reader submission
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”.
Poetry / The colour of revolution is red
And along with our bodies, the rage keeps on, / we chafe and bleed and clot and steer; / we go mad and nude
Poetry / Black swan
from my blood fangs, disarrayed cold / looting my sore body / that has done so much for me, while I ached
Poetry / House of god
I wonder where God sits in that tower. I wonder whose cries are louder.
Poetry / Oak cognacs
From moon beamed mountains To plains deltaic; In Diasporas–detached
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.
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
Bombardment
What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight
Silent screams
Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred
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”.
The colour of revolution is red
And along with our bodies, the rage keeps on, / we chafe and bleed and clot and steer; / we go mad and nude
Black swan
from my blood fangs, disarrayed cold / looting my sore body / that has done so much for me, while I ached
House of god
I wonder where God sits in that tower. I wonder whose cries are louder.
Oak cognacs
From moon beamed mountains To plains deltaic; In Diasporas–detached
Anjuman and the stories of the mango people
My father’s ancestors were Ayurvedic medicine men from a remote corner of the North Bengal. A few generations ago, one of them had cured a long-lasting ailment of the Raja of Taherpur and had received, as a reward, a large chunk of agricultural land or “joat” next to the mighty Joshoi Beel.
