Poetry 2018, Featured Poet, Biswadeep Ghosh Hazra

*23 winters*

23 winters passed by,
I learned that-
Tears and eyeliners;
Happiness and sadness;
Lipstick and lollipops;
Lust and longing;
Dreams and devastation;
Smiles and evil grins;
Mix together very well-

Sometimes they’re inseparable, sometimes one floats atop the other,
Like a fine layer of oil on water-

Is living only for the sake of learning lessons?
Maybe yes, maybe no-
I don’t know, but I’m growing old to find out


23 winters crossed my path,
Making an odd snowman out of me;
A slap of ice cold sorrow here, a small mound of happiness there;
A twig of exasperation, a carrot of anguish
Wrapped everything up with a scarf of warm feelings.

But I’ve been told that for every snowman, there exists frigid winter.
23 winters passed by, more will follow suit, I’m sure-
Summers, autumns and springs are not for me
I survive, dwell, prosper and propagate in the cold.
Winter isn’t coming, it is already here, always with me.

Poetry 2018, Featured Poet, Debasish Mishra

Golden Ken – A Roseate Sonnet Couplette

Years tears flow, go by; I
Can’t rant but shut
My dry mouth — drouth
Of love, each speech.
Pain rains, yet debt
Of love I try
To (phew) free, repay, yay,
In bins of shoved, few, muted dead words, birds
Sith without clouts, wings, things;
Smacked, blacked by lies, fate. Wait,
Red shreds, pale, stale,
Of love thrive;
Strives my dry soul, whole, huh! To be free;
Eyes dry hold golden ken— streams, dreams!

Note – This poem is the fusion of two novel forms of poetry – a Roseate Sonnet and a Couplette. A Roseate Sonnet is a form invented by Dr. Ampat Koshy in which the traditional sonnet is remodeled with an acrostic at the end, reading ROSE. A Couplette, on the other hand, is another form of poetry devised by Dr. Duane Vorhees, in which the rhyme of syllables has to be maintained (For instance, the first syllable has to rhyme with the second, the third syllable has to rhyme with the fourth and so on).

Poetry 2018, Third Prize, Swatilekha Roy

Dust

Today is cleaning day.
After procrastinating far too long,
The layer of dust has become impossible
To ignore.
With a vacuum cleaner, allergy mask and determination,
I start with old magazines, stagnant with clichéd health tips,
Paparazzi, places-to-see-with-your-special-one, nanny ads and,
Blind hopes
Of print worthy life, newspapers glossy with falsehood,
Mites on the dank wood. In me.
On undoing the closet, a putrid smell of the dead arrests me-
Bats. History.
I rummage through years of acquired
Dirt and ghosts of a mirrored past,
Stuffed in a corner, away from the circle of pretense.
A picture of a sunny eyed couple, with much too happiness to restrain
In the minuscule frame.
Christmas savings, baby shoes, gift wraps,
A necklace which isn’t mine
And night club masques, maybe,
We have been wearing those, but never realized.
Maybe,
All this time, we are struggling to keep what isn’t ours-
The hope, the marriage, the baby
That never comes. And reality. Secrets.
Not ours, none of it,
Only yours. Only mine.
This dust is testimony.