NaPoWriMo 2020 – We are Serving Up Essays!

It’s National Poetry Month and a few of us are bringing to short, readable, illustrated, essays at your doorstep every day. The very diligent Steve Spandouis curates these articles with contributions from Bob Blair Robin Martin Berard, Howard Miller and myself this year. I have one up about Writing in times of Unease – Anne Boyer and

Humans of Varanasi

My review of Vivek Nath Mishra’s – BirdSongs of Love and Despair featured in The January Edition of The Bengaluru Review https://bengalurureview.com/2020/01/18/humans-of-varanasi/ ’The collection of stories is independent that they can be pulled open on any one page and read as nuggets to be savored on their own, yet are interdependent in that they cross

The witchcraft of daughters and mothers

Kidnapping you for a day, away From the dailiness, of duties I walk with you outward, outward Into a brewery of chamomile I disentangle my roman locks From the twists and turns of me My own encounters, I walk with you deliberately, kidnapping you for a day   I walk with you, Sanah, side by

non-gifts

You don’t need anything, you say You always brush me aside when I ask So I decided to will you my own will A will that is made of the potent residue That stays after our anatomy is distilled So here it is Papa, a few non-gifts from me, condensed into a will Bite-sized and

Five Poems on World Literature Blog

https://koshyav.blogspot.com/2019/11/five-poems-by-kashiana-singh.html? Five poems on the World Literature Blog curated by Dr. AV Koshy.  

Contemplating Nanak

The tree you sit beneath grows away from its own rituals it sheds leaves, weaving into the forest, an immense song of mindfulness, as the universe grows luminescent to Maradana’s profuse music every tree a Sufi holds her storms still as your breath composes hymns, your smile unaltered the sky a meditation, in awe of

My turban, is Sandeep

when the traffic stop is empty of egos assumptions and banalities, and talk and talk and construction of hero’s on 6 o clock news   my blue turban rests proud fiercely clasped together each fold a time stamp an assimilation of stories   as my head fell to a nameless shadow, gently, it fell very carefully

before you go to bed tonight

before you go to bed tonight, will you take stock of me, you us, ours? the encroachment of our ghosts, their clinking voices singing into glasses brimming with our receding desires   before you go to bed tonight, will you promise, to continue this ritual even when I am more fragile when tomorrows lose their

every september

  they say time heals in aggregation it does but there are those individual moments or things, one or two that come unstored, unmoored from where they have been stored, in cold and dark places, lingering, they sneak their way into my pores every once in a while rattling my panes as they escape me

‘Is it true, we can only love so much?’: Four poems by Kashiana Singh

Originally posted on Bengaluru Review:
Mouthful of Cloudbursts  Feather soft droplets, uncertain and fickle Surprising sounds, glassy sheets of revival Gushing in to announce a transparent arrival Initiating an odorless ovation, trickle by trickle Rooftops lay flat against a tiptoe dance Hummingbirds listen transfixed, in pleasure Flapping grief, into a euphoria of collapsing treasures The…