Vol. 1 | Issue 1
Advaitam Speaks Literary
July-2017
Being is Seeing
An international journal of poetry, poetics and visual arts
2 An International Journal of Poetry, Poetics and Visual Arts
Advaitam Speaks Literary
Founder/Publisher/Editor-in-Chief: Debasish Parashar Assistant Editor (Guest)- July: Diana McWilliams (Beijing/California)
New Delhi-World advaitamspeaks@gmail.com Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Advaitam Speaks Literary
Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief: Debasish Parashar E-mail: debasishparashar87@gmail.com or, advaitamspeaks@gmail.com
Published by Debasish Parashar University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
https://advaitamspeaksliterary.wordpress.com/ Copyright Š2017 The Authors
The contributors named in this book have asserted their moral rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act to be identified as the editors and authors of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the above-named copyright owners and the publisher.
Typography, Magazine & Cover Design by Debasish Parashar
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John Guzlowski
Bio:
Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz said that Guzlowski’s writings reveal an “enormous ability for grasping reality” and that his first volume of poems ‘Language of Mules’ “astonished him.” John Guzlowski's poetry appears in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Rattle, Ontario Review, North American Review, Salon.Com, and many other journals. His poems and personal essays about his Polish parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany and refugees making a life for themselves in Chicago appear in his memoir Echoes of Tattered Tongues (Aquila Polonica Press). He is also the author of three novels. He is the recipient of the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Poetry Award and also Eric Hoffer Foundation's Montaigne Award for his book Echoes of Tattered Tongues.
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Melon
When I see a melon on the table glinting in the morning light, why does my heart leap up, go out to it as it does? Why do I want to sketch this melon, put it down in words, or set it down in short melodic phrases?
It can never come closer to me than it is now, at this moment when I see it before me on the table like some small world I dreamt as a child in my sandbox of dreams, and seeing it as this world, I am taken by it,
possessed by it as surely as the spring takes the elm, thawing it until the winter is nothing in its life, until the skin of leaves it’s lost is nothing. I become the melon’s then, exist only to admire
its beauty, its lime white skin and cold sweetness, its Bethlehem and Golgotha, exist only to admire its otherness, and see myself a part from it, never closer to it than I am now, never freer than now of my own place of skulls.
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If There is Light It Will Find You
But what if there’s only darkness? Memories scored in black ink and scattered paper— the mother folded into herself weeping with a letter in her hand? The father receiving the blows that won’t kill him, only blind him? What then? What then? The violin doesn’t play for everyone. Caravaggio killed a man in a tennis court but he was still a painter.
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Usha Akella
Bio: Usha Akella has authored three books of poetry and scripted one musical drama. She is pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing at Cambridge University, UK. She read with a group of eminent South Asian Diaspora poets at the House of Lords in June 2016. Her work has been included in the Harper Collins Anthology of Indian English Poets. Her recent book ‘The Rosary of Latitudes’ carries a foreword by Keki Daruwalla. She was selected as a Cultural Ambassador for the City of Austin for 2015. She has been published in numerous Literary journals, and has been invited to prestigious international poetry festivals in Slovakia, Nicaragua, Macedonia, Colombia, Slovenia, India etc. She is the founder of ‘Matwaala’ the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US. (Edition 1: 2015, Austin, Director; Edition 2: 2017, Long Island/NYC, Director: Pramila Venkateswaran). She has won literary prizes (Nazim Hikmet award, Open Road Review Prize and Egan Memorial Prize), and enjoys interviewing artists, scholars and poets for reputed magazines. She has written a few quixotic nonfiction prose pieces published in The Statesman and India Currents. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin which takes poetry readings to the disadvantaged in women’s shelters, senior homes, hospitals. Several hundreds of readings have reached these venues via this medium. The City of Austin proclaimed January 7th as Poetry Caravan Day.
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Reading the South American poets Orchard of sounds, pens tipped with fire, throats warm with poetry, poems moist with honey, poems of molten lava, lines like swills of the flamenco, poems buoyant with yeast, poems rising, poems of conquest, exile, ferment of politics, savage lands, poems of myth—clash of armor, ardor and crumbling walls. Poems like protection from winds, like rivers coming full circle, like oracle, bird song, sun dial and shapes of light. Poetry that comes like wind in tunnels, rises like steeples and mountains and falls like bones of water, juicy like the seeds of pomegranate, poetry like eyes that see, and the gnashing of teeth, black holes, wells and mirrors, war bugles and the earth’s sweat and toil.
Poems like scented milk, thighs of a woman like orgasms, like crosses, poems wet with longing. Succulent oranges, I taste your heat, longing, your fervor, your fever, your earth, your sky, your root, your bread, your love, your flag, your blood, you.
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Miscellany
Chatter of time, Crochet of grass, Puppetry of light, Talisman of the moon, Mirage of the future, The rose of a dream, The Bats calligraphy, A bridge’s yawn, Fumes of oak pollen, The limestone symphonies, Fingertips of the leaves, Looking glass of dew, The tongue of the road, The Light! Light! Light! Striations of dawn, Scrawl of trees, Bride of dawn, Widow of night, Gecko’s obedient line-up, Origami of days, Scroll of years, Hourglass of the body, Alligators of Cedar trunks, Circus of the heart, Guillotine of nightmares, Surgery of immigration, Austin papaya sunsets bleeding staining wounding.
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Birthday poem
Every birthday so far— a fading plinth of genes-hieroglyph, a batten in the floor work of memory. On this day, in the mirror laughing is a child in the corridor of my childhood, playing marbles, she does not think of winning and losing, and watches the birth of a calf, a new life clumsily tottering on fours, On this day I am that calf taking its first step not knowing the slaughter house is around the corner, On this day I forget— Someone always does something for something, A temple priest sells you salvation, On this day I enter the only true temple— the one within, I know I have dared to be human, it is enough that I know and the versions of me in others’ heads do not haunt me, On this day supine under the sun, emboldened, Unhurt by my own prehensile abilities I return home to greet my daughter and meet a crumpled card with typos that cannot misspell ‘Love.’
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Lynn Geri
Bio: While Lynn Geri’s writing of poems only began after her 70th birthday, her writing must include her greatgrandmother walking across American prairies with an ox cart and Lynn’s life with crickets and seagulls, wending around the world a few times, through a few esoteric philosophy books, through the controlled chaos of big cities, to the Eden of living in a spirit saturated forest. She now lives with her sweetheart Dick among screeching owls, scolding squirrels, munching deer and marauding eagles on Washington State's Bellingham Bay... where there is plenty of freedom, stillness and beauty to nourish both her and her writing. She has poems published in Bacopa Literary Review, Sonora Review, Barrow Street, 24 Pearl Street Blog and VB Writers Anthology. Lynn has studied with Averill Curdy, Peter Campion, Bob Hoffman and David Wagoner.
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Dawn A tercet sky condenses pouring through a V crack in the mountain.
Involution
The cascade flows over her satin flesh, standing on the crag of the rock— a sonorous place— left arm across her eyes, to spare her face the flare. Her right-hand filters rillets and sunbeams, breaking into pyramids of creation below. First three children laugh and splash. Farther downflow six play on a slippery scarp. Twelve, then twenty-four three dimensional prisms, refractions of sacred: impetus, water, and light.
Evolution
Note to reader: “I am writing a series of poems called Watermarks. Watermarks, stains left by water, live as a language, metaphors from a different paradigm, faint patterns symbolic within paper, a priori, for thoughts to be written upon, sourced in the creation process, visible when held against light, often central to the page. They float and flow freely atop and behind poems, morphing, shifting, wave like, independent as they travel. You can make them concrete, only by your own curious reflections. They will not visit your bedroom as a fiery climatic nova. Beware however, they may expose themselves. I introduce you to Watermarks the same way I was first brought to them, with no expectation nor explanation.”
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DURGA’S REGENERATION
to the woman Frank raped Demon fighter, the one he chose as the next link in the pain chain, inaccessible suffering, embodiment of feminine. Let dolor be the Sun’s heat blasting your garden of roses, firing your weapon of flowers. Independent fiercest mother, don’t let fear and anger spread to your children and grandchildren. Redeem the devil with green stamps. Trade in the black spider's binding, for violence that stops with you firing your weapon of flowers. You're born of cosmic energies, called by evil, you come from light of the three worlds to stop the rape of innocence. Let your cost end. Laugh again, with your ten arms raised, riding on the back of a lion, firing your weapon of flowers.
(From Mother Light series)
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Seeing is Being
On the long soft days each form is discrete:
Proces s
a sunlit temple, a charm of goldfinch, an irate muscle car, a snow geese flower'd
Then a shortening day sings Amazing Grace, in the saliva'd jaws of winter ice. Wings of wind bay hard,
meadow, a fugitive gaze of raccoons. Here are my children, house, friends, impudent pink petunias. There is the forest, trees,
Becoming
Bein g Be
a murder of crows in a swaying nude maple; birds and tree silhouetted black
terrible tectonic land, zealous tides,
against a white gelid sky,
insurgent earth, moon, sun and the stars.
intersecting, connecting,
All nouns, independent, objective, arbitrary,
arranged by Rilke's angels, like
could be seen here, there, or in no context.
Material
My mirror shows only sharp edges, flat,
iron filings on paper, arranged by a magnet. I see
one lone mass. I, this tiny object, see
crows, maple and sky, all nouns, secondary,
night's forearms of despair. Each noun
nothing trivial,
separate, unimportant, I see me,
temporary actors
in the moss draped casket of a name.
in an eternal verb.
Like two black hole spinning toward each other, Adam and God's fingers almost touching, dactyl and anapest, material and process --each emits gravity waves, sucks me its way-As the two views get closer, collide and merge, they explode in the powerful sound of creation.
(Originally Published in Sonora Review)
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Scott Thomas Outlar
Bio: Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, reviews, and books can be found. His works have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Scott serves as an editor for The Blue Mountain Review, Walking Is Still Honest Press, The Peregrine Muse, and Novelmasters.
Topple Maybe I’d be much happier if I learned again how to suffer more, but probably not, so just leave me here with a respite of peace.
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of a love that burns, burns, burns eternal.
You can keep your high and holy temple, whether it continues to tower in make-believe splendor or eventually topples; I’m safer here in the shelter of a heart that needs not attack, ever.
There are ten thousand wars waging tonight on earth without my soul signed on a single one; you can stamp my name in innocence, or you can forget its sound completely as I wash away the past with a new identity.
Rites of Initiation
Any fool can get high.
It’s not too tough a trick to pull off.
All it takes is a little cash and a few chemicals combined as a dope concoction to dose and douse the day with.
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Hell, some folks can ride such waves in a peaked state for months at a time.
But the true test in life is passed by those who learn how to sustain on solid ground even when water may be crashing all around.
Actually, the only high that matters in the end is experiencing God stare back from your soulmate’s eyes.
The only people who think that sounds clichĂŠ are those too scared to take the proper hit.
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Z.M. Wise
Bio: Z.M. Wise is a proud Illinois native, poet, co-editor and poetry activist, writing since his childhood. He has been a written-word poet for almost two decades and a spoken-word poet for four years. Wise is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum, with his dear friend and founder Dustin Pickering. He has published four full length books of poetry, including: 'Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock!' (MavLit Press), 'The Wandering Poet' (Transcendent Zero Press), 'Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems' (Weasel Press), and 'Cuentos de Amor' (Red Ferret Press). Other than these four books, his poems have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. The motto that keeps him going: POETRY LIVES!! Besides poetry and other forms of writing, his other passions/interests include professional voice acting, singing/lyricism/songwriting, playing a few instruments, fitness, and reading. He can be visited at zmwisethepoet.tumblr.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-weiss-74aa4775 .
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Mioli
This aspiring artist, how she sits idly on the side of the burnt rubber road, unaware of the pros and cons of hitchhiking. Are you Mr. Waters’s girl, prepared for the rape of criticism? Lizard kings hiss at either end of your desert trip. This Taylor Swift lookalike rebels on the right side of the thoroughfare. One too many Firebirds swerve to avoid your cigarette voice. Beyond yonder power lines sits a hallowed mountain below flying saucer skies. Are you far from the home you love, maiden of the green gables? Your country animal skin boots foreshadow the backstabbing affections of the music industry. Think you can handle the sandstorm repercussions? Puffing fags to improve your voice of melody will twist you around the cobweb of mystery.
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Tangent Insanity River in the sky! River in the sky! Clouds are flowing like piles of materialistic gold. Lotus petals lie scattered about. It makes us forget about wholesome existence. The petals are a newlywed surprise for those two inexplicable lab rats. Until this clockwork heart heals to the maximum, the bard would rather be an observer than participant in the chasm of love. Rocky Mountain Low! Environment for a yeti, outcast Himalayan creature. One link missing from life’s patented chain. Who needs the permission from a persnickety persimmon? A perceptive performance in perfecting the art of personality, thy rosebud. Now, the Lewis Carroll within me must be let out, or he shall indeed parish. Lose yourself in the lights of paralysis.
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Sukrita Paul Kumar
Bio: Sukrita Paul Kumar, born and brought up in Kenya, is a well-known poet and critic. Aruna Asaf Ali Chair, Delhi University, she was formerly, a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and an Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Programme, University of Iowa (USA). She has been a recipient of many prestigious fellowships and residencies. Her books of poems include Dream Catcher, Poems Come Home (with translations by Gulzar), Without Margins and Folds of Silence. Amongst others, Sukrita’s critical works are Narrating Partition and The New Story.
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Snow:
Mounds of white silence rise
With the flakes of snow floating down Waywardly from the grey universe
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Where the snow smiles in the moonlight
Buried below lie the flowers that bloom in summer
In the laps of sacred Himalayas, Mountains of snow sit snugly protected by gods and mythology
Down here from the streets of Manhattan snow is cleared overnight with machines and shovels.
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NAKED KAILASH
Betwixt Himalayan peaks and human spirits sometimes masses of black shadows and crows lie trapped in lingering pauses;
In the stillness and the motion of fluttering wings and thoughts, generate waves of warmth caressing the slopes to melt the snows into cheerful apologies
for stripping the sages from the chilled privacy of white robes.
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Anwer Ghani
Bio: Anwer Ghani is an Iraqi poet. He was born in 1973 in Hilla. He is the author of "Narratopoet"; (Inventives Cloud 2017), "Antipoetic Poems"; (Creat Space 2017), "TRUMP"; a poetry collection, (Inner Child Press 2017) and "The Narratolyric Writing"; essays (Smashwords 2017). His name had appeared in Adelaide, Zarf, Peacock, Eunioa, Rabbit, Otoliths and others.
He can be visited at his Website: https://anwerghaniwriting.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
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Babyish Winds
The life is so vacant without the fire of babyish winds. They color the rocky hearts with their frivolity and give the hare his flying soul. If your old trees had taught you the antique aloofness, you should breathe the babyish wind and uncover your deep spring’s warmness.
Alfresco Wishes
Our trees which wear their alfresco wishes and the dreams which play with our small boys are mirrors swimming delightedly on the faces of remote seas. All of them in with the free shadowed spaces sit in midst of the universe with blue chants. Outside our souls, the bags bring colored butterflies, but on the faces of our trees, you can’t see but black sadness. I know as any bird, my wishes need a new open air, and the smoke of the wars had killed my oranges. I know as any young soldier, the black souls can’t buy my ambergris, and all the remnants of the wars’ voices are liars. We like the colors of the flowers and the sounds of the waterfalls, but what can I do if all our sun’s songs were stolen in a free trade? Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Biswamit Dwibedy
Bio: Biswamit Dwibedy is the author of Ozalid (1913 Press, 2010), Eirik’s Ocean (Portable Press, 2016) and Ancient Guest (HarperCollins, 2017). He guest-edited a dossier of Indian poetry for Aufgabe13, published by Litmus Press, and edits Anew Print, a small-press focused on translations from India. He was also a judge for the Best Translated Book Award in 2015. He has an MFA in writing from Bard College and teaches in Bangalore at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology.
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Scene Seven Even the Flood-tide and Ebb-tide were not notes independent of the hours to a young devotee, who then gently put forward the question: “what is the purpose of life?� considered in a newly learned sequence in reference to the springs of compassion, The Master said The fish feed off the stone without attachment and told us that first know this detachment and then everything else Will come like Crabs in the Ganges during Rainy Season And elsewhere, in the same book, the end of hair divided into a Hundred parts and then each part is further divided into a hundred parts for then alone you will not be able to differentiate between your home and a foreign country.
Scene Eight
Used to give advice to his devotees Involving the use of the cyclic during such fickle weather & implored the disciples to live by themselves. Said: the bees sits on flowers only & though they like to live worldly lives, they see that this universe is transitory, alone is Real and in the secretions is the Math & Mission immaculate young boys. Their attitude is that of Ravana, that excellent pundit. He does a great deal of farming. Somewhere he is both worldly and alone, enjoys both yoga and bhoga; the one of knowledge and the other of you may wash a thousand times the cup that the householders very often use, but it is never clean of the taste as after touching the lips of a true devotee.
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Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Bio: Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
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I Am Nursing a Viper for the Roman People
hip to shovel tyranny, dig? the spooks have been through your garbage again searching out treachery and orange peels gloved subterfuge by flashlight, by lamplight do not alert the authorities to themselves they get upset when you do that their wives have it rough enough without your contributions instead, let delusion have run of the house empty cassette spools into the bathtub in the name of false squid walk backwards for the entire evening nurse vipers for the Roman people and when the hounds are set upon you your deception will be perfect the steeping tea box garden full of stamens a suitor’s dust, flippant and inane, marks lost to a growing childhood wall above your previous standing, validation of the growth-death cycle; black town cars at every funeral as though the whole of the automotive industry is in mourning.
(forthcoming in Five:2:One Magazine)
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Kariuki wa Nyamu
Bio: Kariuki wa Nyamu is a passionate Kenyan poet, script writer, editor, translator, literary critic and educator. He obtained an Honours BA Education (Literature and English) from Makerere University, Uganda. His poetry won the National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU) Literary Awards 2007 and Makerere University Creative Writing Competition 2010. He is published in A Thousand Voices Rising, Boda Boda Anthem and Other Poems, Best New African Poets 2015 Anthology, Experimental Writing: Volume 1, Africa Vs Latin America Anthology, Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology, among others. He is presently pursuing a Master of Arts in Literature at Kenyatta University, Kenya.
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Palaver
So what’s all this palaver about the visiting head of State that has hijacked headlines for days on end as the month-long inter-clan clash in the north that’s up till now muted hundreds is broadcast in ‘…local news round-up?’
What a palaver it is, the Health docket’s utter silence when countless paupers are yearning to die in deserted wards as medical staff’s strike spill over to week five over mountains of pay arrears!
Anyway, who cares for scores of expectant mothers expiring on their way to Level 4 hospitals? But, does the appalling state of healthcare really mean anything to the State?
And then, how on earth could you have the nerves to demand hefty perks as our economy gradually crumbles under the strains of devil-lution?
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Hey there, excuse me! Can somebody please elucidate our honourable legislators’ empty rhetorics for dissonantly crafting their idiosyncratic differences at roadside rallies to ensure our political discord!
And before I forget, during retired Senior Chief Kazi Bure’s burial who didn’t realize how you honourably ignited a political duel amidst the bereaved utterly blanketed with grief? How bizarre it was! As a racket among the unwaged youth erupted before your very eyes… thus grounding the casket? Alas! You astounded the human race when you overlooked the frozen form of retired Senior Chief and the excruciating wails of the bereft! How dare you sustain your callous political squabbling even when your microphone was muted! Affirming ‘twas your territory your political party’s zone! How insensate to the grieving you proved!
Anyhow, who on earth gives a damn? Especially when I blether such trivial matters to the domineering you for I know damn well you’ll still rubbish the above national issues as mere palaver of a not-good-enough loyalist!
(First published in Best “New” African Poets 2015 Anthology)
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Sunil Sharma
Bio: Sunil Sharma is a senior academic and a widely-published writer from Mumbai, India. He has already published 15 books: five collections of poetry, two of short fiction, one novel; a critical study of the novel and six joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015. Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA: http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html For more details, please visit the blog: http://www.drsunilsharma.blogspot.in/
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Songs
Even when you and I my dear cease---suddenly
here
attended by the fireflies and scents of the midsummer night
and drowned in the music of the fairies and elves our calm faces lit up by the moon-light entwined figures in-hiding and partially hidden by the trees in the valley of flowers away away from the humdrum world
our songs will outlive us as they have a tendency to do everywhere, these songs composed by pining hearts
and we will live on posthumously
in the syntax and idiom and beats of tender lyrics whose interlocked lines flow with the grace and majesty of the broad-bosomed Ganga.
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An enchanting world
Beyond the frail door Unsupported, vertical Lies that Eternal Wonderland That can be reclaimed/ re-imagined By all the cynical adults by invoking Their inner child and trying for new Ways of seeing/finding; But then, Alice-like take the first Tentative step from the mundane into the Unknown and find a thrilling realm, A region luminous, yet dark Fantastic and multi-colour; The tall trees and a grey mist Hovering in the back, a solid curtain A feather suspended above In slow motion forever And new mysteries beckoning The young traveler in the All-surrounding solitude!
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ilhem issaoui
Bio: ilhem issaoui is a 24-year-old Tunisian translator and poetry and short stories writer. Some of her poems and short stories have appeared both online and in print in magazines including Three line poetry, Salis Online Magazine,Mind Magazine,Mad Swirl Magazine, Jaffatelaqlam, Danse Macabre, About Place Journal,etc. She is also the author of a collection of poems entitled Fragments of a Wounded Soul.
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my antediluvian days
my antediluvian days celestial and glimmering with the chirping of birds phalerate and the euphony of mirific rain where have you lost your delightful colours you have aged, you have aged be afraid not my soul is lorn from me too I hide behind the lighting pole to fear none I contemplate the ballerina in the box music she dances no more her leg is broken and the music coming from the box though not coherent and shabby I still pine for
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is the thought a sin
is the thought a sin then I have sinned a lot and I have whelved my heart in hell and burned it and scattered its ash on every escarpment of purgatory with mockery my heart is in hell like a cognoscenti of the thanatosian arts I have prescinded my wet soul from my jejune cadavre and breathed in equanimity I am neither cadavre nor soul, then
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Kabir Deb
Bio: Kabir Deb was born in Haflong and completed his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Karimganj. After that he completed his Graduation and Masters from Assam University, Assam. Poetry has been his passion and a hobby from his childhood. He looks forward to change the society with the power of poetry. When the society is facing with many political and social conflicts he would like to show them that poetry can destroy even the most destructive force in the society as poetry knows how to create. His works has been published in 'To be my Valentine' edition of Hall of Poets.
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GHOSH AND CO. (A poem on Rituparno Ghosh) With messy hair flurring over his blazing eyes He approached Ms. Sen for the first time She took a sip of tea and told him to sit He took a gaze around and absorbed everything Sen's saree flying like a coconut leaf in the spring weather Now he started the journey of narrating the epics of his life 'Hirer Angti' started rolling the brain of Ms. Sen She couldn't stop thinking that how light can be trapped inside a human
He had the eagerness towards functioning of camera Alongwith the order of the saree that his characters should wear Tagore alongwith his beard used to tickle his mind From 'The Sinking Boat' to 'Palace of Hearts' everything was blessed by Tagore Gulzar with his intoxicating voice and words Made 'Raincoat' a peak which cannot be conquered
How often do we see that Shakespeare hugged Tagore? I saw it in his creation the touch of two galaxies King Lear never would have thought that he can perform in a place Which had the audience replaced by cameras and can live with Ghosh He made it possible when "The Last Lear" cried after his birth A king for the very first time knelt before the adapter
His creations had the touch of the deprived 'Bariwali' was brave enough to fight with patriarchy Big names appeared to be small when they used to participate in Ghosh's creation Tears in their eyes were a form of lava for the men around them Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Many used to dislike them as they thought of melancholy While the wives used to see them with moistened eyes
His interior was unchanging but it was seldom noticed When he changed the exterior to melt his own wish Some believed in him while most of us had the inherent habit of teasing But he always believed that change of the exterior is just like weather It keeps on changing and when she is not ashamed Why should I be ashamed? He lived his whole life with the staunch confidence of being a change Where change is seen with narrow eye lids
One day he thought of penning a book to drive his own thought 'First Person' started like a diary which had the pain of Naxalbari And the happiness of a play by Nandikar It had a small girl with butterfly wings on her back When she came before bald Ghosh, she started to talk like a bullet Ghosh said 'Come sit here, now tell me what were you saying?' She asked ' Are you a widow? Do you feel the pain inside?' Ghosh stopped his lips and started to think about the question He saw the widows walking before him with bald head To symbolise that their husband died in this very land He said 'Unfortunately I am not a widow, Baba' Old things didn't change and yet another time he was proud of his change
30th May never would have thought that she will witness a Sirius of earth She now enjoys the talks of Ghosh and lives inside his ticking brain He never believed in death as the ultimatum As he knew that a light dies only when the source die Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Elizabeth Mariani
Bio: Interdisciplinary Artist Elizabeth Mariani currently lives in New York and works mainly in photography, visual art and poetry. Mariani has been published in Poem Town Randolph, The Brooklyner Magazine, Berbice [Mrkt], Hammered Out, BlazeVOX, Fortunates, Artvoice, The Buffalo News, After the Pause, Two Serious Ladies, The Seneca Nation of Indians Newsletter, Great Lakes Review, Letterhead, Nomad, and Fortunates. Broadsides have evolved from collaborations with artists Jeremy Maxwell and Michael Morgulis. To know more about her : WWW.ABOUT.ME/LIZMARIANI www.85cqu.wordpress.com
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Things I learned out West
It is possible to fly West have your skin ripped off from the velocity rescuing the catastrophe of blistered winters It is possible to walk West face a death curtailed only by a paparazzi of clamoring spray paint cans. It is probable you as the human will walk on paths punch-holed by bear dung We should walk a saline tide guitar. Float into robust tangerine metals. What gives to the roasting eyes of eagles gazing at our distrust? I learned humans as they walk gorge on amnesia fragmented from their place-hood We are beings The Earth does not need us
For Cacy
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Renee’ B. Drummond
Bio: Renee’ B. Drummond is a prominent poet and artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of: The Power of the Pen, SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER, Renee’s Poems with Wings are Words in Flight-I’ll Write Our Wrongs, and Renee’s Poems with Wings are Words in Flight. Her works are published, viewed and appreciated on a global scale which solidifies her as a force to be reckoned with in the literary world of poetry. Renee’ is inspired by non other than Dr. Maya Angelou, because of whom, Renee’ believes in “Still I write, I write, and I’ll write!”
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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‘BLACK’ for No Apparent Reason
Some say I’m way too loud Some say I’m wild Some say ‘Imma’ beast Without A beauty inside Some say I’m ‘EVIL’ Some say I’m too fat Some say I’m bald Nappy, ugly and ‘BLACK’ Some say I’m too skinny ‘Wit’ Big poppy eyes Carmel coated On ‘da’ inside ‘NAW’ I’m ‘Jus’ ‘BLACK’ Some say I’m too ‘yeller’ And don’t Quite fit in Not enough ‘BLACK’ Not enough white For acceptance By anyone’s kin But… ‘I’z’ ‘sayze’ I’m ‘jus’‘BLACK’ For No Apparent Reason (At all).
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Citation
I’ll write a poem for you; You write a poem for me. Back to back; quotations extract ‘summadat’ ‘BUTT’ remember to cite thee; PLEASE. Illustrations’ mention references; citation is the key. I’ll write a poem for you; You write a poem for me. Son of citation will allow thee, to be or not to be; “A BAD Poem” if you please.
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Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo
Bio: Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo is a multi-awarded and an Internationally-Published Contemporary Author/Poet and a Professional Writer/Creative Writer/Feature Writer/Journalist/Travel Writer from the Philippines. She has 2 published books, "Seasons of Emotions" (UK) and "Inner Reflections of the Muse", (USA). Elizabeth is also a co-author of more than 60 international anthologies in the USA, Canada, UK, Romania, India. She is a Contributing Editor of Inner Child Magazine, USA and an Advisory Board Member of Reflection Magazine, an international literary magazine. She is a member of the American Authors Association (AAA) and PEN International.
Advaitam Speaks Literary
50
Land of the Sherpas, Rise!
Blue skies can be traced over the distant horizon casting a spell of hope and eternal glory for the weary souls, symbol of the dawning of a brand new day Gray clouds before are now replaced by immaculate, cumulus formations above promising better days ahead after the devastation. Nepal, Land of the Sherpas, yaks and yetis, The sun’s rays will reign again on the slopes of the Himalayas Your brothers from the East and West with arms wide open are willing To reach out and lend a helping hand out of your pleas which echoed beyond the seas, Land of the Sherpas, rise from the rubble!
Your ever beauteous magnificence can never be ruined by this sudden tremor, Mighty wild rapids will come alive once more Your exhilarating mountain descents will forever be admired even from afar, Land of the Sherpas, rise from the ruins! The sweet, innocent smiles of your beautiful children will once again grace their faces, to welcome the world who adores your stunning natural riches Land of the Sherpas, your cry of victory will echo the ends of the earth, With heads held up high, face the new frontier dawning upon you as you rebuild your life and embrace tomorrow full of hope and enormous faith Land of the Sherpas, from these ruins, you shall rise!
Note: “Sherpas” are the cheerful and lovely inhabitants living in the farthest corner of Nepal in the Himalayan region.
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Ken Allan Dronsfield
Bio: Ken Allan Dronsfield is a published poet who was nominated for The Best of the Net and 2 Pushcart Awards in Poetry for 2016. His poetry has been published world-wide in various publications throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. Ken loves thunderstorms, walking in the woods at night, and spending time with his cat Willa. Ken's new book, "The Cellaring", a collection of 80 haunting, paranormal, weird and wonderful poems, has been released and is available through Amazon.com. He is the Co-Editor and Cover Artist for two poetry anthologies, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze and Dandelion in a Vase of Roses available from Amazon.com.
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The Ebb and Flow From atop the great redwood trees dragonflies fantasize of summertime; of warmer mornings, balmy winds dodging flycatcher's and bullfrogs. The grasses are green along a pond baby goslings enjoy the new sunrise; barn owls love a midnight stellar show wolves howl and worship the full moon. Beating hearts prevail in creek or marsh deep rivers and great bays ebb and flow large animals enjoy the salty sweet grass beautiful wild flowers grace rolling hills. As the sun now rises in the eastern skies, from within that great awakening forest a lone cicada sings his mating sonnet within the ebb and flow of life's circle . (First Published, Poppy Road Review) Pretense of a Solstice Journey over time end of a rainbow, end of a branch plying of rhyme. Clouds float by adrift in a breeze, adrift through life coursing onward. Rainbow sleeps edge of the day, edge of the night now twilight time. Full Moon rises reddish pallor to a reddish haze Sprites kiss the solstice. Summer has come warm is the sun, warm is the heart upon blooming smiles.
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Jack Kolkmeyer
Bio: Jack Kolkmeyer studied English Literature/ Creative Writing at Ohio University in the 1960's where he developed a special interest in the Romantic, Imagist and Beat poets. He was the Editor of Sphere, the Ohio University literary magazine, from 1967-68. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including The Writers Place and Kwee: The Liberian Literary Magazine and have been broadcast on his popular Santa Fe radio programs, The International House of Wax and Brave New World, and presented with his performance group, The Word Quartet. Jack currently reads some of his works on his new radio project, Fifthwall Radio. Jack resides and writes in Delray Beach, Florida. His current writing projects include poetry, music and city planning topics, and screenplays.
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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gaining perspective
it may feel backward the more forward we go watching those blurred images swirling between then and now whisking off into there
that we all see things differently even though we see the same things
there are reasons for this although reasoning has little to do with it
it is more about imaging and imagining what is there or not there or might be there
it is only when we finally come to personal conclusions that we can gain the perspective of the others and know and understand that illusion is sometimes just simple
reality
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Iris Orpi
Bio: Iris Orpi is a Filipina writer currently living in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is the author of The Espresso Effect (2010), Cognac for the Soul (2012) and Beautiful Fever (2012). Her work has appeared in dozens of print and online publications across North America, Europe and Asia. She was an Honorable Mention for the Contemporary American Poetry Prize, given by Chicago Poetry Press, in 2014.
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Beacon
The tub is full and the night is overflowing
I watched the beautiful beloved of a forgotten confession give birth to a silent, but infallible, compass I saw untouched hunger brimming with dark legacies true north is a rare orchid cut open with a scalpel grace of blade on folds of fever not all nocturnal songs are lullabies— I saw one just crouching under the eaves of indecisive constellations hanging its lyrics on the beams of porch lights, wide awake with intention on a garden where the rest of the pregnant symbols have been spared Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Mariela Cordero
Bio: Mariela Cordero is from Venezuela. She is a Lawyer, Poet, Writer and visual artist. She has received many awards and accolades like Third Prize of Poetry Alejandra Pizarnik Argentina (2014), First Prize at the Second Ibero-American Poetry Contest Euler Granda, Ecuador (2015), Second Prize of Poetry Concorso Letterario Internazionale BilingĂźe Tracceperlameta Edizioni, Italy (2015), Micro-poemas Prize in Spanish of the III contest TRANSPalabr @RTE 2015, Spain as well as the First Place in International Poetry Contest Hispanic Poets mention of literary quality, Spain 2016.
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Your body or a distant country.
The maps as a fragile truce, are made of scattered atoms. To reach your boundaries and touch your skin I must discover The burning zones and the shortcuts of the random.
The lubricious compass will expel me to the center of the anointed war of love.
I will arrive to lose myself between the sacredness and the whirlwind. The ancient spiral of desire still devouring pulsations.
The heart is an arrow and a target. Your body is a distant country.
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Thomas W. Morris
Bio:
Thomas W. Morris works night shifts as a warehouse operative. Thomas has been writing poetry for three years and self-published his first book ‘Fishbowl’ in January of 2017. Currently he is writing his second book, expected to be released in 2018. Find him at www.facebook.com/authortwmorris or www.twmorris.com
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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I am here
I am here Washed out but breathing A dry array of watercolour On a dove coloured canvas Waiting to be complete Open, my window breaks Masking the ground, those droplets of ink Stained floor a reminisce of my presence Though the black marks cry in mute Into the morrow light, I climb forth Shards of glass steal my being My body tight with the tearing Worn strings stretched into a collapse Gently, I become one with the wind Blowing down the valley with wasted paper Lifted, into the air Rising, into a never known existence I am gone
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Nalini Priyadarshni
Bio:
Nalini Priyadarshni is the author of Doppelganger in My House and co author of Lines Across Oceans. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, podcasts and international anthologies including Mad Swirl, Camel Saloon, Dukool, In-flight Magazine, Poetry Breakfast, The Riveter Review, The Open Road Review, Your One Phone Call, In Between Hangovers and Yellow Chair Review. Her poems and views on poetry and life have been featured on AIR (All India Radio) and FM radio. Nalini’s has been nominated for 2017 Top Female Writers by The Author’s Show.com for her book Doppelganger in My House. She lives in India with her husband and two feisty kids.
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Lovers & Strangers
All lovers are strangers once, caught in vortex of time Walking the same roads, drinking coffee from roadside cafĂŠs Riding buses, buying books, strolling on promenade Dancing nights away with a bunch of friends Confusing lust with love, desire with passion
In a sea of strangers, how lovers find their lost half? My guess is as good as yours Is it an instinct or a primeval code Imbedded in their minds and souls That endure onslaught of experiences and memories?
Love can be baffling as it is exasperating Long before it begins to feel any good It is like a thirst that won’t go away no matter what Or how much you drink Heart tethered to gathering storm ready to burst any moment
Hazarding broken heart, shattered dreams, disillusion Some strangers step out of matrix Open their hearts to love and hurt Willingly burn on stake, strip off outer trappings To be lovers they always meant to be
(Part of Doppelganger in My house, a poetry collection)
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Blanca Alicia Garza
Bio: Blanca Alicia Garza is a Poet from Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a nature and animal lover, and enjoys spending time writing. Her poems are published in the Poetry Anthologies, "Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze", and "Dandelions in a Vase of Roses" now available at Amazon.com. Blanca's work can be found in The Poet Community, Whispers, The Winamop Journal, Indiana Voice Journal, Tuck Magazine, Raven's Cage Ezine, Scarlet Leaf Review as well as Birdsong Anthology 2016, Vol 1.
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Robotic Era
Robotic human beings Staring at bright screens Like moths attracted to light Connected to technology Disconnected from humanity Wolves in sheepskin Stalking their prey Or lonely souls Seeking for love Face to face conversations Became cold texts Loved ones becomes strangers Strangers become family Newest toys of this era The computer or television Like an addiction to a drug Is the addiction to a video game Innocence stolen by technology.
(Initially published on Tuck Magazine)
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Carl Scharwath
Bio: Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with more than 100 magazines selecting his poetry, short stories, essays or art photography. He has won the National Poetry Contest award for Writers One Flight Up. His first poetry book is 'Journey To Become Forgotten' (Kind of a Hurricane Press). Carl is a dedicated runner and 2nd degree black- belt.
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Admonitio
You are the genesis of today The cancers of a desperate heart etched in the loss of hope.
Vision doubled, fractured fragments give warning Blood rushes in a sojourn
Following the Daughters of Zion adorned in self-alienation to a future world, without history.
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Rony Nair
Bio: Rony Nair has been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. (They’ve been) the bed-sit at the end of a long day; the repository that does the sound of silence inimitably well. Not unlike a pet; but with one core difference- the books do suggest, educate and weave a texture that marginally provides streams of thought that are new. And one of the biggest pleasures of his life is certainly holding a treasured edition in one’s hands. Physically, Rony works as an oil and gas Risk Management consultant. He has been in the industry for 20 years since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Being extensively traveled, dangers fronted him often. But that is his day job, the one that pays for his bread and bills. Rony was a published columnist with the Indian Express. He is also a professional photographer about to hold his first major exhibition. He has previously been published by Sonic Boom, Quail Bell Magazine, YGDRASIL journal, Mindless Muse, Yellow Chair Review, Two Words For, Ogazine, New Asian Writing (NAW), Semaphore, The Economic Times, 1947, The Foliate Oak Magazine, Open Road Magazine, Tipton Review, Antarctica Journal, North East Review, Muse India, and YES magazine, among others. Rony has also been featured in the Economic Times of India. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish, as do the thoughts!
Advaitam Speaks Literary
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In Training Rooms
the boats sail onwards between tides of free speech and magic realism,
forgetting the magic within or the stars breathing down,
which berate the forces of intellectual mass, those sanguine in its pull.
Towards inhaled vapors of righteous air, bereft of oxygen.
We stare at each other, across abscesses of unreason,
that capture the bites and the pressures of holding on, to a lifeless travesty, a futile hope.
sex as divorced from love is mother Teresa terrain. terrain where firma and logic have since been deluged. dry and trademarked. ransacked and cold. Old. Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Holograms
In your town I search, without seeking visitations’, of the divine. Not for me the corpus of maudlin and hymen. or scores lost in meandering intent. there's you somewhere, in the oxygen that I breathe.
Somewhere in the hairclips that tie disparate strands in airy weaves and raised flags, In long ago defeat. somewhere in the roaming of the mind around the bends in the head, somewhere in the rusted edges of your contempt are shrugs which begin from eyes that have already reshaped history; Entwined it in cobwebs of stretched out half-shreds, shrapnel bursts from long ago. I’m in your town and I seek a glimpse. I’ll never find.
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About the Poet:
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu was born in Romania in 1936 and left the country permanently in 1983, at the height of the communist regime. She holds a PhD in French Language & Literature, and she taught French at Loyola University and Northwestern University for many years. Writing poetry in three languages, she has published numerous books in the United States, France, Belgium, and Romania, but she does not translate any of her own work between languages. Radulescu’s French books have received several awards, including the Grand Prix de Poésie Henri-Noël Villard and the Prix Amélie Murat. Her latest book of original English-language poetry is I Scrape the Window of Nothingness: New & Selected Poems (Orison Books, USA, 2015). She lives in Chicago.
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About the Translator:
Luke Hankins is the author of a collection of poems, Weak Devotions, and a collection of essays, The Work of Creation: Selected Prose, and is the editor of Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets. A collection of his translations of French poems by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems, is forthcoming in an international edition from Seagull Books. A graduate of the Indiana University MFA in Creative Writing Program, where he held the Yusef Komunyakaa Fellowship in Poetry, Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.
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autumn confession
I will have said everything, and no one in this corner to distinguish my hands from my face. –JoÍ Bousquet
the song is in the pause of the wave
the trough
lace of sounds loudly
someone is talking to me
the view
: autumn has never seemed so bright and sweet listen the bells
the distant echo
the nowhere of my days
memory keep still
at the bottom of the glass the drop sits like that whether a river whether a tear a solemn day comes a day of white tenderness the world returns to it I’ll no longer finish being born Advaitam Speaks Literary
memory keep still
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others two hours into time’s memory and the clockhand stops like a dead man’s heart and yet this cry the silhouettes of the hours where are you coming from song? who is signaling me? others live on Earth can see us moving forward
someone far away
rubber boots gazes lost in the snow
evidence
the evidence is killing me how can I escape it let myself be devoured by the night its blue colors its stealthy footsteps its dishonest ways how much can I hate the view the eye taking pleasure in the deceptive distance theater of the day : are we more alive or more dead little toys in time’s pocket?
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Artist : Mariela Cordero (Venezuela)
Artwork : Collage 2016-11-02 18_16_23mm
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Artwork: Collage 2016-10-31 17_23_33mm
Artwork :Collage 2016-11-02 18_19_22mm Advaitam Speaks Literary
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Artwork: Collage 2016-10-24 21_26_14m
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Artist: Carl Scharwath
Artwork: Aviation Dreams
Artwork: The Mirror
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Artwork: Face 1
Artwork: Window
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Elizabeth Mariani (New York/ U.S.A)
Artwork: Futility is Urban by Elizabeth Mariani
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Artwork : Golden Strega Hemoglobinita by Elizabeth Mariani
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Advaitam Speaks Literary