1. |
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2. |
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Once I lived in a house where things fell in and out of time
with no regard for when they were needed.
A belt, a phone, things set down briefly
fell temporarily away and then
returned. Much was seen
out of the corner of the eye.
A pair of boots, for instance,
a farmer's boots, hobnailed, thick-soled,
with tight-tugged laces.
No doubt he too had searched with angry hands,
dealt out blame wearily, had pointed out
how his important work had been held up.
I lost nothing, or what I lost came back.
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3. |
Sanjeev Sethi - Pigeons
01:00
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Pigeons
Pigeons have no tenancy laws.
She placed her squabs on my sill.
When I protested, she gazed at me
with looks which were a hybrid
of hesitancy and hostility.
At night, the pigeons cooed.
Throughout the day,
the exhalation of their excreta
wafted across the apartment.
During feed-time, their twitter
was louder than church bells
annunciating crisis. But I was helpless…
Soon I decided -- to be kind to myself,
I had to be cruel.
I opted to evict them.
But there are no courts for this.
No legal machinery.
Only feelings.
Feelings have always failed me.
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4. |
Sree Sen - Sour Apples
01:00
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5. |
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The earth has grown plastic. Water takes eons to seep. The burnout of tress is due to blemished air. Neonates feed on supplements. Does frondescence succor wellbeing?
Air-conditioning helps appraise accommodation. Windowpanes don’t open to the sky. Owners enhance décor with filament lights. A flame tree stands alone beside the gateway. Old leaves cover the passage.
Wood is abolished to expand highways. The flamboyant tree dies from Roman vitriol.
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6. |
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7. |
Ankit Raj Ojha - Home
00:55
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Home
It is easier longing in absentia than
watching your beloved hometown fade
in instalments with each summer visit;
the majestic peepal tree of your childhood—
once sacred, haunted, having stood
guard and witness to your bloodline—
now a giant plumeless scarecrow,
awaiting, by resigned consent,
uprooting by non-Hindu hands;
elders who like old gods reigned supreme
in their once-kingdom,
now pillaged ruins grown smaller
since they last blessed you in person;
streets once wide enough to
accommodate your wildest dreams
leaving room for more,
shrunken to shocking miniatures
too small to tread;
random acquaintances—flesh and blood
and fun and frolic in your fond recollections—
contaminating your memory by deviating
from your script promising happy endings;
the fading phantoms of your ancient town
compelling you to yearn from safe distance.
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8. |
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Dear Nostalgia,
will you ever leave me alone? Will you refrain
from sliding into my bed at four in the morning
when you find me lying awake after releasing
the dog? Will you stop pursuing me, embracing
me with your brown Yarra arms and narrow Liffey legs?
Why do you insist on waking me with memories
of past geographies, decomposing relationships,
the deeds of youth? Do you think I might forget
the brilliant blues, the amber glow, the snug fug
of cosy belonging? I’m not sure I need you
anymore. Perhaps I’ve reached the farther shore,
survived the breaking surf, dragged my exhausted self
from the undertow, staggered onto a new continent.
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9. |
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10. |
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Endurance
I came to a raw and cloying resignation.
I do not belong to the places and conversations
that I am standing in. The air is filled with acrid humanness.
The jarred angles of my speech.
When did a stone made of glass serve as a fetish for silence?
An outplaced refinement. This is a wave more necessary to the ocean.
This is the crusade of quiet.
The crumpled shadow of a too-hungered dog.
One day the only landscapes turned from naked deaths
will not be deserts. From this we fall and write and pray an order
to the earth, to a heartbeat more faithful than ours.
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11. |
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LAST RITES
The world would come crashing in around us
in as many days as it took to make
when you return to the care home, conscious
of our presence, attending your own wake.
You perform a rehearsal one evening;
we gasp at what we think is your last breath
then you rally to sit up, eyes gleaming,
ordering breakfast - your last before death.
One by one, folk call in to pay respects,
sit in silence or give a knowing nod.
You aren't fit to speak, yet touch does affect,
as one lady proved and how I applaud
her cradling your face in pillow-soft breasts;
prompting memories, you smile, feeling blessed.
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12. |
Liz McSkeane - Invasion
00:57
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Invasion
Uniform: one old coat, pockets sewn
inside the lining. Mode of transport: bike.
Route: along the stony laneway that winds
behind the house, through fields and hedgerows
from Clontibret to the Dandy’s in Armagh.
Our mission: smuggle butter from the North;
give customs men and soldiers a wide berth,
too young to wonder who the strangers are,
where the accent’s from or who they might be
looking for. Weren’t we supposed to be done
with all that palaver? Good riddance, Prods
and Taigs alike said. Now it looks like free
movement, for us, won’t survive the London
bother, here, stuck in the crossfire of gods.
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13. |
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14. |
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Sonnet on Our Nineteenth Wedding Anniversary
Green bathes the view from the office window:
the neighbors’ house hidden behind low cherry
trees, taller maples, massive oaks and poplars
flanking either side of the frame giving way to blue
sky, contrail of a passenger jet fading in the distance.
The woods sway slowly in the sweltering breeze
as the day thrums into mid-morning. Dragonflies
dart for mosquitoes. Hummingbirds zip in for quick
drinks at the feeder, then bolt for shade. Red-tailed
hawk turns on thermals over the ravine. Blind locusts
rattle mating calls in the daylight where fireflies
will seek each other’s silent brightness at night. Once,
years ago, I sang my words to the universe, and you
answered me with your light. And then we took flight.
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15. |
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Going Home
A late September I waited for them,
the Brent geese coming across frozen lands.
On the shore they bent their necks like a peace offering
to the land that welcomed them.
In their wings the conspiracy of each leaving,
the high Arctic, the barren tundra slopes lost in mist.
Perhaps they too dream of the land they head for.
Layers and layers of glaciers and shells, sea herbs and lands.
Or just atmospheric conditions, magnetic fields.
A bird ancestor moving inside, towards a different time.
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16. |
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Ospedale Degli Innocenti
It was some kind of tray she laid her in.
A young mother had become unexpectedly pregnant.
The reason for conception she kept secret –
she didn’t have to tell the staff anything.
A few days after opening,
this baby was the hospital’s first admission.
The container, in which she’d set the child, revolved.
No trust. No touch.
Mother and carer felt the same – guilty.
The baby’s anonymity.
The abandoned infant would spend her childhood days
in that hospital.
When womanhood approached she’d be placed
in a well-to-do family’s home. Her life-gift.
That’s how things were in Florence
on Friday the 5th of February 1445.
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17. |
Julian Day - October
00:51
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October
A single minute, short bookends.
The baton raised, a breath—
Lightness in the lungs. My heart
trembles. How could I ever
say enough? The truth spins
and rattles, round and round
the brain stem, its centrifugal force
invisible under scans. Yesterday’s
unremarkable. Today I’m gone. West
to Victoria: maybe now I’ll find daylight,
peace in cold salt water. In all
the Arbutus trees. Garry oaks.
With everything else
just barely hanging on.
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18. |
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Swimming Around the Inkwell
I have known a few poets
who gave up
the good fight
and stopped writing.
They have not stopped altogether in life,
and have gone on to other
worthy applications
such as further education, unemployment
and generally getting on with things
instead of swimming around the inkwell
endlessly.
I say,
if the fight is truly good,
then you can never lose.
And it’s a poor scrap of a losing battle
when each fist is a cliché,
with no blood left in your words.
Lost are the victories
of the Imagists, the Romantics,
the Lakes, the visionaries.
Instead, today,
we drown.
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19. |
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These days, nobody else's wrinkle repair will work for me.
I sometimes feel tired
of wanting to know more about other people
then they want to know about me.
I sometimes feel tired of sharing.
I feel like hardly anybody cares
about my personal details anymore.
Maybe young people are more interesting
and in comparison, I am relatively meaningless.
After I get up and apply
my Dragon's Blood Wrinkle Repair Eye Creme,
I'm filled with hours spent crying.
I ruin my own repair.
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20. |
Deirdre Cartmill - Torn
01:07
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Torn
I see you crying at the gate,
and I am back at another gate
where you hoisted me on your shoulders
and the horn of the hunt
quivered through the fields,
and I saw the horses race
but I didn’t see the hare,
blood pulsing
as its hind legs flexed
to bolt, zigzag, leap,
and I didn’t see the hounds’ teeth
rip into its neck,
then trail its dripping entrails
back to their masters
to blood their young,
and as I watch you weep
I still don’t see
what lies beneath the hedge line,
- the blood stains on your shirt,
the debris on your tongue,
because I didn’t see what you saw,
the ripped limbs flung across the street,
the dead eyes open,
and the wee one floating in the water
in a torn green blanket.
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21. |
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I Make A Cuppa
Some say it is better with a warmed pot,
or with tea leaves through a strainer held
over a bone China cup. A specialist shop
had a bud float in my clear cup unfurled
before my eyes. Expensive and rare sight.
Indulgent, like days of Imperial
splendour when women tea harvester's plight
long hours, low pay, working was very real.
My dad national service merchantman
mariner kept his life in the loft stored
in old tea chests, plywood box, steel battaned
edges. Brought home carved elephants for the sideboard.
We collect the wild as ornamental.
Domesticate, put on a pedestal
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22. |
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Perspective
To set things in perspective
turn back to those times
electroplated with a fine nostalgia
like an echo turns back to its source
only to get startled by hearing itself.
Reconciled to your hopeful springboard
you will be able to see besides the moss-smothered well the clump of the bamboo shoots, the azure sky mottled
with piebald clouds.
Be ready to be entranced
by the porpoise-backed stones
that love to be released from the borstal institution of the mud in summers.
Watch the cactus and the buckthorn
in action engaged in a fencing duel
navigated by their subterranean players.
Then with slow pace and steadier elation climb the hill and fall in love
with the asphalt path wriggling
like a snake that leads to peace.
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23. |
Amy Barry - Chang Cheng
01:00
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Chang Cheng
A tribute to The Great Wall.
Every stone is a story.
winding upward,
trembling the bottled water I carry.
Leaning over the railing,
I’m clothed to the waist in bricks.
The trail meanders over hills,
twists down into darker forms.
And in the darkness of weary eyes
I unearth the past.
Bodies straining,
hands and backs,
rippling their muscle in the sunlight,
absorbing the bluster of a storm.
‘Chang Cheng’, they called it,
the long wall,
or ‘The Long Graveyard’,
for the millions who perished.
Later,
when I have rested my legs,
my tongue breezes a poem,
built from stone
and the bones hidden within.
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24. |
Peter Adair - Pipe Man
01:01
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Pipe Man
This morning at three.
The ghost of a cough,
hard, hacking –
a pipe smoker’s.
A dream, I suppose,
unless there are ghosts
in these enlightened days
of empty ashtrays.
The wind was wailing.
Fatal for his buggered lungs,
fatal for his old body
slumped on the sofa.
A whiff of Condor,
or was it Saint Bruno?
Days when men
strode through Alpine passes,
legendary names
in the dying art
of keeping a pipe lit
in all weathers.
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