reader submission
POETRY / Ghostly tenants
My father speaks in a dismantled language that goes up in smoke.
POETRY / The song of freedom
the bullet hole/ in my brother's chest/ unfolds like a pandora's box
POETRY / Wonder
I feel my rage, ma, a living thing;/ A beast, caged, like me
POETRY / The things I wish I had never known
I skip talking to myself for hours / The “me time”, before going to bed
FICTION / Wings Across A City Wall
Shimu and Tushar had grown up together on an alley in the Mirpur area of Dhaka city. Their neighbouring houses were separated only by a brick wall, about two meters high. The branches of a tree growing beside Tushar’s house overhung the wall, its foliage shading a part of Shimu’s courtyard.
POETRY / My scarlet incarnation
Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook
Poetry / Bombardment
What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight
Poetry / Silent screams
Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred
Poetry / Prompts
The pavements are hotter in winter, the rain never wets the asphalt and I never tell you to do anything else other than “be”.
Windless hair
I frolic and burrow myself inside the vastness of the fields And the prairies that stand tall Of spaces heavily concentrated, and then stretched out to infinity
Cosmopolitan Dream
I see you, with whatever half awake, sleep drifting irises, I see you. Dusted in the shelves of unread books, I see you and I know you, They will never know you but I do, in ways you are afraid.
Shimul
The girl stared back at her and asked a question that made Mrittika’s heart beat faster. “Don’t you recognise me?”
for my weeping mother
her heart was a two seater unfit for a family so big i grew to be a woman mirrored in her shadow when she was younger
An aftertaste
“Can’t a man even get payesh and shemai on Eid in this house?” Altaf Shaheb screamed from the drawing room while watching the news, “There used to be so much joy in this house. It used to feel like Eid. But your mother has grown so sluggish now, Saadat! She used to be such a good cook. Our neighbours back in the old neighbourhood were crazy about your mother’s chicken bhuna. But now I can’t even get a plate of payesh the night before Eid.”
Heathen
Spirit breaks at home along with love mingled with innocence.
Will-o’-the-Wisp
The sky to the west and overhead is mired in darkness; but to the east, light is gleaming out like a jasper stone, as clear as crystal.
PTSD
Martyrs and-slash-or heroes they call us Is it worth all the fuss? While they celebrate We ache to recuperate
Embracing whole-ness
It's time to take care of ourselves, both mind and soul, To live a life that is complete and whole.
The story of an ancient silence
The pleasing melancholia of Friday morning hovers through the window as a heavy gloom and sways within the fake plastic daisies lying on Marium’s table while the smell of burning spices filled her entire house. Marium’s mother couldn’t care less about the condition of the kitchen now. Her husband has just collapsed to the floor.