Dinah Roma-Sianturi

January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments

Dinah Roma-Sianturi is an associate professor of literature and the director of the De La Salle University’s Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center (Manila). Her first collection of poetry A Feast Of Origins (2004) was given the National Book Award by the Manila Critics’ Circle while her recent work Geographies of Light (2007) won a Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature.
 

Family Portrait 

After Hafez

I did as you say.
I did not surrender
my loneliness
too soon.

I waited for what
it can teach me
of heaven
and earth,
of what keeps
them apart.

What blessing it is
when voice breaks
crying out for God— 

a heart seasoned,
the body scarred
by cuts deeper
than divine.

The Naked Imperative

Endure is what the morning
Wants to say each time dawn
Bares the gentle sprawl
Of her body as light seeps
Through the thin shade
Failing to honor why she is here—
The shifts of joy, the unbelief
In promise that moves her
Past space, her steps,
The pardon of distance.

And what is it like
When she stands bearing
The gift she mourns and seeks,
The desire that comes
With the world, and offers
No door out of it? 

                     Endure is this
Woman’s will and giving.
The earth stirred, hewn
By its own longing.

She is still. Naked. Sleep
Of deep valleys, ridges and planes—
The nightfall’s landscape
Of blissful absolution.

Rizio Yohannan Raj

January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments

Dr. Rizio Yohannan Raj is a bilingual writer who has published poetry, fiction, translations, criticism and children’s literature in English and Malayalam. 

Her debut novel in Malayalam, Avinashom (2000) was shortlisted for the DC Books Silver Jubilee Award and is presently being translated into English. Her second novel Yatrikom was published to critical acclaim in 2004. She was part of the revival of the Mumbai Poetry Circle while she lived in the city. Her poems in English have appeared in journals and anthologies in India and abroad. Her debut collection, Naked by the Sabarmati and Other Guna Poems is under publication at the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.  

Rizio has also translated into English, some of the landmark poetical works in Malayalam such as Kumaran Asan’s Veenapoovu and Chintavishtayaya Sita, and many of the 20th Century Malayalam writers from various generations. She has done translations from other languages, the latest of which include two novels by the Swedish writer Torgny Lindgren, The Way of the Serpent and Sweetness into Malayalam, and the co-translation of the first single collection of Maithili poetry in English, Udaya Narayana Singh’s Second Personal Singular. She has also translated and introduced Gujarati and Marathi Dalit poetry into Malayalam.

Apart from her literary writings, Rizio has been balancing two simultaneous careers in publishing and higher education. During her decade-long career as a books editor, she had headed the editorial departments of Navneet (Mumbai) and Katha (New Delhi). A PhD in Comparative Literature, she has also been a faculty member in the Mass Media department of Sophia College, Mumbai. She lives between her home in Mumbai and Kasaragod, Kerala, where she serves as Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the Central University of Kerala.

Tree

While the show is on
beneath its sprawling shade,
age creeps in
without the tree knowing it.
 
Suddenly
the whole spectacle
is another ring of memory,
the trunk, older by a year.

Naked by the Sabarmati
 
1
 
Dream:
 
You beckon me from the purple trail of the day,
I rise from the warm shore:
our clasped hands, a thorny globe in mid-air.
 
The salt in the air nearly blinds us;
yet we look into each other’s eyes
and find the first stars of the evening.
 
‘We must cross the night together:
it is time we sought the river.’
 
2
 
Journey:
 
The silhouette of the hills
is a reverie etched along the horizon.
We are as prayerful as the trees,
hymns frozen on their way to God.
 

We walk under the moon in growing silence,
waiting for a song to come by.
Someone whimpers–
a feverish piccolo or a sunflower withering?
 
It’s one of those strange nights
one smells the dew on autumn leaves.
I close my eyes and chant –
Wind! Wind! Wind!
 
 
3
 
The road leads us to the wall of the city by the river.
We press our palms against it;
our touch, a sigh dividing a swell of silence.
The wall eagerly splits before us: we enter the city:
hushed slums and stained minarets, our witnesses.
 
But where are the men and women
who had painted dreams of hukkah on my autumn nights –
the handsome kite-flyer, the fat woman of wit,
the bearded old philosopher, the paanwali behenji,
the turbaned tractor driver, the Madrasi mechanic?
 
Where are the farmers
who had squatted upon after-harvest stories –
Chandrakant, Lalitabai, Bhoomir Dhrumesh, Fatema, Aalam?
Where are the sleeping children?
Where are the bhajans? Where is the banyan?
 
 
4
 
A tremor runs
down to my toes.
 
‘Your hands are flushed, ’
your quivering voice breaks deeper into the air.
 
Dear, I am red from within; I have swallowed embers:
words, gestures, silence.
 
You know it; your face shows your knowledge—
the stars in your eyes are tired while you whisper.
 
I cannot bear uncertainty any more, and run to the river.
But there are only dead stars and our pallid reflections in it.
 
Comrade, can you name this moment
to which even the river has lost its flux?
 
 

5
 
Perhaps, the river must wait
before it can flow again,
for everything waits:
 
field for seed,
serpent for woman,
fig for hunger,
rock for diamond,
bansuri for breath,
quill for ink,
parchment for Time
 
Waiting fills the elements, too:
 
a white piece of sky
a coppery speck of land
a cobalt drop of sea
a black pole of wind
an orange sun,
 
wait for Word.
 
 
6
 
And then you and I run
as though a lightning has entered us.
Through the flight our clothes leave us
one by one, till the skies offer
themselves to us, and we grow wings.
 
The peeling was abrupt; nothing
had prepared us for this bareness.
Now we are gliding witnesses
to the trembling of the city –
is it seized by fear or shame?
 
We can’t make out:
Have we been late in arriving?
Have we no choice now
but to flee in our starkness
as though our sins are chasing us?
 

7
 
City of opposites,
along our naked flight across your breast,
you remind us of our one true Spartan.
 
His frail body had warned us
against choking in our clothes,
like truth getting lost in words.
 
We now remember our semi-clad martinet,
and see how this age asks for all we have
to be allowed to return to our nature.
 
From the bare banks of this river
it is clear now: we have endured too many guises;
a shedding is inevitable.
 
We must lose all our garbs:
we must turn digambaras,
with just the ashen horizon on us.
 
Our wild bodies alone may save us now:
they will tell this blind century
that we are woman and man first.
 
Our nakedness will again connect us
with this river,
and with each other.
 

8
 
Hope:
           
There, the river calls us now to its flow,
even as our last clothes renounce us:
 
‘Let us share our remains:
you, the sweat on your brows, and I, my longing.’

Now you and I stand in knowledge of each other
as in a garden of memories.
 
With infinite tenderness I tell you,
‘Comrade, let us celebrate our freedom.’
 
We embrace by the Sabarmati,
bare, forgetful.
 
And we enter the flowing river:
 
light floods us –
 
Light.
 

Phyllis Perlstone

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Phyllis Perlstone, a Sydney poet, first worked as an artist and experimental filmmaker. She turned to poetry full time in 1992, taking courses in poetry at the New School for Social Research in New York. She has gained various awards, including the NSW Women Writers poetry prize in 2004, and was second in the National Women Writers poetry prize in 2005. She has published reviews and articles. Her poetry is published in various journals and anthologies including Westerly, Siglo, Social Alternatives, Notes and Furphies, Meanjin, Blue Dog and A Way of Happening. Her first book is You Chase After Your Likeness (2002), reviewed in Southerly by Jennifer Maiden, and by Louise Wakelin in Five Bells. Her poem “Music and Landscape and other Consolations” was included in The Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology for 2007and her latest book The Edge of Everything published by Puncher and Wattman was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the 2008 Premier’s Awards for N.S.W, and ‘Ondine’ was included in Motherlode, 2009.

                                                                                                                                                                  (Photograph by Max Deutscher)

Hokusai
 
after your ‘thirty six
views of Mt. Fuji’
now you surprise me
on my calendar for April
with a print of poppies
the flowers are paper party-cups
folded on themselves
or flattened wide by a wind
springing the seams of things
in whole fields
open to the new season

That’s why I look at

my mother and her sister

in a snapshot

on a city street in Sydney

at their eyes on the photographer

their smiles and their hats 

the bunched violets on my mother’s lapel 

and my aunt’s cape

flaring on her shoulders

they dare their happiness

as if they were young and without care –

looking good

they might have said of themselves –

and why I stare at my orchids

my white ‘butterfly’ phaleonopsis

my dendrobium purples that arch out

into the room

and then turn to look outside

at the lemon-scented gum

rising,  a casuarina going up even higher

and then back again to gaze

at a grevillea – the way

it crowds the balcony with a branched extension –

its tiny flowers spray-brushing the rail

Hokusai, because of your print of poppies

I look around at these things

for a joy to match yours

Tuesday 24^th April 2007

For the rain it raineth everyday

today’s rain is falling

landing on leaves on roofs on

whatever catches it first –

it’s as steady as the air

it drops through –

at one or two almost-stopping points

you can hear the run of it

over the ground

where it puddles and leaks into holes

At an attention of waiting for its last

or next to last tick

my ears can’t help but measure it

Expectancy – as it’s still   

unable to be tightened into silence –

doesn’t let me escape either

from your stress  

your turning away

from what  I can only think to myself

you don’t need to feel…

Basho’s frog croaks  

in the half-quiet

the  sound of my voice can’t repeat

adequate replies to you –

the rain a mirror to everything

comes back

as if it’s shining a night-light at itself –

there’s a lane of echoes

opening and closing

only the frog’s joking note

can hop away

Lachlan Brown

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Lachlan Brown has studied poetry at the University of Sydney. His poems have appeared in Heat, Southerly, Total Cardboard and Philament. He was shortlisted for the Blake Poetry Prize in 2008 and is a recipient of the Marten Travelling Bequest for poetry. Lachlan lives in Southwest Sydney and teaches at William Carey Christian School in Prestons.

a secret work

After a time the prophets kept their silence,
no longer speaking of that place where decisions were made,
where the glint and curve of hardened metal formed a singular language
and the cries of departing flew out across the landscape.
I have struggled for years, against this gap in the record,
attempting various solutions with little hope of success.
Now though, I sense the approach of another,
and must make preparations to leave this city.
The shadows of buildings darken the pavement,
dragging the evening ahead of itself.
And the wind channels its way through every street,
like the breath of something vast that draws near.
I am locking my office for the final time and so take out a small key.
Without astonishment I feel its weight settle against my palm.

a miracle occurs

Somehow I have made an astounding return:
the alps rise against a blue sky, the sun streaks down the valley,
a meadow feels those mountains pulling skywards
and lets its daffodils run into the light.
Yes I have seen this place, known it before.
In my childhood I was taken to many fabric shops,
and as my mother made her purchases
I would weave my small frame through the rolls of material
into a soft world that did not begin or end.
In one store a picture of this setting was fastened to a wall,
and I stood spellbound, until my name was finally called.
Now, so much later, I am here and cannot help but smile
at that younger self pushing through a forest of silk and cotton,
only to be held, silently, captivated by a scene.

Brenda Saunders

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Brenda is a Sydney writer and artist, of Aboriginal and British descent. She has had work published in journals anthologies and on the web. Her poetry readings have been broadcast on ABC RN and 2MBS. In 2008 she won the NSW Society of Women Writers Poetry prize. Brenda plans to publish her first collection The Sound of Red in 2010

Under the net

He is a man without a shadow
living in the park. Humid nights hiding
behind the kiosk. Or in the undergrowth
his dark shape spread on ivy. He wakes
to the murmur of couples leaving
a well-lit path: footsteps on the grass.
Settles to the steady roll of traffic.
Christmas lights. Possums sparked
to an all-night frenzy in the giant trees.
                       
The shaft drops him into old territory
an open vault. Stale air. He waits
as the cold closes in, counts his steps
along the rail, unsteady on flint.
Hands trace a line to a corner place
at the end of a  walled-in tunnel.
He lies awake, listens to the sound
of his breathing against the whirr
of trains. Heading into blackness. 

Blind Faith

He comes at me. Side on. The weight of metal
pressed at my side. A hand clamps my mouth.
He breathes one word, up close. Move…move 
There are men on the ground, a gate swinging
I am deaf to any thought of protest as the bag

covers my head. It smells of fermenting hay
hot against the lids. I listen to the men shouting
in strange accents, count each turn out of town
senses on high alert. We drive for hours. Stop
when the air is cooler. Maybe it is already night.

Blind Man’s Bluff at a half-remembered party
Arms search empty spaces for familiar shapes
a friendly voice. Now I wait for some command
to shuffle forward: like an old woman shackled
by pain. A baby stepping onto new ground.

Sounds carry when you’re closed in, bare feet
on mud-brick. A square, three paces each way.
I have learnt to be attentive to every variation
strain to catch familiar phrases under the door.
When a guard raises his voice I hold my breath

tighten the little fears, mouth dry. A water bottle 
anchors my hands, roped against risk of slippage.
Clothes cling heavy under waves of midday heat
its prickly light penetrates my roughcast prison.
Only night loosens the pressure under the mask.

Or the touch of water. One small escape allowed
for daily bathing, to absorb the playful splashes
on skin and hair: fill a chasm inside me. Waiting
for the barter, like prized sheep penned at night.
Back and forth a mobile’s ring tone sets the price

of freedom. A pause in the skirmish: long days
trading this body for comrades held like me in
some other place. Waiting for payment. Funds
exchanged for my ordinary life, already pledged
long ago to their distant cause. Sight unseen. 
 

Rumjhum Biswas

January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments

Rumjhum Biswas’s prose and poetry have been published in India and abroad, both in print and online. Notably in South, Words-Myth, Everyday Fiction, Muse India, Eclectica, Nth Position, The King’s English,  Arabesques Review, A Little Poetry, Poems Niederngasse, The Little Magazine – India and Etchings – Australia. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006. She won third prize in a poetry contest run by Unisun Publishers India in February 2008. A flash fiction by her was shortlisted in the 2008 Kala Ghoda Arts Festival literature section Flash Fiction Contest managed by Caferati. Her poem “March” was commended in the Writelinks’ Spring Fever Competition, 2008. She won third prize in the Muse India Poetry Contest 2008. Her story “Ahalya’s Valhalla” is among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award. She was a participating poet in the 2008 Prakriti Foundation Poetry Festival in Chennai. Links to her work at www.rumjhumbiswas.com. She blogs at http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/

Pelicans On The Brisbane River

“They’ll be here soon,” said the man in the wide brimmed hat
lumbering on his way down
into the wide belly of the tourist launch.
So we stayed above, sipping iced lemon tea
picking at our lamingtons nonchalantly flicking
crumbs off our clothes. Honestly speaking
nobody cares except for mother. “Don’t be so
impatient,” she said, as she smoothened her hair
before it succumbed to the river breeze again.
“Didn’t the man say they’ll be here soon?” So we waited
above the snowy froth churned up in our wake.
The launch skimmed like a water skater on the river’s skin,
flying faster than the flock of birds that seemed
to be doing a marathon just for the heck of it.
Some people preferred Brisbane’s sun bitten breeze
so they went up. But some, like mother, wanted the soft river
spray. We however outnumbered them all
clambering all the way up and then
all the way down. The river crept smoothly along
humming a song. Until finally the stars of the show
arrived waggling like miniature paddle boats,
jelly- jawed and ready to receive
our excited offerings of fish and more fish peeled
from buckets of ice. The pelicans smiled.
They spread their wings out wide for us and our cameras. They knew
what to do and they knew what to eat. Unlike that other
family that day, so lost in contemplation at the lunch buffet,
holding up a softly murmuring meandering queue
as they pondered and weighed
the pros and cons of each and every dish.

The Other Side of the Sun

Dusk has hefted this bloodless day
upon grim shoulders
and is now striding towards a horizon
where the Borealis are waiting
to feed…

Night drops down on iron haunches
and scans the sky
for a Moon, any Moon. Even an Arabian Moon.
Instead this night is hit full in the face
with wind, sleet and hail

Snarling at this January day, winter’s dragon
teeth stand
row by row by row on power lines and telephone poles,
ready to champ down hard
on bird, beast and man…

Its power is elusive. Elusive like the mirages
in the burning fields
on the other side of the sun. Redemption is too far away
and winter’s flinty fingers are breaking now
over the dreams of the dead lying forgotten
in unimportant lands.

Anaesthetized

I am at this portal
where the corridor of infinite doors
opens up one after the other
multiply and recede further
and further away from me.

Light turns opaque. Light turns heavy.
In that deep and perhaps dark world
light turns. Time ceases its terrors.
Dreams release their hold over notions.
My mind becomes torpid like a tomb.
My thoughts are embalmed. Sound
becomes numb and sight is nullified. Touch moves
more than a thousand touches away
from skin catacombed by sutures.

In the darkest maws of my belly
another consciousness stirs.
I cede control. I cede myself.
There is no ‘I’. No ‘Me’ left to hold.

Afterwards the hours are counted and stored
in the bag of oblivion.
Time becomes wafer thin.
Afterwards my tongue begins to seek words.
My words desire utterance and a man who loves me
understands me. Translates my wishes to those
who wield syringes.
There is no ambiguity here.

Eventually I unhinge and flow back
through the canopy of infinite doors
from that long corridor.
I return as one who was
a special guest of death before the gap
between then and now was squeezed
into an infinitesimal thing. I return as the one
after whom the world spun
and fell back like rain.

But I do not care then. I do not care.
Like a new born baby, I do not care.

Libby Hart

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Libby Hart’s first collection of poetry, Fresh News from the Arctic (Interactive Press, 2006) received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize. She received an Australia Council for the Arts international skills and arts development studio residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland. During this residency (2008) she wrote the book-length poem ‘This Floating World,’ which will be performed by Teresa Bell and Gavin Blatchford (2010). Publication of ‘This Floating World’ is forthcoming.

The very thought of you

You’re the face I’m seeking
each time I think of love
and my yearning covers
all the miles I’ve travelled tonight.

I’m alone, but I’m cuddling up to the thought of you,
of your fingers that come to me as if ghosts
inside a memory so crystalline.

I’m rounding my passion,
curving it to your meaning,
as you leave a kiss against lip
as a hand strokes my hair
as a breath is tattoo-delivered against brow
with a sigh so full of thought.

That’s when you leave me again.
That’s when I remember
I’ve been meaning to tell you
that you hold my soul in your hands.

There is silence at the gate,
all my angels press against the fence.

River poem

To capture the moment just before it happened:

The river was epic,
everything coiled and flowed
inside a great restlessness.

Then came a ribbon of blood,
then came curlicues made by stone,
then came the water, inking.

Canoeists passed silently like ancient travellers.

A step-by-step approach 

Arthur Leung

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Arthur Leung was born and raised in Hong Kong. He regularly presents reading of his poetry and has had his poems published in anthologies such as Hong Kong U Writing and Fifty-Fifty, as well as in numerous magazines and journals including Smartish Pace, Yale Anglers’ Journal, Loch Raven Review, Existere, Paper Wasp, Bravado, Taj Mahal Review‏, Poetry Kanto, QLRS, Crannog Literary Magazine, Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Words-Myth, Magma Poetry and elsewhere. Leung has served as external editor for Yuan Yang and as guest poetry editor for Cha. He was a finalist for the 2007 Erskine J. Poetry Prize and a winner of the 2008 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition.

Kiss of the Moon

Drunk in its mild yellow, that silence
explodes like the first thunder in June.
My breaths swallowed by the curve of a body,
no name is fuller than the cheeks of the moon.

I taste the peach in your tongue, only feel
the words from your lips but never your eyes.
Heartbeats like summer frogs, knowing a touch
would return you to the soil of paradise.

Angler Fish Sashimi
(reinterpretation of a Chinese poem by P.K. Leung)

I come from the border between sea
and river, stage my performance art
in every winter, cordially invite
the audience to take part. I put a pair
of scissors beside me, you may choose
to cut away anything from my body.
 
I look at you, solitary lad,
your reckless cut of my gill. You angry
young man, a sharp cut on my skin.
I gaze at you, crazy old fellow,
you cut my stomach, ovary, and liver
that survives the winter, plump and juicy.
 
I give everything to you as you swallow.
You chew everything, understand
the taste of blood and know more of me.
I’m your magnificent caprice,
not an artist high above, bring
myself to your hands to manipulate
your boundless imagination.
 
I trust you’ll treat me well, without trust
how can we communicate, my art
take shape in the society?
You touch me and feel a heap
of flimsiness, or you can grasp my profile,
tell my truths and lies, a biased
favour for big mouth, strange face?
 
I sacrifice my best portion
to my best audience. You carry a part
of me, I become a part of you
and dissolve in a deeper, wider ocean.

Simon West

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Simon West was born in Melbourne where he teaches Italian at Monash University. His first collection, First Names, was published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2006. It was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers’ Prize 2007 and joint winner of the William Baylebridge Memorial Prize. In 2004 he held an Australian Young Poets Fellowship. He is also the author of The Selected Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti published by Troubadour Press, 2009. 

To Wake In Someone Else’s Dream

To wake in someone else’s dream – 
             weather that warmed bare
             arms and the inner arch of feet.
In a capital of lost provinces
to keep crossing avenues of flowering tiglio – 
             unmarked doors were just ajar
             all the birds were facing south.
Lime trees, we reminded ourselves.
Lime tea at all hours.

And a flock of pigeons rose – no, click
            of slats as old women drew their blinds.
And a heckle of car horns was heard – no,
            bells from a distant church 
            recalled. And listen,
a blackbird, now, at dawn not evening.
You said, happy as a blackbird, and talked
           as if at home. Still
           they sing alone. Branches
           were dark under summer leaves.
Not a whit less solid. Coated in lime.

Blackwood

We leaf before daylight from blackwood or ironbark
leaf on a pulse pressing as breath:
green vowels from blackwood.
They falter by nightfall. Their colour bleeds away.
We hope at the end of stuttering twigs: hard
won foliage. Even the lightest notes fall to ground.

In the thick of things there was eavesdropping,
there was sunlight sunk on events. Where we trailed
the forest there were pathways
to hold as a sound, and wing
and voice of startled bird.

We clasp single words.
We feel the rough shell of what has fled. An age
may slip from our hands.
We leaf before daybreak.
Our foliage is sparse. We leaf on an impulse
from blackwood or ironbark.

The Mirror

Eventually
quickly
          everything changes.

The mirror breaks and we find a way through.
Shards cling to our cheeks like cold water.

Blackbird song streams in a startled mind.
Courses rediscovered in spring.

A new vowel
fills our mouths.

 
*

Even the faintest ways lead.
In late spring
the grass grows fast in the mountains
a foot or two high and folds 
         to mark the passage of a child.

Followers even by night
by torchlight, somewhere
         we have no word for
         climbing slowly.

Silence keels, its slate roof sinks
        on things.
        Scattered voices ask of you.
        All we have a certain liberty.

Jennifer Wong

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Jennifer Wong was born in Hong Kong. She has participated in various poetry festivals and readings, including the Man International Literary Festival in Hong Kong. Her poems appeared in several poetry journals in Hong Kong and overseas, including Coffeehouse Poetry, Iota, Cha. Dim Sum, Aesthetica and Oxford Reader. Her debut poetry collection Summer Cicadas was published by Chameleon Press in 2006. She graduated in English from University College, Oxford University, and is currently doing a Master’s degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, UK.

Myth

Do not talk to trees.

They have deep squinting eyes.
Long stout necks sticking out.
Rough chafing leather.
 
In the warm house you feel them
Inhaling and exhaling, your old furniture

Or their harmless smiles
In your child’s picture books.

It’s hard to get lost in the woods
Without meaning to.

Do not talk to trees.
At night they dance in ballet shoes,
Tell secrets to one another,
Put on a ring,
Wisdom for every year.

I Remember

Remember
Your dreams spilling
From bright red velvet?

When time feels
Free and right as memory foam.
A child puts his best things
Into his delicious pockets.

Curious and curious-er,
We poke and shove our fingers
Into every small crack or hole.

We dare to tilt
Order of anything;
Pluck cotton balls from dolls,
Turning them into clouds.

Remember how to play?