CLRI January 2014

Contemporary Literary Review India January 2014 CONTENTS
POEMS
Anupama Chowdhury Fear by Anupama Chowdhury Poems by Charles F. Thielman His Teenage Octave Men of Dust, Men of Dusk Debarun Sarkar Cocktail Pills by Debarun Sarkar Poem by Kameswara Bhradwaj Mantha Moon Light Poem by Raad Kamreem Abd-Aun The Poor Taxi Driver Poems by Rafael Ayala Impressions Vaishvanara/Agni Poem by Salih Hameed Metamorphosis Poem by Soumick Mukherjee My Olfactory Rememberings Poem by Tayeb Bouazid Memories from the Black Decade Poems by Vinita Agrawal Anaesthetic Edge Anklets of a Lost Habitat Poem by Walter William Safar Beloved Country!
Arts
Arts by Molshree Ambastha
Stories
Story by Aman Chougle Volcano Story by Biswaranjan The Letter from a School Girl and Chocolate Story by Kim Farleigh The Gush of Confidence Story by T J Benson The Apparition of Priya Sethi Story by Veerinder Patwari Crescent Moon My Obsession!!
Criticism
Criticism by Huzaifa Pandit Transgressive resistance in R Raj Rao’s One day I Locked My Flat in Soul City- A narratological analysis Criticism by P. V. LAXMI PRASAD Nature in the Poems of Chandramoni Narayanaswamy
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Fear by Anupama Chowdhury

Fear by Anupama Chowdhury

FEAR

Slimy                           dark                            damp

UNKNOWN

Like some prehistoric den

The wild smell of animals in cave

mossy FEARS

rotten petals on a smarmy bough

MACABRE

PUNGENT

GOTHIC

ABYSMAL

Fear

SLIMY                         DARK                         DAMP

Unknown

(You think you are not into it and then one day it just grabs you)

Loneliness

Terrible loneliness.....

FEAR

Like chromosomes

In your cellular matrix

Mushy fabric

Soggy colds

Shadows unnumbered

FEAR HEAPS UPON FEAR

It darkens forever.

Dr Anupama Chowdhury (M.A., B.Ed, M.Phil, Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor of English, MUC Women's College, Burdwan, West Bengal. She has published several scholarly articles in journals of national and international repute. Her areas of interests are Postcolonial Literatures, SAARC Literatures in English, Gender Studies and Critical Theories. She is currently engaged in Post-Doctoral research on SAARC Literatures in English.

Subscribe to Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers. CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366. Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions. You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI

Poems by Charles F. Thielman

Poems by Charles F. Thielman

His Teenage Octave

Stepping back from the edge of a street-light pool,

his lines of preludes

are gang glyphs on a wall

near his station as he whistles at night traffic.

With street-wise finesse, he un-sleeves a flick of his right hand,

lighter palm catching light, signaling a brother spotter

hid behind half-open drapes or twilight.

Then he long-eyes my stance,

my parked, empty, idling, bus w/2-way radio,

the quick cig flares

within my smoke cloud while I stay,

stay between sidewalk

and curb.

Satisfied that his warning is heeded,

he watches for cops and customers.

He whistles his teenage octave at slow-rolling cars,

a toned magnet inviting headlights to bend

towards a white-lined,

silk finale.

His eulogy hangs as a dialect

pleated into the arms

of his dark coat.

Men of Dust, Men of Dusk

Held by habitual love, men of dusk

raise oak batons into deft subito,

the blue notes of jazz sax and trumpet

rising above brick, asphalt and pulse.

Men of dust raise oak batons into deft subito,

conducting current swirl as a seeled falcon

climbs, rounding on columns of heat and sweat.

Homing in on the blue notes of flute and trumpet,

men of dusk grasp at sedge beside the current

as men of dust raise oak batons, sensing

pain in the serrated glaze of stars.

Hawk cry wedding city jazz, held by

habitual love, men of dusk, men of dust

dance and stride through the convoluted air,

raising oak batons into deft subito, breath of cougar,

blood of bighorn, bones of whale, sight of osprey,

flesh within flesh. These lovers of twilight lean

into its liquid flutter, discovering new pain,

sweet pain, in the serrated glaze of stars.

Hawk cry wedding city jazz, men of dust,

men of dusk homing in on blue notes, true eyes

opening in songs of love, anointing the new wings

arriving laden. Oak branched surprises of clarity crest

beside the current as a large falcon wheels and dips

into our dark blue sky, thousands turn at the peal

of its cry. Edging down into green, these lovers

of twilight lean through the birdsong swept air.

Men of dust, men of dusk raise oak batons

into deft subito. Blue notes rising from dry benches,

rising into a liquid flutter, current pulling

marrow as the ragged heel into their waltz

of hungers, hawk cry wedding city jazz.

Born and raised in Charleston, S.C., moved to Chicago, educated at red-bricked universities and on city streets, Charles F. Thielman has enjoyed working as a truck driver, city bus driver and enthused bookstore clerk. Married on a Kauai beach in 2011, a loving Grandfather for five free spirits, now living much closer to them, Charles' work as Poet, Artist and shareholder in an independent Bookstore’s collective continues! And not a few of his other poems have been accepted by literary

journals, such as The Pedestal, Gargoyle, Poetry365, Gangway, Poetry Salzburg [Austria], The Oyez Review, Windfall [Oregon], Muse, Battered Suitcase, Poetry Kanto [Japan], Open Road, Pastiche [England], Belle Reve, Tiger’s Eye and Rusty Nail.

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Cocktail Pills by Debarun Sarkar

Cocktail Pills by Debarun Sarkar

Wrapped in the red cocktail dress

A dance of ethereal significance

was enacted.

The cocktail melds and flutters

into the clouds, and the times

flutter away.

The cocktail flutters and

encapsulates the body

like those cylindrical pills.

Cylindrical pills of varied significance.

Debarun Sarkar just graduated from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, has enrolled for Masters programme in University of Hyderabad. Forthcoming publications include Inclement Poetry Magazine (Winter 2013 and Autumn/Winter 2014).

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Moon Light by Kameswara Bhradwaj Mantha

Moon Light by Kameswara Bhradwaj Mantha

I came to know the depth of moon’s insight,

As I watched it fading away in the bright day light;

Passive as a wise man in the midst of fools time,

Waited for its turn to rise and shine;

As it watched the ignorance shadowed the day,

Darkness crept inside and filled the world with dismay,

By turning day light to dark night;

Then it rose up in the dark-skies,

Shining bright in the darkness,

Ruling the dark-nights as the white Knight,

Casting rays of wisdom, which is our moon-light.

Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha, hails from Vijayawada, India, and is currently pursuing post-graduate in science. Even though his Interest rests mostly on Physics and science, he loves spending time on writing stories and poems.

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The Poor Taxi Driver by Raad Kamreem Abd-Aun

The Poor Taxi Driver by Raad Kamreem Abd-Aun

I

I was going to rent a compacter

To finish the sub base compaction

Of the front yard of the house

So, I hired a taxi driver

Who took me to a place

Where such machinery is available

We loaded the compactor

And on the way home

He told me his story:

II

His car keeps breaking down,

An old Opel, day after day,

And spends money more on fixing

Than what it brings him

He said that he lives in a rented house

Made of a single room

With his two children and wife

They come from Basrah

A few years ago he faced some hardships

He sent his wife to her folks in Basrah.

He used to sleep in a car on the street

And lived on palm dates only

He worked at a traffic light

Wiping car-windows

He complained that

People give him half a banknote

Sometimes I remember seeing him once

And thinking scornfully of him

But now I feel ashamed as I

Listen to him telling his story

No one offered him help

Even his brothers and his friends

He knew but one

It was a bookshop keeper, a communist,

Who asked the man to rent

A house and send for his family and children

He also bought him

A refrigerator

A cooker and a TV satellite receiver

A rug and made him a tea booth

He told me that he used to scorn him

For being a communist but he helped him

While others who claimed to be good

Believers scorned him but not

The bookshop keeper

III

I couldn’t stop myself

I thought he might be lying or exaggerating

But then I noticed that he did not ask

For too much money for the taxi fare

Unlike some well-to-do who want to earn more

Who work as taxi drivers

After closing their shops

Or leaving their full-time jobs

I knew he was telling the truth

I felt it after meeting him many times

He did not tell different stories as others do

To gain compassion easily.

I paid him the fixed fair

And offered some extra but he refused

On my insistence he agreed though.

I have seen

Many poor with so high morals

Than many a millionaire.

My wife and youngest daughter are asleep now

And my other daughter is watching Ben 10 on TV

I feel helpless as I finish this poem.

Raad Abd-Aun, born in Babylon, Iraq, (1976) holds a PhD in English Literature. He writes poetry since 1995 and considers it second to his family, the food of his spirit. Some of his poems have been published in print and electronic journals. He currently works at the University of Babylon dividing his time between teaching English Literature, academic, and creative writing.

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Poems by Rafael Ayala

Poems by Rafael Ayala

Impressions

Memory is in the fingertips

Colors are in the eyes

Infancy is contained in the backbone

Worlds are born in broken shells

There will always be a sign in every object

made vague in the horizon

An infinite omen in the night

A sparkle suspended on the forehead

An old smell beneath the pebbles

A red sun behind the hills

Sunrises on the eyelids

Balloons floating in the sky

Villages unsuspected in the soles of feet

Giant anemones in the clouds

Beings that walk on their heads

Suns like pupils

Divers drowned in a glass of water

Shipwrecks of desperation

Locomotives exhaling a swarm of flies

Trees that understand what we say

A clock with arms and legs

A tower submerged in a puddle

Eyes crying birds

Dreams that drive their cars in the night

Rafts that navigate the arteries leaving a trail of stars

Songs searching for the light

Skies tense like elbows and arms

Cities built in my left hand

Suns between fingers

Tides of deaf ears

Pieces of beaches in the retina

Aquatic insects

Maps of remote places like galaxies

Discussions over matters that we will soon forget

Islands that are nests of sounds

Impressions of everything dreamed

seen

smelled

heard

sensed

felt

liked

forgotten.


Vaishvanara/Agni

The fire, pair of the universe,

creates a sun

spilling out flames.

The fire moves towards the center.

The breath is wind

that sings without stopping.

The eyes

caves

that light up

in a glimpse of clarity.

The sweetness of fire

enraptures a naked body

and the leaves of summer

sing in the eyes’ brightness.

Everything shakes under your breast.

Rafael Ayala Paez, has degree in Education and Language Arts, is founding member of the Municipal Writers Network of Zaraza, Guarico. He has published in literary magazines in many countries including India, South America and Europe. Some of his poems have been translated to English, German, Frenchman and Hebrew. He has published Bocados de silencio, 2012.

Get Your Book Reviewed by Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers. CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.