Not a collective
It is personal
Beautiful is
Not a qualification
Not a rank
Beautiful is a feeling
Not a judgment
A poem
And not a test
Is a practice,
Beautiful
is love.
But tell me
How to be?
Literature from India and the world over! Indian Literature Magazine
Not a collective
It is personal
Beautiful is
Not a qualification
Not a rank
Beautiful is a feeling
Not a judgment
A poem
And not a test
Is a practice,
Beautiful
is love.
But tell me
How to be?
Only a pair of parakeets
Know how to love in my city
My city, of a million hearts
Pumping blood at high pressure
Charred lungs, Slick tongues
Only a pair, entangled, still, share
Breaths full of sanctity
In my city.… [Read the rest...] “Parakeets in My City | Etti Kotnala”
Paperback, an identity card, wish washed to the point
of renewal or retirement, it goes with the farmer
collecting weight, numbers, of raw potatoes, yields of
foreign fields,
the mud of lands a foot away, distant, beyond reach, the
barbed … [Read the rest...] “A Foot Away | Yukti Narang”
Full disclosure: I often borrow words and phrases grander than my imaginations
to use for our letters,
I often mark old memories and place you in them,
I often, and painfully, stare at the unread book at my side table,… [Read the rest...] “I Often | Rachit Sharma”
Poverty doesn’t tell a poem of happiness
but of the hungry vultures awaiting the dead body,
I am hungry.
Poorness is the shadow of mine, it follows me where I go,
it poisons my beauty; it is the stone on … [Read the rest...] “Poverty Poisons My Beauty | Ujjal Mandal”
I was born and raised in Kolkata, in earnest
I don’t remember the first word I spoke, but I can guess
It was my parents’ language
Their stories and their songs.
It was the language by which I came to … [Read the rest...] “Language | Moumita Sinha”
Spread even, your flesh against the gnarled roots-
push against the carmine walls that caress you;
you will learn to outgrow them.
Drape around the trunk until one can’t tell
[Read the rest...] “A letter to myself | Namrata Narendra”
My feet are playing catchup with my senses,
Upar neeche, aage peeche.
Sounds draw me in,
sights and smells, I drown in
[Read the rest...] “City couplets | Namrata Narendra”