August Issue: Poetry Section

1. Letter from the Other Side of Silence — Stephanie L. Harper
2. Because The Deacon Couldn’t Sleep — Dina Friedman
3. One Day At A Time– Kavita Ratna
4. YOU ARE– Mahvash Mohtadullah
5. Gypsy Woman– George Bakola
6. For Angie– Rachel Ikins
7. Rise And Fall– Lynn White
8. Canary’s Plea– Agaigbe Uhembansha
9. The Lost Pages– Sabreen Ahmed
10. VOICES: Three Haikus by Daiypayan Nair
11. Lipstick– Kalpana Singh Chitnis
12. She Rides The Bus– Marianne Tefft
13. There Is A Desire– Trijita Mukherjee
14. My Inner Voice– Shailja Sharma

YOU ARE— Mahvash Mohtadullah

You Are
  Too different
    Too controversial
              Too weird
  Too quiet
     Too absent

You Are
  Too passionate
Too frigid
      Too pushy
           Too gregarious
Too reserved

You Are
    Too opinionated
       Too invested
 Too indifferent, disinterested

You Are
Too much but
You Are
Also not enough

These arrows used to fly
East and west
Between the bazaars and the mosques
Down and up
From my beating heart
To my silent mouth, forging
Right angles containing me
In burnished boxes glittering bright
But in the moorings
Of all these paradoxes writhing out
Like strident dirges from treacherous lyres
Howling of brimstone and hellfire
Now I hear only one thing
I only hear that one constant thing

YOU ARE!

In the refrains that ring
Thunder and break
I hear it sing:

YOU ARE!

In all that cacophony
In the clarion calls of propriety
Pounding, rounding endlessly
From the steeples of society
That is all I ever hear now

YOU ARE! YOU ARE!  YOU ARE!

Yes I am! I finally am! This is me
And that is all I ever need to be.

Mahvash considers herself somewhat of a “serial corporate rut absconder”.  Only because a sabbatical that was to last a year, has turned to eight, and she still see no end in sight to the freedom.  Before that, Mahvash worked in the Financial Services Industry, and was considered somewhat of a specialist process and experience “fixer upper”.  Mahvash has previously published a book of short stories centering mainly around the woman of the larger Indian Subcontinent, a book of poetry and essays, and three books in a children’s series. When she’s not writing, she’s fussing in her head, over ideologies of social justice and equality, with superhero twists! She also spends a fair amount of her time watching and reading science fiction and the superbly diverse literature that is constantly emerging from the greater Indian subcontinent.  Mahvash spends her time between Karachi, Dubai and Colombo.

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