Down

Anam Tariq

A descent. Cloak of invisibility well wrapt in, dropped in on February’s mild, rosy air a grim silhouette, leading her to her fated lair. # # # Shells are all a cynic discerns, superficial performances, descries all, not yearns. # # # Averse to kin, impuissant against the declaration, the invader carved out an age-old laceration. Warped not, as the deep to a liner, Abraham from the furnace, foundered the Assyrian’s stratagem. # # # Blasted underground, blasted above. They turtle-shelled; no fireflies neither butterflies, flaky connections in the sky. Recline before a flashing tile while the ebbing white cliffs get back at the root of this upsetting. # # # Now the Euphrates, seventeen hundred miles of water going down apace as unseen creatures behind a wall strive. Months/dawnings in unison with Quicksilver, Wanda’s mantle by this poet’s side; existing in a bubble of mine. # # # Tides test immunity; by the Providence’s grace guarded, else mortals vulnerable always!

Anam Tariq is a poet from Aligarh, India with an M.A. in English from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), India with results awaited. Anam is passionate about poetry and has been writing poems since she was 17.

Jorm S

FROM THE CASEMENT

Anam Tariq

Many a time verse letters from this casement bear scribblings of obsessions, of cloudy climes and sun-kissed orchards, of wildernesses and tempestuous deeps, of histories indelible and arduous times. But shows what this frame to a poet’s eye?

A room, a casement, a muse, a hope.

From the angle I choose to observe, some things fit in it. A bungalow two-storeyed faces me. A wide rectangular terrace, rises behind which another on another storey. Shades of virescent and cream plaster its face, while the gleaming day star has drained the patterned overhang, extending from the terrace railings, of its distemper. A little patch of green the house boasts (before its small veranda) where two lofty Ashoka trees stir in the breeze.

Another bosky residence to my right faces us both. By me christened ‘forest house’, a mountain cottage’s likeness. Profuse climbers of bougainvillea, producing rosy and icy bunches, the ancient walls festooned, before they gave in to a tempest’s havoc. Lavender and pink hues the wall wears now, making a new out of the old, while rise anew the climbers with a human’s resistance.

The sky like in paintings fills the remnant frame; as discrete bulbs to a room, discrete ambiences to the scene it gives. A pearly-grey, sunless sky gives many a wanderings, while picturesque patches of gold, the sun towards its setting course, on the bodies of parked cars and the two houses leaves. Below the blue-black firmament glistens over everything the milky street light, Ashoka trees appear lambent just as powdered women in brocade ghararas and necklaces glitter under a marriage lawn’s floodlights.

From the ajar pane flow in hawkers’ calls of saccharine fruits and veggies, a beggar’s shrieking pleas; kids towards late afternoons conversing about the seemingly lasting new-normal learning. Haunted the street two neighbourhood white boys of mixed origin, whose whereabouts the memory compels to wonder.

What else does it show? Could the Lakes or the White Cliffs present themselves in it? But the pearly, sunless weather takes on a ride of its own to a remote highland where, in a knee-length tunic off-white and brown I perhaps stand with a ‘taking all in’ eye beneath a hazy dome; or to where under the Millennium Wheel’s eye stand intricately carved edifices in wide streets thronged by multitudes in coats and jackets, gloves and mufflers, often from countries new. Mind travels more freely over the expanse while the body is fettered to a room.

The sensibilities of the Poets present on the other side of the frame stimulate, to visit that of which I have only limned from their observations and searched images on my screen.

knysh ksenya

A TALE OF TWO UN-HERDS

Anam Tariq

Most modern moments, most sordid ones; intellect enhanced, imbecility even more. Dawn of ambition, dusk of doom; phantasm of infinity ahead, quantity of <one in hand. # # # The bank of the only lake amongst the hills (conifers covered); the predators reigned. The lax herder’s golden-black grazers; a civic situation. He down the hill engaged, few parched gold-black woolly denizens to the feigned silence of the lake drawn. The herder, returning to behold them recumbent. Every night’s brume abetting further slump, by the courtesy of the coyotes. Compelled to install insulation, impeding a long line of animosity, but who knows what ace up their sleeves may dismantle his jenga of measures for the victimized! # # # Naive, unguarded surviving beside the woods, across a lea woollybacks, settlers in all glory. Nagged, when came nigh rambling hunter quadrupeds, back to what they had inhabited. Bulky in number, a blatant besiege to claim what property used to be. The originating saga glided; among another set, the kin of the settlers, the call to offer succour echoed beyond the woodland, to arrest not defer an awful genocide.

Original Artworks