Posted on: September 29, 2008
We have some new poetry on tap from Sheema Kalbasi, Alessio Zanelli and Tony Jones. Sheema also tipped me off to a very good short film and hopes our readers will view the movie here.
The filmmaker in question, Hossein Martin Fazeli, is also a poet. One I hope to publish here soon.
* * * * *
If I had another life to live, I think I would be a filmmaker. The ability to make art that way, to combine prose, poetry, music, soundscapes, landscapes, paintings, phởtography, motion. It has it all. And I don’t think that “all” has been fully exploited. One could do a life of a poet, a musician, a novelist, a painter, a philosopher. One could utilize most of our senses and hint at the rest. He or she could create a world and go beyond any one form of art by itself.…
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Posted on: September 29, 2008
The Shriek
On the edge of her lip, like a car
balanced on the brink of a precipice,
the shriek has halted, swaying.
Just one spasm, and all of her anger
would gush down noisily, sweeping
sighs and placid thoughts away.
We could try to rescue those inside
the shaky car before it plunges
to the bottom of the crag, but nothing
curable is in that mouthful of vibrations.
And the force of a thousand hurricanes
locked in a chest then suddenly released
would not suffice to wash such evil.
In the end what is unavoidable befalls,
and the tenacity of her facial muscles
is not worth the trouble. Ineffectual,
however long she strives, to hold her breath.
No human can contain a lifetime’s pain.
The Effort
Moon shines while billions
of corpses rot
beneath earth’s crust.
—Shinkichi Takahashi
Man’s sight is dim.
Man’s look is squint.…
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Posted on: September 29, 2008
Atonement
Grind your teeth on atonement pangs. Lone rocks crop the low sky. You reach up with a steady hand. The clouds elude you.
Walk the brown stream, dip in your hands and face, drink deep. Forget the water leads always down. Brown drops crumble in heat to ascend, as must you.
2.
You’ve got to stumble three times. You try to walk, and that staggers your first summers. Drink love and fall forever.
You enter the brown room, where an hour stretches to blackness before time, songs flash bright between your ears, there is no difference between the song and your voice, your mind.
3.
You bleed brown into your chest, your head.
Luck cleaves to the gray channels. Don’t cling
too tight, you might miss it. Keep one eye open,
or you’ll miss her. Two eyes, and she’ll run away.
4.
You dive through the murk to the stone, pry it loose with tired fingers.…
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Posted on: September 29, 2008
Paper Spoon
This night holds me so tightly in its palm,
as if to never love another, but outside
what remains is the inheritance
and an unfriendly notice.
I fumble through the memories, recalling
promises of life, never loving another.
Softly, I wait until the lush beginning
comes to me. I am pale yet ripe,
seasoned with night clouds,
wondering how the skin is perfected
before the portrait of a wrinkled woman,
from my kitchen to yours, is secretly hung.
My heart weighs the love and lust
as I sprawl within this page, inking
aloneness, swinging the papers
or a naked spoon inward.
–by Lekshmy Rajeev and Sheema Kalbasi
Lekshmy Rajeev is a poet, and literary journalist and translator in English. Her poems have been published in many highly regarded literary magazines & journals. She has translated The Narayaneeyam, a devotional Sanskrit work in the form of a poetical hymn.…
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