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On this page: poems by Tirzah Ben-David, Peter Branson, Liu Hong-ping, Rena Lee, Richard Doiron, Roy Runds, Ruth Fogelman, Sabine Huynh, Vyatcheslav Bart, Susan Rosenberg, Wanda Sue Parrott, Yakov Azriel, Zahira Rahman, Phyllsie Gross, Donna Bechar, Fathima Riaz
The following works are copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the authors.
Tirzah Ben-David
Tirzah Ben-David was born in 1949 in Liverpool, England, and read English Literature at Cambridge University. After visiting Israel as a kibbutz volunteer she converted to Judaism in 1977 and received rabbinic ordination from Leo Baeck College, London in 1996. She is a member of Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi and visiting rabbi to the Shir Hatzafon Progressive Jewish Community in Copenhagen. Her first book of poetry 'Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute' was published in Britain in 1988. Her second book 'Consider the Heroes' was published in Israel in 2005 in a bi-lingual edition by Gvanim, with Hebrew translation by the Israeli poet Oded Peled.
New Pasture Ground
The dead of night
Are brought out to new pasture ground,
Gored and beaded
In the courteous dawn
Deference will be our undoing
Where the lions piss on our faces
And the gods
Stalk barefoot downwind
Of our death
That strives to lie in gracious heaps,
Scarlet in the morning
Faded already by sunset
Beauty will be our undoing
A laid-out feast we are
Or even a hunger,
But parted forever from the earth's greed
Except to feed it with our sleep
Charity will be our undoing
We come to a trading of vigilance:
Stars fix their gaze upon us,
Enemies defeated by our absence
Sit down to wait for another
Patience will be our undoing
The world we tested
Face to face,
But never knowing when it turned away
And left us shadows
The light will be our undoing
Only the colours of blood
Still lend us an air of the living,
The earth's stubborn stain
Always marking the place
Where one hand undoes the other.
Dark Star
The first time that you smiled
I had no words
To name you
Although your name was
Legion
All your hosts of stolen gold
Arrayed before me
And my soul the weight
Of a brass farthing
Only my blood sustained me then
My possible humanity:
Who was I to turn
The other cheek
And offer half my face to darkness?
The night is long enough
The blind apprenticeship
Of dogged journey
By water and by fire:
It comes by water before the dawn,
Snatching my harbour from familiar light
Or drowns at sea
And never arrives,
But all the same I wait.
The fire is never late:
It strafes a hospital bed
Not mine
But burdened by my folded hands
And pain with time to spare.
I don't look for deliverance:
A crooked human kindness gets us home
Or shields the patch of roadside
Where we fall
So all the trivial decencies
May be observed
And none shall be offended.
Peter Branson
Peter Branson has been published or accepted for publication by journals in Britain, USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Magma, The London Magazine, Iota, Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar, Red Ink, The Recusant, South, The New Writer, Crannog, Raintown Review, The Huston Poetry Review, Barnwood, The Able Muse and Other Poetry. His first collection, “The Accidental Tourist”, was published in May 2008. A second collection was published at the beginning of this year by Caparison Press for ‘The Recusant’.
The Wassail Tree
"Here we come a-wassailing
among the leaves so green."
The wild hunt thrives
this hoary Old Twelfth Night.
Glimpse torches through the rides;
gone now, like stars
in shrouded skies. Their theme,
to shrive our souls
of otherworldly ones,
melts on the breeze,
cedes shotgun blasts
and clattered pots and pans.
Held high, a boy and girl,
the king and queen,
place bread for redbreasts on
gnarled boughs. Where blood
once spilled, now cider punch
is drunk and slopped
in lieu of sacrifice.
They fire twin crowns
of woven blackthorn twigs,
dance embers deep
into the sward and chant
“Auld Ci-der”, on and on,
mesmerically,
steam rising from
the maple bowl to mull
steely cold breath,
till spirits are driven off
or pacified.
Kite Flying
A kite sails, gracefully, against the breeze,
turning the mountains’ pages east to west
along the ridge, this bobby-dazzler day
of bracing cold and blinding light, blue sky
with whispers of sheer white to harmonize.
Your x ray breath is mute and shadow-less,
just like the snow you print frail mantras on
in brail footfalls that all will turn out right.
This walk out in the hills is tiring you -
more than it used to do. The poison pen’s
been written; you’re still upright though half done.
The kite is consummate in its design,
unlike the one that you’ve been forced to fly.
You’re fathomless; could stall at any time.
In Memory
For Kirk Sherwin, his family and friends
Soon as I heard, it’s yesteryear, that night
in early spring the then you, seventeen,
star in a local cup match on Vale Park.
You take possession, pause, stand both feet on
the ball; press play, scoot off again, your fist
high in the air, straight-arm like Denis Law.
Your manager looks unconvinced, sheer joie
de vivre the tune you dance us to; we grin.
Cruel machinations of biology
afflicting humankind we comprehend
but can’t compute, crude randomness of cause
and consequence we cede to Fate or God.
Still young, denied flood prime, your friends recall
a perfect gentle knight, no side at all.
Liu Hong-ping
Liu Hong-ping is a Chinese poet whose CV includes teaching English, interpreting and translating English and French, and marketing management in an international environment. She was born in Chongqing City, majored in English at Sichuan International Studies University and has lived in France for several years.
Flogging a top
As whippinging a top at childhood
I’ve been whipping myself up
Unwilling to come to a stop
I dare not slack off
For fear I would lose balance
Fall down at a dead corner of life
You and I
Your pain
Is a thorn in masses of flowers
My happiness
Is a flower in tangles with thorns
Mountain City
Owing more to nature
How majestic the mountain city !
Changjiang River holding large ships
Jaling River is alive with sails
Once the city clothed in mists
Is illusory as wonderland
Twlight and fog steam into each other
Not to mention the spring rains’ visits
Walking along Piba mountain path
With stars ardent beside
Lights reflected in both rivers
All mingled in a delightful rest
With a most enchanting bit
How romantic the city is !
In the south sleeps a hot spring
And in the north does another
O exquisite relief !
In the city are visitors reluctant to leave
Rena Lee
Rena Lee is the penname of Rena Kofman, poet and writer, a retired Professor of Hebrew from the City University of New York, and the author of eleven books in Hebrew, six of which are poetry. A seventh comprehensive volume of poems is due to be published in Israel shortly. Her work appeared (in both Hebrew and English) in many magazines, anthologies, scholarly journals, etc For more details, listings, awards, reviews of her writings and samples thereof, please visit her internet site www.renalee.net
MRI
The machines are all there waiting for you –
Modern-age deities they have their own ways
of probing your inward.
A technician in white proceeds to ascertain there’s no
scrap of metal in your body, and you suddenly imagine
yourself in the airport checked before boarding –
You embark on a table, a tube’s hungry mouth opens
to swallow you…
“And remember not to move…”
Now, like it or not, you’re in for the concert.
The variety of sounds is astounding: Hammering, knocking,
dentist drilling… On occasion it’s like a repetitive sentence:
“Don’t think about it, don’t think about it…”
“Don’t think, don’t think…” “Don’t, don’t…”
Then a burst of chimes from thousand bells –
Yet, amidst all this noise a solo thin voice may sneak
reminding of the Shofar blowing on Judgment Day
when verdict is issued whether you live or die.
The cacophony grows. It’s terrible now, shaking vigorously
the entire table…And when in agony thinking it’ll never end
it suddenly stops.
“You’re done,” declares the technician bidding good bye –
All stiff you assemble your bones, bundle up in the warm coat
and scarf, and off, on the way home. It’s cold outside.
All the time you were cooped up it was snowing heavily,
and the streets are white like a technician’s gown.
In a few days you’ll have the test’s results, and you seem
to hear Ma’s voice from distant years:
“Never mind the A’s, all you need is a passing grade
to move you on to the next semester.”
Calling God Long Distance
"Hello! Does someone hear me up there?"
Holding the receiver tight, pressed to ear,
while the clock's hands dance around time,
changing angles desperately,
as if to avoid final judgment.
Pinned by seconds, needled by minutes,
I continue to dial endless numbers
from the huge telephone-book of the universe.
Oh, good God!
Does He too have an unlisted number?
Always at the mercy of some operator,
I'm being again operated on, again cut short,
again kept on the long waiting list -
Oh dear God, please drop me a line
from somewhere between the lines!
Buzz-zz, is the only sound I hear.
My soul unplugged is running out.
My life hangs on a cord -
Suddenly this voice, loud and clear and near:
"Hello, are you still there?
Please hold-on another minute...hold-on...
just keep holding-on..."
Richard Doiron
Richard Doiron, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Published 41 years as a poet and novelist. Author of seventeen books. Work read at United Nations, World Congress of Poetry & Cultures, participant at International Festivals. First-place winner in World Poetry competitions.
When The Lamb Has Charmed The Lion
When the flower no longer visits with the bee
and when the grass no longer calls the steed
then going shoeless will be a pointless act
no stone in sight upon which then to bleed.
When the rainbow no longer sits atop the sky
and when the ocean has ceded all its salt
then surely in silence we'll be gathered
with wounds that fester and not a one can halt.
When the poet no longer consorts with his Muse
and when the lamb has charmed the lion with its fleece
then killing fields will be the stuff of wonder
specters insisting there never was a need for peace.
Today In Your Absence
Despite your absence,
I will pen my poems today.
Coming down from the rush
Of you, I will, as best I can,
Make a collage of my words.
Today, my poems may not wear
Their Sunday dress, however, as your
Presence yet permeates my room,
And, like me, my poems
Address their nakedness.
Today, I will not open
Windows, for fear that what
Remains of you will vanish.
Today, alone with the ghost
Of you, I will stay put, and,
Like the miser, hoarding
Of his coin, I will
Double-lock
My door.
Empty Page, Empty Page
Empty page, empty page, before me as you are,
Audacious you to think somehow you'd be a jar,
Unnerving me that I might seek a place to hide,
A silent stare by which I never could abide!
Empty page, empty page, before me once again,
Audacious you, so pure and white, without a stain,
In haughtiness perhaps deducing how I think:
Restrained myself and sparing you that spot of ink!
Empty page, empty page, before me like a lark,
Audacious you, to think that I might miss the mark,
When for a fact I'd pounce upon you from the first,
If then to see my ink absorbed with such a thirst!
The Being Of Poet
The being of poet
is not in the yelling
of it from off
the mountaintops,
that it should echo
into the valleys,
deep and wide,
but in merely
the whispering
of it into the wind,
which will then carry it
to the mountaintops
and back again.
Roy Runds
Roy Runds was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1944; came to Israel in 1972. He has been writing poetry steadily since 1983 and is the author of two books of poetry, with a third in preparation. His poems have been published in Israel, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. He works as a free-lance editor and proofreader.
The Sea Bird
Soaring over the dome of sea and sky
Cooled by the downy clouds
Warmed by the mellow sun
Kissed by the salt spray
With its cascading rainbows
Wafting from shore to shore
Your flight is filled with light
And you are lighter than
Dawn’s glistening dew-drops.
I will fly with you.
Corona
Surface far cooler than
The inferno within,
Sunspots erupting on my face,
I hurl devastation.
Coronas arc into the inky blackness,
Scorching the canopy.
None can penetrate me.
I radiate life,
paint rainbows.
Clasp of the Swans
Two swans
Gliding gracefully
Enfolding heaven
Mated for life.
Other spouses slip
From bridal bed to bridal bed
But my mother’s ring
Was encrusted to her finger.
Missing
When a person departs
A universe is extinguished
With its jeweled galaxies
Black holes
Constellations
When a person departs
A panorama is blotted out
With its summits
Valleys
Cool and hot springs
When a person departs
A river is drained
With its diamond darts
Turquoise and emerald
Strong and gentle currents
When a person departs
A volume is missing
Buried
Out-of-print
Cyclopedia.
I cherish the chapters we have shared.
Ruth Fogelman
Ruth Fogelman, a long-time resident of Jerusalem’s Old City, is the winner of the Reuben Rose Poetry Competition, 2006. Her poetry received an honorable mention in the Lindberg Peace Foundation Poetry Contest 2010 and was a commended winner of the John Reid Traditional Poetry Competition, 2007. Ruth’s first full poetry collection, Cradled in God’s Arms, was released in 2009, and her chapbook, Jerusalem Awaking, was recently published.
Ruth is author of Within the Walls of Jerusalem - A Personal Perspective. Her poems, articles, short stories and photography have appeared in anthologies, various publications and e-zines in Israel, the USA and India. Ruth leads the Pri Hadash Women’s Writing Workshop in Jerusalem and holds a Masters Degree from the Creative Writing Program of Bar Ilan University.
Word Sonnets
red
schooner
meanders
across
morning
sky
while
crows
land
on
lamp-
post
near
pines
****
lavender
and
fig
trees
lace
air –
flute
plays
near
City
walls
while
Jerusalem
dances
Go Inside A Shell
Go
inside a shell.
Feel the veins
in its concave hand.
Note its scalloped, brown edge.
Hide in its rounded corner.
Squeeze through
its off-white ribs –
inside, inside –
Do you hear
the sound of waves
crashing on the seashore?
Do you hear the sound of water
as it withdraws
from a pebbled beach
to gather strength and come
crashing down again?
Do you taste the salt?
Do you smell
tiny sea-creatures
or seaweed?
Emerge
through the beige
scalloped ribs
that ray out
as beams from the sun.
See how the ribs
are formed –
off-white
criss-crossing
the bold brown.
When
you emerge,
find
the shell’s
wonder
inside
of you.
Sabine Huynh
Sabine Huynh is a poet, novelist, literary translator, and sociolinguist, who lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel. Her poems and short stories appeared in journals and anthologies, including The Dudley Review, Poetica Magazine, Cyclamens and Swords, arc, Voices, Art Le Sabord, The Jerusalem Post, Zinc, Virages, Terres de Femmes, El Tecolote, Dogs Singing, Soul Feathers, and Continuum. Her translations (of Seymour Mayne’s, Uri Orlev’s, and Richard Berengarten’s work) were published in Retors, Temporel, The International Literary Quarterly, L’Enfant et le génocide, and Traduzionetradizione. Her first novel is due out in France in 2011 from Galaade Editions.
Farewell Childhood
It's hard not to think
of a place where dogs met
their fate on railway tracks
or in unkempt backyards
where a father with chapped lips planted
tulips around a dying cherry tree
where a mother's screams scared
dust and kids into dark corners
where children watched T.V.
in the garage - why in the garage? -
where they played with a wheelbarrow
inside, and paper cut-outs
outside, yet they lived in town
it's hard to ignore
a fact like that
I can only think of it here
facing the sunny Golan heights
with hummingbirds punctuating
my glum memories with gaiety
and cows' mooing filling up
the deep valley of the past
a flying ant above my head
a white falcon perched on my thumb
if I thought of it there
where it all happened
I'd turn into that
silent child again
and never come back
but I'm here now
I have opened the windows
to let the landscape in
and the childhood out.
Vyatcheslav Bart
Vyatcheslav Bart was born on December 2nd, 1983, in Kokshetau, Kazakhstan. In 1994 he immigrated to Israel. He is studying for an MA in English Literature at TAU, planning a doctoral thesis which will include a close examination of the mental processes behind the composition of one or more of his own short works.
A shrub in flower: sun-drenched violet
Lush elongated clusters,
And over it, like God over the world,
The sparkling song of hummingbirds –
Now flashing past as if to dodge the sun,
Now freezing in a rainbow blur –
While elsewhere clamored geese
And another boy, enraptured by their call,
Roared in inspired imitation.
But there was something else.
The porcelain and silver clink-
clanging in the foamy sink, a myriad
spectral pairs of hands
washing dishes in a world of bubbles,
and a thousand faces gazing past
me from re-reflected depths:
seraphs with hands for wings,
fingers for feathers, fluttering
with invisible effect round confused
and gleaming kitchenware,
there was still something else,
something I had seen and knew,
but seemed to have forgotten:
When I describe a link of light
that in a line of empty bottles
multiplies in every lucent fault of glass,
a jar of nutshells on a shelf, or, say,
a dying bee between the bottom
of an upside-down glass and the merciless
skin it had stung, the glass and skin
so real for that pollen-dusted death, do I describe
a bee sting? Or the tip of a wing
of some other beast behind the curtain?
Pay some attention to neglected things –
They need a caring presence to feel at home:
A clear moon,
Set into translucent blue
Above the stiffened shoulder of a building
Radiating light-amber light,
Is not a cityscape,
But something more
Familiar.
The sky is gray – a cold, majestic, sun-shot gray. The sand sucks in the foam of the waves. The sky is mirrored in the restless water which would come ashore, despite impossibility. What wind or will or whim compels it to spread skin-thin across that nail-bed of sand, mirror the sky, and die with a sigh, white foam begging of the rain-laden dusk, clinging with slipping, pale fingers to the somber skirts of the indifferent dusk with its heaven-tall back to the heaven-wide sea?
Another effort – it sweeps a limpid limb across the blazing sand, over a log, round a rock, grasping at nothing. Imagine the despair. The pain of the awakened thing which lives and suffers, but which is no more than a ghost, less than a ghost, in a world which, for all its whorled fullness, might be, as well, a void.
White-knuckled, it pounds at the impassive shore, spraying sand, and recedes, with a whimper – a sea-gull somewhere – sucking at its raw-smashed flesh. It has moved nothing. A jelly-fish lies dying on the lightening wet sand – a lucent, almost luminescent dream, the sun that’s nowhere to be seen above. A startled crab’s stalked eyes scan the restless landscape but do not see the wave collapse onto its hands and knees, crashing chest-against-the-earth, the Earth.
But for that Earth, sea and sky would have been one.
Pity the earth-bound sea.
Susan Rosenberg
Susan Rosenberg, now in her mid-eighties, began writing poetry as a child. Her work was unpublished until a decade ago when she joined Voices Israel. Now her poems appear regularly in anthologies and journals and she has received honorable mentions in two international poetry competitions. Susan also writes short stories.
Before Getting Rid of Stuff
She sits to read
through piles of letters
post-marked years ago
varieties of handwriting
stamps, addresses,
she reminisces about
landscapes travelled
dwells upon
forgotten friendships
and marvels at
the many souls,
once close,
scattered past
each other on their
way through life.
Wanda Sue Parrott
Wanda Sue Parrott, 76, retired journalist of Monterey and founder of the Amy Kitchener's Angels Without Wings Foundation California, administers the National Senior Poets Laureate Competition for American poets. She uses 18 pen names. As Diogenes Rosenberg she invented the Pissonnet; as Edgar Allan Philpott she was Hawaii Senior Poet Laureate; as Prairie Flower she uses Native American voice. www.amykitchenerfdn.org
She is past president of Springfield Writers' Guild, honorary life member of Missouri State Poetry Society, and founder of the Springfield Writers Workshop which has been meeting weekly at branches of Springfield-Greene County Library since 1992.
She is a former investigative reporter and feature writer with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and syndicated feature writer with Ozarks Senior Living newspapers.
To John
Impeccably groomed in black cashmere,
we wore youth's night unobtrusively.
But no one knew and no one cared
that we were there.
Becoming garish with young isolation,
we garlanded our flesh with gold that shone.
Glittering then, we sensed the world
exclaiming: New stars shine alone.
Less effusive, with maturing swiftness,
we flung our false gold signs afar.
Those who passed their shallow judgments
said: Oh, fallen star!
Wizened, cashmere still, we do not fear,
for in our Golden Dawn of
lumin-essence
we know that I AM here.
Yakov Azriel
Yakov Azriel was born in New York and came to live in Israel in 1971. He has published three full-length books of poetry: Threads From A Coat Of Many Colors: Poems on Genesis (2005), In The Shadow Of A Burning Bush: Poems on Exodus (2008), and Beads For The Messiah's Bride: Poems on Leviticus (2009), all published by Time Being Books. Over 160 of his poems have been published in journals and magazines in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel, and his poems have won thirteen different awards in international poetry competitions, as well as two fellowships from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for his poetry.
Painting God’s Portrait
I came to paint God’s portrait.
But where would I find the colors?
After entering the Palace grounds, I looked at the royal gardens
And placed on my palette
The soft green of spring grass in Tiberias,
The dark green of the ocean near Haifa after sunset,
The bright green of a feather from a peacock in Kibbutz Sa’ad.
I looked into a courtyard in Zefat
And placed on my palette
The pale sky-blue of the synagogue walls,
The dark blue of the stripes on the tallit
Worn by a lamed-vovnik as he silently prayed.
I looked into the future of Israel
And placed on my palette
The purple of the capes adorning King David’s grandchildren
As they solemnly parade through the streets of Jerusalem,
Marching slowly to be anointed at their coronation.
I looked into the Torah
And placed on my palette
The dark red from the blood of the sacrifices in Leviticus,
The bright red of the rubies on the breast-plate
Of the high-priest in the Book of Exodus.
I looked at the tzaddikim
And placed on my palette
The soft brown of their eyes
When they turn to the beggars of Beer-Sheva,
Then speak to them and shake their hands.
I looked into my own soul
And placed on my palette
The soft yellow of my infant daughter’s hair,
The bright yellow of dreams I dream while resting
On the sand of a Tel-Aviv beach under the midsummer sun.
But these colors were not enough.
So I looked at the land promised to my ancestors
And placed on my palette
Not only the orange of citrus fruits in the orchards near Rechovot,
But also the gray of the clouds above Mt. Herzl
And the black of the night sky above Yad VaShem.
And after I spent generations painting the portrait,
Behold my picture:
A canvas
Completely covered
White.
Delete
"And he [Moses] said, 'The Lord came from Sinai and shone upon them from Seir, He appeared on Mount Paran and approached with myriads of holiness; at His right hand was a fiery law for them." (Deuteronomy 33:2)
I believe that there are a number of reasons — historical, sociological and psychological — why modern man finds it extremely difficult to accept the two fundamental axioms of traditional religious faith, namely, that (a) a realm of holiness, and (b) a transcendental but personal God, do indeed exist; yet despite these weighty factors, faith is still possible.
Much too wordy. Delete everything that is superfluous or extraneous.
I believe there are a number of reasons why modern man finds it difficult to accept traditional religious faith, namely, that a realm of holiness and God do exist; yet despite these factors, faith is possible.
Make it more succinct. Continue to delete.
I believe modern man finds it difficult to accept that a realm of holiness and God exist, yet —
Much better. Delete more.
I believe man finds God.
Almost there. Delete.
I believe.
Good. Repeat.
I believe.
Zahira Rahman
Zahira Rahman teaches English Literature in a college in Kerala. She is the mother of 16 year old Isa. Zahira loves painting,cooking reading and writing. She is married to M.A.Rahman, teacher,writer,documentary film maker and social activist. Zahira is in love with the bright and beautiful world despite the chaos and loss. She is researching on aesthetic education through theatre.
Kerala, India
Storks have arrived
white against the eye-balm green.
A girl was raped and pushed
out of a moving train
the mother is screaming her agony-
papers smirk in front page glee.
The sun is flowing through
leaves of the Laburnam
a bulbul is singing upside down.
An M.P. in starched Khadi is lying blatantly
on Television. Starving fourteen year olds
lured by silk bed covers in dens of middle-aged ministers
look brassy and gauche at once.
Herbs and wildflowers perfume the twilight air
strings of fairy trimmings spiders weave on dew
Low caste peasants
are driven to frenzied death betrayed by ill-kept promises
of government aids,
their smart sons shrivelled sell jasmine garlands
at busy intersections-empty of gaze.
The sea is a bright blue, silver streaked
sunset sand edge the tangy grass.
Cliffs spilling brown earth plants
Huge container terminals and smart cities
dislocate families-some precious doll,
an old armchair- one small comfort of a lonely old man
abandoned and broken among debris
Rains fill the ponds
and many hued fish
to delight childhood forever and ever
come up to empty air
And the rest is silence.
Phyllsie Gross
Phyllsie Gross was born in Philadelphia in 1950 and moved to Israel in 1973. She holds a B.A. in foreign language and literature from Temple University, and a M.Ed in Creative Arts in Learning from Lesley University. Her son Yarden is a published poet and an aspiring artist. Her son Golan is an award-winning singer and an aspiring actor. She lives at Kibbutz Evron with her husband, Michael. She works with the elderly, tutors English, runs a charity, paints and has published three books of poetry: Faces of Kibbutz, The Soldier-Son and The Israeli Comet Halley Experience and Other Poems.
The Portrait
The glint of despair shadowed her broken smile
opaque titanium white
obscured the mood
tones of ochre and sienna
struggled to be born
it was a simple portrait
brushed onto poster paper
destined for the bin
yet she painted
in earnest caress
stroking the page
like a soft feline
investing emotions in inexplicable devotion
she had abandoned the forest of color
during seven years
of wandering
tithing her efforts
in cathartic phrases
touching imaginary hues
inscribed in rainbows
the searing warmth of earthen pigments
had beckoned
drawing her back
to the seductive call
of the easel
Donna Bechar
 Donna Bechar, originally a Long Island girl, resides in Israel and is a long-time member of the poetry group Voices Israel. Donna's poetry has appeared in such publications as Ibbetson Street, Poesy, Full Circle, Voices From Israel, Determinations 2, Firm Noncommital, as well as in numerous volumes of the Voices Anthology. In 2005, her poem "Sneak Thief" won Second Prize in the Rueben Rose Poetry Competition, and other poems have won Honorable Mention, including last year's "My Father's Ankles". Donna is also involved in pottery and theater.
First Thunder
They said it would come today
And I didn't believe
Too soon, I thought
Too early in the season
But here it is
Forbidding blue-gray sky
Foreboding
Beautifully ominous
A world closing in
Knitting tight
And weaving comforting
Claustrophobia
I don't want to see
Grand vistas
I want to hear
The distant rumbling
As if stampeding buffalo
Are imminent
I want to hear
The roar of the sky's
Giant lion's mouth
Knowing the excitement
Full-born and flooding
Will embrace me
At the first jagged streak of
The Sorcerer's blinding sword
So, here it is
As promised
Real, noisy, dangerous
Swashbuckling and wielding its clout
And surely the great wet bull run
Will follow
Enter Darkness
Flying into darkness
Entering the night
Prowling eyes spy
Dots of light
Picture perfect pointillism
Arrayed amorphously
In rectangular rectitude
Or aligned in singular sameness
No telling what the inhabitants
Have been up to under the bright
Blue of day
But in darkness
From great height
It is a world of tranquil purpose
Fathima Riaz
Fathima Riaz is a bilingual writer of poetry and fiction, from Kerala, India, just emerging from years of self-inflicted secrecy. Writes poetry mostly when not working on a novel long overdue. To be in the vicinity of words, teaches literature.
Another Wedding in the Monsoon
This no cool clime that I am returning to:
no screen wedding this, as forbidden closets belch,
pucker and strain tenuous accords we cling on to,
trying to patch up the fraying quilt of dappled dreams
of our youth spent hurtling through this house
that shaped our merry limbs lithe and gay
as monsoon crooned to sun drenched days
and calmed the parched heart of this verdant land.
This season’s rain relents little, raining a drop a pot
Yet no chill braves these walls, bursting at its cockles
with infused hatreds and accusations that singe unsaid
seeping dark and sinister into corners lying in wait.
I can feel the heat scorching the lull in the rain
that fall gravel for gravel, misting the driveway
that gathered us here, sequestered in wary grievances:
the air bristles helpless at kinships now unseemly,
sundered by adult transgressions and misgivings.
The groom, marks the unwanted guests off the list;
each a red dot to unleash yet another war.
This being his wedding, missing is the habitual aplomb
overseeing his usual trial-less condemnations.
A final go at the spoils is not to be for
a groom surely has to spruce up a modicum of civility.
The monsoon shall not act as a backdrop to the drama.
At best, it dulls the sound of sighs that defy resilience.
I can hear my heart beat furiously to the rhythm
of hate matched against hate, loathe to give way.
The children muse excitedly about the wedding,
matching silk against their smoother cheeks.
It’s for them that these wars dare not be fought
lest scars etch deep, whittling away parched souls
no monsoon can leach to sprout green again.
We weather ourselves through the rituals,
the familial shrouding of seamy edges,
wrought with care and undue considerations,
smoothed over with seeming felicity and ease,
hoping the bridges we burn with such vengeance
may be doused by the monsoon, for our children at least.
Loss
In the filigreed palm
vain, your memory
dripping away
As I try to hold
my fingers cupped
around a little face
retrieved from
breached years
Lotus
The tender stalks sway, coaxed underwater,
collapse not into the cool abundance of its stagnant tract.
The roots fan out a canopy, their hold tenuous in water.
In waxen perfection, lone droplets roll off, rotund indolence
Buoyed in flawless symmetry. The leaves supplicate to the sun,
sweetness and light folded in the suryanamaskar* of budding awe
at sun’s benevolence afloat, unfolding petal by petal,
infinitesimally slow, till in full bloom as if suo generis.
* surya namaskar is an aasana in yoga that is also a prayer saluting the rising sun.
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