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The atom bomb. It rolls off
your tongue
like the name of your great-
grandmother. Her white linen scarf wrapped
around your shoulders. Dead
when you were born. Dying
when your mom was pregnant. What makes a good
cocktail? We ask each other. I never
wash my glasses; you rim yours in sugar
water. You know I never wanted
to be beautiful just cause I never
wanted to be hooked on something. Of course, I’m lying
just a little. I started my day by oil-pulling mercury
out of my teeth. But doesn’t the mercury still enter
your bloodstream? You ask. Ah, don’t be silly,
have a drink. Take a sip. The glass
sloshes and spills into the dirt.
ants wash up. A caterpillar crawls
on a nearby leaf. What an evil little
world you say.

I smeared blood over my body when you wept,
I scratched scars upon my skin,
I painted my hands blue
to match the colour of your face
when it was stained with tears,

I listened to you,
I listened so much
that I turned myself into a character in your story
and when you closed your book, you got better
and I got trapped.

An imagined missing soliloquy from Act III of Hamlet.

I crave return to the earth.
I who bore that boy
now must abide his destruction.

Whose image is it in this dark mirror
shadowed, candle lit, framed by white roses?
A lone woman, but not one waiting
for a sign from above,
from You,
the One who makes no signs.

For You
I have no explanations,
nor for my husband,
nor for my son,
though You and I both see him
in the doorway.

I think we see him the same way,
his mind wobbling, his dagger golden red
looking for a place to plunge,
as I hear a storm of empty thunder rising outside, spreading
to my bedchamber. Like a heavy oak with clumsy limbs,
a fool falls from behind a curtain, run through by fear.

The end would now be so different
if either one of us cared more about it.
I am a mother, but not
like You are a Father.
The world is Your body, but for all the world’s noise
I have found You mute.
My body has been my voice,
You have seen to that,
and my voice falls silent by my choice.

I have shame. You,
the Playwright of all this,
You have just Your contempt
for all of us, giving us
only loss
to show Your power.

You will never be the light I call out to,
but only the blackness beyond.
I dismiss you,
as I will be dismissed.

A few pieces of love,
today I picked from the garden of my heart
Some dreams that I had threaded for you
Today I will pick up the pieces of those dreams
from your path

This heart is sad because of your departure
I’m keeping eye on the road, maybe you will come
You are away for some reason but no relationship
is special even after being close

When the strings of hearts are connected then
there is no feeling of distance

They said they would die if I didn’t meet you
Letting my love go to ashes today

Why did you come into my life, you ask?
I’m still there now
You came to leave

I took all your pain to my chest
I treated every sorrow of yours as mine
Still you are angry with me
Don’t trust me

It is possible that you may forget me
But I will remember the ink on your pages
Everything that bothered you
And, you added it to my name
I will remember everything

You have the right to leave whenever you want
Your love will always reside in my heart
I’m sad that you considered me unfaithful
You always considered me a stranger in your heart

What have we not done to keep this flame burning forever?
You created darkness, you did not let the lamp of love burn

You will remember me, when you will be lonely
Think again, what you got by losing me?

…… Puneet Maity

Off to the left, not fifty meters
from the bunker busting bomb site,
they protruded from the Gaza dust,
tank track treads bisecting them like
scalpel-sliced, surgically impaled remnants.
The arm seemed to be that of a child,
perhaps due to what appeared to be
a cartoon-charactered image still
visible on what might have been a
shirt, but rags rarely tell stories clearly.
The head wears a bloodied cap,
maybe Kippah, maybe Taqiyah,
but religion disappears under
rubbish and wounds take precedence
over Torah or Koran like angry pages torn.
The leg, a stump of a hump of flesh,
torn and raw, red and ragged, toes
blackening, might have been a man’s,
but who knows what gender becomes
when bodies are insulted by the cost of war.

It is neither here nor there that I truly care,

for someone to see me so bare.

Since I am someone who loves me most,

yet I am never one to boast.

Though if a prince comes into my life,

he better stop to make me his wife.

And treat me like the kingdom he owns,

for if not he will be thrown with stones.

How do I stop these tears
bleeding through my soul,
dripping off like dewdrop
from the extent of heights we reached
only to end up alone.

Waited for you forever
but you never showed up
when love turned to resentment,
flabbergasted that you didn’t exist anymore.

Only if I could relive
for this sorrow knows no bounds,
though I’d still choose you again
no matter the immense pain to endure
just to be with you anew.

Could we be together
even if we’re not together
for amatory doesn’t last forever,
would there be a peaceful Nirvana
where this ardor would remain eternal?

~ Ananya Sharma

When I was a toddler.
St. Patrick’s Day was just another day for me,
beside the occasional flash of green.
It held no meaning.

Then I hit double digits, and I was handed,
my ancestry on a plate.
Hello I’m Sylvia, and I’m half Irish
I would proudly say,
Even if the stories that my grandad told

were filled with famine and pain.

Then I grew-
Up,
Up,
Up,
Learning to translate my grandads’ accent so others would understand,
Dressing in sparkly green dresses for the parties,
shamrocks in my hair,
Irish dancing, hand in hand.

Just months after I turned fourteen,
St. Patrick’s Day came back around.
Mum took my sister and I, up to London for the parade,
Oh, how I was so proud.

I’m Sylvia, and I’m half Irish.
I said to every passing stranger out loud.
The parade had dancing and music, and I even had a sip of Guinness.
Mum said I wouldn’t like it-
(But I did)

And there I bought a balloon-
Look, mummy, it’s as green as grass!
and pulled it along to the car.

Smiling from ear to ear,
I felt I could fly-
Up,
Up,
Up,
To the land of Ireland;
I felt that there would never again be anything to fear.

Then I fell-
Down,
Down,
Down.
When mummy said daddy had decided to leave last night-
(Last night when we were dancing and singing, and the parade was alive)
He was in his car, ending his life.

The shamrocks turned to vines that wrapped themselves around my throat and squeezed.
Leprechaun ghosts crawled from the shadows with hands holding green balloons.
Irish music replaced with screaming and an ache the size of the moon-

St. Patrick’s Day would never be the same-

Look, mummy, everything has fallen apart!

Hello, my name’s Sylvia, and I’m half-
–
a person.

shock the body electric
parasitic paroxysms penetrate you to your core
polymorphic transmutations
convulsive then catatonic
iced white rose petals on my nose
you are a master of major chords + tea cups
and your words all fall in eerie shades of icy blue
stir musings inspire hunger
all for the haunting croon of your golden swan song
your heavy horn
no wonder garden goddesses fall for you
traipse barefoot thru the gnarled nation of small-town streets
shower strangers with symphonies
throw caution and causation to the wind
there is powder in the wind delicate debris
there are chimes far-off ringing in the wind
and here i dance in the wind
in the crepuscular blue in the night air
here i dance thru galaxies and millennia
all while stars mutate and explode around me
all while your music breathes into my porcelain lungs
fills me with the effervescent oxygen of jazz
even just that word
jazz
is ever just as vital ever just as encompassing
as the names of sordid street corners at midnight
that the perfect tiny music notes blooming from your instrument
drifting up to the moon
will remember as the origin of their birth
and journey back to some shrouded night
to kiss, and die.

To be witty is to be smart, to think fast on your feet for the quick comeback, the pun, the play on words. When you step up to the counter at the fill-er-up station with a Big Gulp or a candy bar and the cashier asks “Did you have gas with that?” Respond, “Isn’t that kind of personal?”

When the service attendant asks, “Can I have your phone number?” say, “Don’t you have one of your own?”

When you see a dad pushing a stroller ask, “And other duties as assigned?”

When you see someone pulling weeds in their front yard, an onerous task, melt into comedy. Ask, “You make house calls?”

Approach the driver of the Pest Control truck and ask, “’You do boyfriends?”

Some comedians rely on timing, inflection, and attitude (Seinfeld.) Some comedians– think Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles (heckles) –are willing to use the caustic, burning, acidic, the fighting aggressive attack mode, and fear. We resent their kidding at our expense. We hear, “Can’t take a joke?” Will you take a ribbing of mockery, scorn, and ridicule? Stifle the smirk or the chortle that comes at someone else’s expense. Even the physical violence of slapstick movies and the fall-down humor of America’s Funniest Home Videos bring the eruption of laughter at someone else’s expense.

A friendly ribbing is an exchange of a friendly banter of insults. No borders violated, no harm done. Absorbed, but I did not find the gag of ‘shorting the sheets’ one bit funny. Nor did I ever care for the ‘sport,’ the joke of putting salt in the sugar bowl on April Fool’s Day. To be made fun of (ridicule, mock, contempt) was a form of bullying. Derision is not fun when you are the target.

Levity is usually welcome. Eastern Europeans regard Americans as feeble-minded because they smile constantly. ‘Silly’ can be interpreted as making you feel inadequate and stupid, incompetent. Think class clown and bozo, fool and buffoon, although even these have been diagnosed as exerting power to gain attention.

To the walker of 2 dogs, say, “Another and you could have had a three dog night.”

A ‘sense of humor’ means we are able to create and appreciate incongruity and contradiction. Humor pits the coherent, the logical, the normal and the assumed and expected against the illogical and the unexpected. Original clever ideas challenge us with complexity in a preferable way. It’s an oversight to pass up a Scenic Overlook. A yard sale pulls up grass. A ‘Dead End’ sign leads to a cemetery. I waited so long for the traffic light to change at a busy intersection that I applied for a Residency Permit.

Meaning +tension=clash.

I thought the food fight scene in the Animal House movie was stupid, mean and crude. I prefer my interactions genial; warm, soft.

When you’re on your bicycle at the intersection at the stop light ask the Harley dude revving next to you, “Wanna’ drag?”

I once asked at a crematorium, “Shouldn’t your ‘Exit’ sign be pointing up?”

Finally, when someone says they’ll be back shortly, ask “Will you be as tall when you get back shortly?” Dogs smile, cats don’t.

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