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RETURNING HOME I 

Fatima is muttering prayers as she walks down the narrow path which leads home. She cannot stop peering through her shoulder. Everywhere is silent. The kind of silence which injects fear. When all a person hears is the chirping of crickets singing lullabies for street…

Poetry

The Editor’s ‘No’ or Nod 

Last night, the editor looked through a pile of poems, where mine hid, with a smear of mama’s anointing oil, wrapped in the first prayer I mumbled after my last rejection. (Is there even a thing as last rejection? Is rejection not a long endless…

Poetry

A POET’S SOLILOQUY 

“When tears are in your eyes, It’s time to look inside, Your heart will find another way” –Enya Are poems not the pallbearers of a poet’s dead dreams & hopes? I am awed by the way they donate their shoulders to bear the pain Of…

Poetry

THIS IS HOW I MADE MY WINGS 

With sunken eyes in tired sockets, a girl ran after her father’s sigh; seized it, slit its throat, hid the blood-stained knife in a lawn of solitude & became the dream her father had on the night of her conception. She remembers her mother’s words,…

Poetry

AN ECHO OF SILENCE 

Because we do not preserve memories from decay By immersing them in vessels filled with formalin, I tried to remember you today- your smell, your kiss The beats and lyrics of the songs you said your heart Sang for me, but I can’t remember any….

Poetry

THE NEW DEATH MANUAL 

Pain is like alcohol. I do not know how many shots gets you tipsy, But the first time life served me shots of pain, I staggered home, entered into a poem & passed out. At dawn, mother dispelled the hangover with these words: “Daughter, pain…