All posts in Issue 1, June 2018

Cactus Thorns are my language.I announce my existencewith a bleeding touch. Once these thorns were flowers.I loathe lovers who betray.Poets have abandoned the desertsto go back to the gardens.Only camels remain here, and merchants,who trample my blooms to dust. One thorn for each rare drop of water.I don’t tempt butterflies,no bird sings my praise.I don’t…

A Dream is Also A dream is also an island,surrounded by the swirling watersof myth-memory;surrounded by the stillness of the nightand mother’s anxiety,which is only another wordfor the currents of the night. A dream is also an allegory;only I distrust its hierarchy of veils,and the masks nailed to the doorsyou have to pass through—form within…

Poetry Matters SHARMILA RAY Poetry creates an atmosphere of words and words only, biting, caustic, lulling, loving. The words get blurred, but it leaves me contemplating, a bit like in what Tocqueville calls touching the ‘hidden nerve’. I get transported to a universe which is expansive, spontaneous, artless and also self-indulgent. So it is not…

Poetry : The Healing Touch MALASHRI LAL The millennium dawned with a UN pledge on poverty eradication, environmental protection, human rights and care of the vulnerable. Less than two decades from then, it is clear that dislocations, exile, migrations and displacements have brought new forms of violence to civil society in many parts of the…