July 2024

You wouldn’t know how it feels, would you?To love a man who’s claimed by many.Who am I but just another woman,lost in a throng of admirers waitingfor a glimpse of his dark, dimpled face.Tell me something, have you ever knownthe fear of

Inspired by Ada Limon Swell like a river.Expand as if your skin isn’t impressive enough already.Pure expression of the body and soul should never be anemic. Don’t tally your uncertainties, showcase your fearslike a movie on repeat. Your skin folds aren’t hiding

I hear mothers,young and old,rich and not-so-poor,Believers, atheists, heathenI hear their staggering stepszigzagging throughformer husbands,current flings,the faltering economy.I hear their symphonies–son’s first tooth fall,daughter’s first ballet,first culinary experiment.I hear, too, their erratic quartets;custody battles,nursing a sick child,telling the daughterbetter loversawait her yet.As

Astir, nightly shows—orchestras of vehicles playthe chords in the streets. True-blue tea-lovers—drinking views with samosas,English coffeehouse. Glistening at daytime—dainty neighbourhoods bask insoft showers of peace. Taking in the town—orange sun ducks behind askyline of jet trees.

lost this moonless nightwithout a starry guidewhere the black dog herdsand the midnight cat’s clawsclick across weary stones.lost where whiteno longer exists.gloom’s black fingerscurl and stretchscratching away layers,the regrets and misstepsuntil my noh mask slipsand I am undone

If she gets sometimes offOpens the portfolio from her voice and singsChildren cry for attention or quarrel over shabby rags or iron blade or broken plastic lid.This is the only time she wipes off whiskey stainse-liquid drip in her mist like songs.Frantic

It used to be alert to threats, waiting on the back porch, ready to run at the first whiff of smoke. The eyes sense it first: the sting from ghosts poking needles in my eye, blinking at betrayal like voodoo dolls that

It was a summer, Mason knew, when things were suddenly gone. In the midst of a drought, hundreds of thousands of dead fish in the Murray Basin and no one knew why. Mass fish kill, they called it. A third of Australia’s

As she sat down and spread outthe old picture album,all the moments and kinfolkslivened up around herwith all those smiles and tearsand those hugs and gigglesthose partings and unionswhirling around herin a cloud of smokeand faint echoes from afar.Like how she beheld

love can find us even when we are not lookingfor it, in the most fortuitous place with the mostunexpected person & at the most inconvenient time.as the waning days & nights of our lives are slowlysettling in around our aging bodies &

I acquired these fears perhapsfrom dreaming too much, from floating above my headin a state of child-hooded fugue. The fear of falling down backwards while trudging up the stairs at 6 pm– an hour to go before the parental units arrive.My legs