Tactile 

“The longing to touch…I feel gratitude when I touch someone  — as well as affection etc. The person has allowed me proof  that I have a body — and that there are bodies in the world.  — Susan Sontag,  from As
April 25, 2023

Eyes That I love

Your crystalline eyes, Deepest than the seven seas Change colour From brown to blue to green From green to turquoise to grey And then to see through glass like They are deep They speak They smile They go sad… They

The Road To Zvegona

Is fading the memory of its son, Who for words must ride the night Fleeing ears that hear thunder on a baby’s purity guggle, Zvegona, my homestead, Ancestors are watching Elders on a scheming mission Trading lies with more lies The

Stripped

Stripped of your beauty, Stripped of your name. Stripped of everything that you thought you would have, Stripped of your freedom to go back to your place of origin. Stripped of the friendship you have with your people, Stripped of

Thus Goes A Day.

Amudha felt like opening her eyes. At the same time, she was a bit afraid. It was just one month previously that, through her co-construction worker,  she had begun to drink; in return for  Amudha’s kind gesture in teaching her

Anagram

My parents refuse to let me tell them about how the world is ending: the high end stores in NYC are boarded up, and people are lying on the bitumen-laid bridge in Portland in peaceful protest, and people in police uniform

I Lived Another Day

In those pathless roads In those shoreless seas In the air so mutilated In the sadness of me I lived another day In this world of asininity In this nature of tranquillity In the existence of fatality Off, the humanity

Lockdown Zurich -A Photostory

This period of lockdown and uncertainty has been a dark time for the entire world. Many photographers and artists across the globe came forward to document the images of this unwarranted pandemic. I am originally from Jaffna, Srilanka and now residing

Gimara

She was seated on the low bench with a warm cup of kahata the cupped between her palms. She watched the ocean becoming calm with dainty white ripples gushing and disappearing on the sandy beach. The bright orange ball was gradually

Street Games

  Thud I throw two red balls at the brick wall of our house. Thud Charlie Chaplin went to France. To show the ladies how to dance First you do the rhumba Then you do the kicks Then you do the

The Maze

On a day like this dawn hauls herself upright pink fingers curling above the rim   on a day like this queuing for basics among empty shelves spilt frozen peas scrunch underfoot   on a day like this navigating the

Beloved Hallucination

I settle into captivity  with a beloved  hallucination. Bearing a face of lulling  lucid dreams. Our indiscernible torsos collide  in this sanctuary of candlelight  and vapour abiding. Uninterrupted. And I’m falling into this misled  by the desires  of this heart unsettled,

Kiewa Creek

Sunday, 1 February The day dawns. Sulphur-crested cockatoos shriek as they rise from the trees. Startled kookaburras call out in raucous laughter and baby magpies squawk. By mid-morning, heat and humidity drive the locals to the spring-fed creek that bubbles

The Protector

He always worried about his kids’ safety. It propelled him to make sure someone accompanied them wherever they went, be it school or recreation.  Recently, he had installed cameras in their rooms that were connected to devices so he and his

Crayons

In trees, in crayon leaves, a box of autumn with a sharpener of birds. How my eyes flew to them. How flocks of big-horned clouds were un-shepherded like hope and went everywhere they shouldn’t be able to: my hands, my

The End Of The Affair

So the cat untwists in midair beneath the apple tree, a blackbird fluttering backwards from her paws as she lands eyes vivid with desire, crouches, wriggles, deliberates, blinks. So, too, an apple springs unbitten from your hand to its twig, unripens

Pieta C.1989

Warm, soft, brown soil of mine No shipped cold hard white marble Parched, tired fingers – also mine Michelangelo’s discarded chisel Does not suffice Beautified, refined you need not be In death, in memory, in life You were sun scorched black-brown Tired, forgotten,

Ariel’s Song

Tent flaps flutter in the breeze. Dust stirs and lingers in the air, in the mouth. Another day—and I’m still here. The queue grows longer every morning. By the time our water container is filled, I’ve at least sweated away half that

Cherry Blossom

春の風桜の花を連れていく… Cold winter had long passed. The snow had begun to slowly melt away, also taking the sorrows of the villagers along with it, giving way to the fragrant spring odours, and new hopes that kindled in the women’s hearts. The

Whispers

Don’t go to the river mother whispers last days of harvest under the molten sun air is still, breathless waves of heat distort the view beneath boundary trees this drowsy afternoon my toes cooling in the trickle don’t go

Aiyo  

This word comes as the voice of the well;   A thousand children— A hundred artists, drunk, lost their way— those who fell  while crossing over the woven coconut fence, clandestinely, in the ecstasy of desire— I know the chapter of

In the Tibetan Autonomous Region

མིའི་རིགས་ཀྱི་མུན་ནག་དེ་  རང་ཁྱིམ་གྱི་མུན་ནག་ཏུ་གྱུར  The darkness of humanity  has become the darkness of my home.  —Kyabchen Deydrol སྐྱབས་ཆེན་བདེ་གྲོལ, translation by Lowell Cook and the author    A Tibetan professor sneaks us home   to share a meal with his family.   He does

Gangaramaya 2019

Highly embellished, in the heart of the capital, crammed within its walls, Gangaramaya Temple is infested with exhibits – chandeliers, Buddha statues, sculptures, coins, carvings, collectibles… High-end, ostentatious Buddhist culture from around the world. It looks grand, yet cosy

Apology

I left  Thinking the sun was safely  wrapped up  in a bundle of clothes  at the bottom of my bag but leaving in such a hurry I didn’t realize I left  the sun  in your chest your palms pressed against the

Rebels

Lawanya Wijesekara  A flower’s life on earth is shortened, as it’s plucked from the ground it’s born Yet its death is celebrated in a glass coffin of a vase… Death becomes melodramatic A sight, news, a story to tell A movie

Skin

I’ve got skin, miles and miles of skin. covered and adorned with colours, be it of cotton, silk or others. It’s perfect in concealing my cells and the scars I possess But your eyes would lurk somewhere that has deeper

From An Australian

I’m not a displaced person living in uncertainty marginalised and not heard. I have the right to vote freedom of speech hard-earned by my migrant ancestors. My children have married into other cultures chosen other religions blessing our family with

Stamping

In a corner of my mother’s kitchen cupboard, there was a brown glass and a plate, slightly cracked, “Reserve them for the Help”, she’d snap “Don’t drink from them, keep them at the back.” There was separate access from the back

Asterion

There’s one in every family the black sheep the bull there are names for me you won’t find on Wikipedia whispered, rumoured too ugly to share I wanted to tell my story but there are no words only mythologies yes the

This Is What Happens

It’s Sunday afternoon and she’s in the wash house standing in stocking feet on the roof of theold doll’s house, the one Uncle John Murphy made, and she’s rocking backwards andforwards …bored, bored, bored…rebod rebod rebod rebod rebod rebod rebod rebod rebod

Rosewater Women

The Hindi word Dalit can be translated as divided, split, broken, scattered… like a handful of rose petals flung into sugared water to flavour gulab jamun soft, delectable, melt in the mouth dumplings… but there is nothing soft or sweet

Faith

They had had another run-in. No matter how much she tried avoiding it. And it was right when she had to rush out of the house too. She hated the way someone could belittle another person and then hours

The Tears We Cry

I stood against the front door, staring up at her, bags in her hand. As my mother’s voice strengthened, my body weakened. I shrank to the ground, hugging my knees to my chest, wanting to scream: shut the fuck

Hope

It was a humid Saturday afternoon. The mugginess around had caressed most of my friends at God’s Children into an untimely siesta. Sister, in her white habit, too, was busy sleeping. The cleaning lady, Domenica, had taken the day

Chadar

It’s 42 Degrees. In between the hustle and bustle of Gardezi Bazaar, Beggars line up at the kerb of each street. Upper-class auratein walk with conceit, draped in their fancy chadars, clacking their heels. Mard blast angraazi music, car windows

Tea With The Demon

Tea with the Demon In terms of beauty that hackneyed dragon still beating its wings everything can be broken down a little further each howling beast like the rest of us imperfect, uncertain bearing witness I didn’t like the look

Ashes Of Roses

Not a hop, step and jump, but a stumblefrom the gravel road, when a stubbed toeleads the way to a giant leap since the house was on the low side of the streetapproached by descending steps, flanked by rose bushes

Murdered For Love

හෙවත් අනිච්ඡාවත සංකාරා A woman was killed in my neighbourhood in 2011, because of Love! I saw it with my own eyes, as did the many who were around. Millions of women are getting killed everywhere in the world but,

#MeToo

At the age of six, probablyI remember my mother sayingthat there are these sacred parts in my body that I should not let anyone touchAnd to me it seemed pretty absurd, how the ugliest and the dirtiest partsbecome sacred? And I

We Dreamt

                                                                                                            To Ali Osama and mewe dreamtof making Palestine free.From Yarmouk* we used to followthe events in Gaza and imaginewe would dieas martyrson Palestinian soil. We could neverhave imagined that warwould knock on our doors.We could never have imaginedthat Osama would leave this

Moobs

Men always laughedAbout my slightly overgrown breasts: ‘Boys are not supposed to haveThese things!’This made me a bit of a hunchback. Stiff walk, rounded shoulders, hiding ‘things’, beneath my loose shirt, I was scared of becoming a womanAs a preteen. Why

Fairy God Mother

Where are you, oh my fairy godmother!You searched this corner and the other.Swabbing the stains of your own goreWhen his anger shoved you and more. Do you exist or did you become extinct?You moaned in silence but distinct.He might hear me cry

Medusa

First it was gold the untold storyraindrops in the gardenof longing she wrote it down tore it, ate the wordsthey were anything but sweetswallowed hard what gorgonthat was just a bad hair day my ringlets my pearlshow many men were lost

Safe Harbour

I learned to love storms as a young man,Because storms were all I knew.Anger and intensity everywhere;Home daily ripped by lightning flashesOf unexpected violence and unexplained pain. I learned to survive on an open sea Of pain and hostility; Hiding