Poetry: July 2025

1. Wedding : Srilekha Mitra
2. The House, the Child Pictured : Kamalakar Bhat
3. Our Pond in July : Jharna Choudhury
4. Say What? : Bruce Mcrae
5. Cherita Terbalik : Barbara Anna Gaiardoni
6. King of Ruins : Erin Jamieson
7. As If There Were No Other Way : Jeffrey Zable
8. Whimsy : Linette Rabsatt
9. The Imperial Typewriters Factory, Leicester : Francesco Sani
10. Breakfast With Ghosts : Steve Bruce
11. Of Joys : Vinita Agrawal
12. On a Call, After Your Leaving this City : Garima
13. Paper Cuts in the Margin : Daniel Abukuri

Wedding : Srilekha Mitra

Twenty three broken mirrors

Glazed with the hazelnut ice-cream of your wedding

Slashed eyeballs rolling down the savannah green floor

Fresh milk spilling over the granite kitchen slab

Smoke rising from burning cigarettes

And a few hopes crying

Women wearing pretty white gowns

Their cheeks painted in red and golden

Grooving, holding their red heels

Sliced lemons dipped in white wine

Cherry lips wet with dew

It’s sour, ashes falling down the sky

Faces flocking towards the altar

Gaping mouths chewing steaks

Jealous fingers scratching the table enveloped in white sheets

Thunderous laughter sealing promises

Young bride winking wrapped in your arms

Bouquet of flowers brooding, seething

Water running down the tap

An overcooked chicken rotting in the oven

Wrinkled blue t-shirt stained with black coffee

White bedsheets crawling down the bed

Enshrouding me, blinding red lights

A strange choking smell

Jumbled alphabets swimming in a cup of tea

Hazy winter mornings drowning in a sea of grief

Violet of Dali’s Cenicitas devouring my skin

White flesh mixed with salt and pepper

Boiling hot oil splashing, half-burnt fingers

Slicing the pomegranates

Torn hairs, a bottle of ink and a fountain pen

Unfinished sentences basking in memories of your smile

Cold nights, razor sharp blade

Holding my breath

I see you in shades of black and white

My wrinkled spring in autumn nights

I want to be loved by you, alone!

The House, the Child Pictured : Kamalakar Bhat

Yesterday, the air reeked of fire.

The embers of a hundred hopes lay bare,

glowing, gasping, refusing to fade.

By dusk, digging through the ruins,

mother hustled up a hearth

and cooked a thin porridge.

After, with wide, waterless eyes,

the child searched the rubble,

lifting the only unburnt thing—

a half-singed notebook.

Today, on its untouched white pages,

with the brilliance of her five-year-old mind,

a house takes shape again—

the same one swallowed by flames.

Every wall, every vine curling up the doorway,

restored in careful strokes,

except for one absence:

her butter-soft fingers

refuse to give form

to the cat—

the one that turned to ash with the home.

**

Our Pond in July : Jharna Choudhury

This summer

rain

did to the pond

what bad weather did

to our television screen

when I was four.

The room

smelt of paint inside;

outside

rotten mangoes’ suicide

in the trembling water

and grief

fell from eye to eye,

to frayed ends of a white pillowcase,

boxed cotton,

memories of wanting to fly.

The hills smudge at a distance,

frenzy perhaps swifts

in grey gyres

directionless in all directions

whirling the vault;

plumes and promises

wherefrom summer breaks

hot

like a heartbreak.

Say What? : Bruce Mcrae

Colour me difficult, but I’d rather read

about the centre of the sun and spectral implausibilities.

I’d rather the howl of a timber wolf in the Ural steppes

than a symphony of domestic acts and noises.

Give me snakeroot, ice plants and snowberries

over the incumbent blah of chance and circumstance.

I’m sure your mother is a darling, soul and flesh,

but I’d prefer the fall of light and gods and angels,

the song of the devil by the pale moonlight,

a nation of astronomers who have never seen the planets.

Children, in the full bloom of their innocence,

a passing suburban ennui, that dirty red heart;

all very fine and well, but I’d prefer the reverend’s earlobe,

temporal bulimia, cosmic anorexia, bedlam’s feather.

Why not the Lord’s beekeepers or a scarab’s blackened brow?

Tell me how the slave despises the servant, rather than

a sheet-long litany of broken dates and sad affairs,

those nights alone with your thoughts, the trends, the currency

exchanged day to day as we go about our petty business.

I’d rather read the foolscap manuscript of typewriting apes

than of household angst and melodramatic incidents.

Why no talking dogs in your poems or jokes or magical properties?

Why not entertain the troops, so far from home?

Why not be interesting?

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner
of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his next book, ‘Boxing In The Bone Orchard’ is coming out in the Spring of 2025 via Frontenac House.

Cherita Terbalik : Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

for the festival of peoples

they even brought puppets

for a play

loud silence comes

over the crowd

final game set

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