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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

CLRI January 2014

Contemporary Literary Review India
January 2014

CONTENTS
POEMS
Fear by Anupama Chowdhury
His Teenage Octave
Men of Dust, Men of Dusk
Cocktail Pills by Debarun Sarkar
Moon Light
The Poor Taxi Driver
Impressions
Vaishvanara/Agni
Metamorphosis
My Olfactory Rememberings
Memories from the Black Decade
Anaesthetic Edge
Anklets of a Lost Habitat
Beloved Country!
Arts
Stories
Volcano
The Letter from a School Girl and Chocolate
The Gush of Confidence
The Apparition of Priya Sethi
Crescent Moon My Obsession!!
Criticism
Transgressive resistance in R Raj Rao’s One day I Locked My Flat in Soul City- A narratological analysis
Nature in the Poems of Chandramoni Narayanaswamy
Announcement
CLRI is soon going to be launched with an all new changed look and format. Keep waiting with a big BANG.
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CLRI 2013 Annual Print Edition ISSN  2250-3366
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Have a look at the preview of the print copy at: CLRI Annual 2013.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

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.



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— 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.
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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.
Subscribe to
— 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

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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Creative Content Media (CCM) provides content development services on wide area and purposes. Get your content developed by CCM. To know more, please visit: http://creativecontentmedia.blogspot.in

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.



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