to sneak past the cloth nappy. No one cleaned it thoroughly. It wasn’t necessary. It was a living record of babyhood.
Evenings had their predictable pattern. As the village sky turned a soft, smoky orange and the smell of cow dung fires wafted from the neighbouring homes, Dadaji would set up the chessboard on the charpai. They’d drink lassi from the same tall steel glass, Bebe refilled occasionally. Homework, too, was done under Dadaji’s watch, on the same sunken bed.
And then came the morning when the charpai became something else.
There was something amiss. Why hadn’t Dadaji shaken him awake, as was usual? The sound of his flip flops slapping on the cemented rooftop, followed by the practised loud mouth gargling, was missing. There was an eerie silence. Like the rhythm of the household had paused. Had Dadaji overslept? Unlikely. Peering closer, Amrik noticed his chest didn’t rise and fall. The hissing sound of his breath was absent. His face had a kind of stillness that even sleep couldn’t imitate. Realising the truth felt like being punched in the face. He yelled loudly, which had the household rushing up. Seeing his still form, Bebe let out a scream that cracked through the skies, like thunder. They lit the diya, placed tulsi under his tongue, and prepared to take him away, cradled in the charpai.
They tried to burn the charpai along with him, as was customary, in the village, as a way to show respect for the deceased and ensure his soul got released. But Amrik raised a storm. He clung to one of the legs, his face buried in its splintered wood, sobbing and screaming. His mother tried to coax him, his uncles tried to reason, but he held on with the fierce confusion of a child unable to handle grief. And so, the charpai survived, though barely.
Years unspooled like the ropes of that bed. Amrik grew up, married a city girl from Andheri, and got a job in Mumbai. They bought an apartment in Worli, a sea-facing flat with glass balconies and Italian tiles. One of those places that smells of fresh paint and detachment. When the packers arrived to move things, he brought only a few essentials: old photographs, the old chessboard, and that charpai.
Everyone objected. His wife rolled her eyes. His mother said it was “bad luck” to bring something like that into a new home. But Amrik didn’t budge. “It’s not furniture,” he said quietly. “It’s mine.” And so, the old relic travelled from a dusty Punjab courtyard to the thirteenth floor of a tower flirting with the clouds moving in from the Arabian Sea.
Now it sits on his balcony, awkward and out of place amid potted palms and slick cane chairs. The sea wind pushes through its worn-out ropes, and when it rains, the frame soaks in water like an old man soaking in a tub. The wood is cracked in places; one leg is shorter, propped up by a piece of broken wood from the neem tree. The ropes sag like tired skin. But Amrik doesn’t try to fix it anymore. He tried once, with new coir from Dadar market, but the knots felt unfamiliar. False. The moment he sat on it, he knew it was no longer Dadaji’s charpai. It was just a poor imitation. So, he undid the new ropes. The old frayed ropes had to be knitted back with extreme caution. A task he undertook himself.
Every Sunday morning, when the rest of the house sleeps in, his wife still under the blanket, the kids tangled in dreams, Amrik steps out with his chai and lies down on the charpai. The sea murmurs below, birds trace lazy arcs overhead, and the city hum fades into a distant murmur. Here, on this broken frame of memory, he feels whole. He closes his eyes and is back in the village. The neem tree above, the sun on his skin, Dadaji flipping him over with a smile. He can almost taste the thick lassi, almost hear Dadaji shout ‘checkmate’ slapping his thighs in glee.
Sometimes, the ropes creak in a way that sounds like laughter. Sometimes, the scent of copra and old sweat lingers just long enough to bring tears. His children find it strange to hold onto something as useless as a clock with hands. Amrik just smiles in response. “Some things are not meant to be destroyed,” he says, more to himself than anyone else. “They’re meant to be remembered.”
And so, the charpai remains; significantly damaged, sagging and threadbare, but undefeated. Like memory. Like love. It may no longer hold weight like it once did, but it holds something deeper. A boy’s first alphabet with chalk on a slate. Grandfather’s warm cuddles. A lifetime of memories woven between its ropes.
Old. Tired. Indestructible.
Charpai – a wooden cot woven with coir ropes
Tulsi – holy basil
Dadaji – paternal grandfather
Bebe – reference to mother
Diya – clay oil lamp
Bio: Snigdha Agrawal, a septuagenarian, was raised in a cosmopolitan environment, with exposure to Eastern and Western Cultures, imbibing the best of both worlds. Educated in Loreto Institutions, under the tutelage of Irish Nuns, she developed a love for writing from childhood. A versatile writer, she writes all genres of poetry, prose, short stories and travelogues.
A published author of five books, the latest, FRAGMENTS OF TIME, is a book of memoirs, written in a simplistic style. The book is available on Amazon worldwide in all formats. She lives in Bangalore (India) and is happiest writing and travelling, her lifelong passions.Special Edition: Collaborative Poetry
 |
| Christina Chin |
 |
| Shane Coppage |
 |
| Jerome Berglund |
Bronze
Christina Chin &
Jerome Berglund
apple encased in caramel
refrigerate
once you take a bite
an
explosion
of
tooth sensitivity
strawberries
in
the box
tiny
hands
opening
the flue
blistering contacts
the steep price
of ivy’s attentions
prudent
shopping
in
small thrifty stores
pillow
sweat
the
slow passage
of
sleepless night
crow on the roof
walking perimeter
all the places you can’t go
and have a mind to crash
eurasian milfoil
long
whorls catch
the
heels
***
Cuneiform
Jerome Berglund
scarred
earth
the
indent of hair
in
a bar of soap
leather
flower
a
water tower
arises
crudely
black sands lull
Atlantic reaches out…
fishing village
there
you are
poppet...
tomato
pin cushion
that
nice smell
while
blowing it out
spiced
***
Altostratus
Shane Coppage &
Jerome Berglund
corpse fauna
we don’t need
the blow-by-blow
beached whale
bronc ride
it was
a moth
candle snuffer
pus
on the sheet
marks we leave
unlock pattern
co
loSQUID
sal
the empirical method
cartography
one day
my mind
state park
Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry were released by Setu, Meat For Tea, M┼Нtus Aud─Бx press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Fevers of the Mind.
Shane Coppage is a poet and artist. His poetry has been published in Prune Juice, Whiptail, Humana Obscura, dadakuku, Trash Panda, The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Wales Haiku Journal, The Wee Sparrow Press, and Cold Moon Journal, among others. Coppage lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his growing family.
Christina Chin is a painter and haiku poet from Malaysia. She is a four-time recipient of the top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California. 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest. 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photo-haiku Contest. She has been published in numerous journals, multilingual journals, and anthologies, including Japan’s prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine.
Special Edition: Concrete Poem
Sarang Bhand
Marjorie Pezzoli
Christina Chin
***
Facing the Sun
fallen clay
becomes bronze
the patina of bruises ~ Marjorie Pezzoli
park swing in disuse
rusted metal ~ Christina Chin
melting slowly
in devotional fire
to be born anew ~ Sarang Bhand
stoking the forge
heat of the moment
moving past pain ~ Marjorie Pezzoli
from form to formless
evolution of self ~ Sarang Bhand
baked in the sun
threshing sunflower
seeds on the ground ~ Christina Chin
***
***
Bio
Christina Chin is a painter and haiku poet from Malaysia. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California. 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest. 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photohaiku Contest. She has been published in numerous journals, multilingual journals, and anthologies, including Japan's prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine.
Marjorie Pezzoli is a silk painter over 30 years, a visual artist, storyteller, and haikuist. Her writings cover joy, hope, grief, and cosmic wonders. Nature is a huge inspiration. Since 2019 her poems have been published in numerous poetry anthologies and online journals. Her work deals with grief, hope, earth stewardship, and cosmic wonders. Photos taken while out walking Beau, the dog with Betty Davis eyes, inspires much of her work. Marjorie looks for words worth more than a thousand images. wwwPezzoliart.com
Sarang Bhand is an entrepreneur working in the clean-tech space. When he is not troubleshooting projects, he likes to spend time writing over the weekends. He is a keen student of the Japanese poetry forms and likes to write senryu exploring the subtleties of day to day observations and human tendencies. His writings can be found @ih_klektik on X (previously Twitter).
Special Edition: Milan Mondal
 |
| Milan Mondal |
Subversion
The centre is not yours any longer
It was
As you preached it.
You are stuck
You are crooked
You are fixed
The string makes you hinged.
***
Posthuman
The stature is stooped
For resilience you can say
But the hierarchy
Is hammered
And you stand decentered.
***
The Figurine
Not fixed
Not firmed
Nor high
Nor warm
You stand there for no reason.
***
Bio: An Assistant Professor and poet, Milan Mondal, paces
on the ground of both common and esoteric subjects with his creative feet. The
stamp of his creative corpus is found in Setu: Bilingual, Borderless
Journal, EKL Review, and Shimmer Spring: Poetry and Prose
among others. He may be reached at milanmondalapengnrc19@gmail.com.
Special Edition: Meetu Mishra
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| Meetu Mishra |
Spirit of resilience
When ,life hits hard,
you’re dealt with a blow,
rise stronger,never give in,
adapt,cope,recover,heal,
fight the circumstances,never give in,
find your strength,your path,a way out,
let the world,raise a toast,
to your spirit of resilience.
***
Bounce back stronger
This life,strange,fragile,complex,
one moment,a fairytale,
the next,a disaster,that’s real,
how’re we supposed to cope and deal?
faith,courage,belief in self,
determination,the only ray of hope,
trust,this too shall pass,
it’s the only way,forward,
bounce back,stronger!!
***
Heal
the soul
Tragedy,wreaks havoc,
a pall of gloom descends,
dreams,hope,come crashing,
it seems,it is the end,
a thriving world,turns upside down,
the future,we endlessly worry about,
things,we put off,for later,
all become meaningless,
when reality,unfolds,
in these darkest,lowest moments,
have faith,trust his grace,
for
he will see you through,
seasons
of difficulty,my friend,
heal
the soul,hold on.
***
Special Edition: Sriparna Mitra
She was a scalpel in a world of corruption
Sriparna Mitra
Wearing
her white coat like a second skin,
a
village girl climbed her way up
through
the whirlpool
of a
crumbling system
to
become a doctor.
She
healed children with vaccines,
stitched
up mothers
without
fooling them
with
anaesthesia.
One
night, on her way back from the hospital,
a van
stopped.
Giant
men in black uniforms.
Some in
khaki, some in suits,
got off
-
some of
them she already knew
who
once called her “sister.”
They
pierced her internal flesh,
stripped
her womb with their salacious teeth,
as if
erasing could dissipate
her
thoughts into oblivion.
They
thought she’d vanish
like
other commodified women,
whose
names history gulps
before
the ink dries up.
But
truth never lies
beneath
balky bedsheets,
just
because its body perishes.
Her
image multiplies
like a
virus
in the
cells of every woman now.
Her
flesh may be crippled,
but
her pen
is still inking
on the
fair pages
of
medical recipes.
***
Bio: Sriparna Mitra is a poet from India with a Master’s in English Literature and Language and a B.Ed. She has cleared the NET JRF in English and finds inspiration in the subtleties of everyday emotion. Her poetry has been featured in Paradise on Earth: An International Anthology Volume II, Double Speak Online Literary Magazine, The Wise Owl Magazine and Piker Press Journal. Through lyrical expression, she seeks to capture the unsaid and the unseen in the human experience.
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