POETRY FORUM

This urn is yearning for a memory’s ashes
that I had scattered far from my hearth
amongst a heap of cigarette stubs
in a frequented pub
where our eyes had first interlocked.

You had prepared the pyre and brought the urn
to immolate the love that you hard-earned.
You fed your eyes on consuming flames,
a ritual befitting kings and queens.

You asked me to cherish what had remained
of a love in whose permanence I trusted.
I place the dust of what was lost
in a rubbish bin
but keep the urn for nuts.

I am ever cautious of the cat-
lying on your lap along with its hidden claws.
If I am not wrong at all
you too are watchful of my dog-
moving around my feet
and barking at your cat.
A dual is inevitable between you and me
yet we never call for it
rather
we are careful of extending our tea hour
to a decade or more
providing
a rational interchange of the masters
of our cat and dog
and now my eyes are fearless to kiss
your awesome fingers
though embellished with sharp nails.

– P.K. Deb

ice-cream wrapper…
midnight sorts
love and parting

***
mangrove tree
tied by roots…
saws snarling

***
I am stuck…
scampering squirrel
flips travel brochure

– Jharna Sanyal

the ramson in fall
I would need tender feeling
of the meekest world

the dead bear’s garlic
in me fantasy blossoms
of marvelous dreams

enchanted autumn
wild garlic needs bewitchment
in some fantasy

autumnal buckrams
the last roses dreaming of
flowering seasons

some fallish roses
weird of my eternity
awakened – ramson

– PaweÅ‚ Markiewicz

I am a circle in the broom room
I am the random floyd of the feathers

normal ice and we are earrings
were you a sponsored chicken?

the secret age of the heavens
the shape of the canceled apple

the rotten wink
this beef is the arthur of the dollar

this is the ness
the dallas glass

I was thirteen
and in love with the woman
on the large billboard,
that the bus passed on the way to school.
I had no interest whatsoever
in girls who were my age.
My billboard love
had long wavy blonde hair,
bright blue eyes,
and lips as red as the plums
that showed up in my lunchbox
come summer.
Girls had pigtails.
Their eyes were brown.
The only time
I noticed their lips
was when they
opened their mouths
to give the teacher
the right answer.
Billboard woman
also had the right answer.
I was thirteen.
The question
suddenly occurred to me.

Having overslept yet again, I wander
the aisles of a Barnes and Noble
that magically expands to an art gallery,
a toy store, a supermarket, all
without selling the book I want,
nature writing set in the hill country,
all that I will miss on the flight home.

Without that book, I walk out
to the shores of an artificial lake
large enough to be an ocean
with saltwater taffy and a Cyclone
at the end of the boardwalk.

I walk past the bare-chested men
and high-heeled women
who clog this path,
singing, smoking, swigging
beer from brown bottles.

I wake up gasping.