From Pratik's Upcoming Issue: Nepalese poet Shyam Rimal's Poems, "Relief" translated by Yuyutsu Sharma

 

SHYAM RIMAL

Relief

 

Rice is infested,

stale and smelly

 

potatoes rotten,

piles of lentils creepy-crawly

 

and sacks of

salt out-of-date

 

without a glint

of iodine.

 

Relief comes

rolling on polished wheels

 

Relief comes

flying on airplanes

 

Black money

arrives disguised as social service

 

Relief comes

to take a snapshot with

 

just one sack of rice,

salt, lentils and sugar.

 

At that juncture

the government goes to sleep

 

and relief-seekers

rush back to the streets

 

to start banging

their empty begging bowls again.

 

To wait for disasters

to beg endlessly and

 

along the arrival

of pandemics and plagues

 

spread their homespun

blanket of helplessness --

 

all this seems amiss along

the lines of our nation’s glorious map.

 

This is what defines

true face of our nation

 

where the essence

of NGOs, INGOs

 

and Government agencies

mingles into one rotten core

 

wherein, one after

the other, the pandemic relief funds

 

are mounted up

a mighty threshold 

to fuel festivities

in the house of higher gods

 

and elsewhere

enduring calamity

 

the cold hearths

continue to shiver

 

without a trace

of livid flames

 

warming fragile walls

of their hungry huts.

 

Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma

 

Shyam Rimal is a known Nepali journalist and poet. He has published several books, most noted being, Trishuliko Kinarabaat. He contributes literary columns to several vernacular newspapers, including Drishti Weekly and  works as editor at National New Agency, Kathmandu. 

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From upcoming Issue of Pratik: Young Nepalese poet, Laxman Adhikari's new poem, "Tungana" translated by Yuyutsu Sharma

 

LAXMAN ADHIKARI

Tungana*

 

This is our bone,

flesh of our flesh,

 

river Gandaki

and  river Koshi

 

its shining strings

where our blood runs amuck.

 

In it our heart resides

thrumming  the pulse

 

of our struggling lives

 

This our tongue,

our mother tongue,

 

our awakened soul

 

This our flag

and our map too,

 

and Nepal herself

 

wearing

the fragrance

 

of the forests of

rhododendrons.

 

 

Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma

*Tungna: String Instrument of Nepal

 

A significant Nepali poet and fiction writer of  younger generation, Laxman Adhikari contributes columns to several Nepalese newspapers and journals, including leading literary monthly, Madhuparka. His debut collection of short stories is due in 2021. Adhikari lives in Kathmandu.

 

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Highlight from Pratik's Current Issue: American Poet Tony Whedon's new poem, "Tachycardia"

 

TONY WHEDON

Tachycardia

 

The storm came fast and was nearly gone

before I went out to check the damage –

a patio table tossed over, our sweet

princess of a garden statue ensnared

in vines. A wild down-home rocker

of Low Country storm, & I felt your heart,

your poor heart, beating next me,

your breath coming way too fast.

A slash of lightning, preceded by

throat-clearing rumbles somewhere west

of the marsh, then you were awake,

your voice soft as a prayer. Nothing’s

to be done about it, you said,

and promptly fell back to sleep,

and I lay there awake till dawn.

 

Tony Whedon’s poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Harper’s, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and more than 150 other magazines and is the author of four poetry books and two essay collections. He lives in Darien, Georgia and Montgomery, Vermont. 

 

 

 

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From Pratik's Archives: Irish Poet Anne Casey's new poem, "Midstory"

 

ANNE CASEY

Midstory

 

A babel of lorikeets

tears me from the page

(ironically paper-bound)

where—while watching her

baby daughter—the poet is trying

to grow a tree by not looking

at her iPhone; a clatter

of wattle birds

clamours nearby for top spot,

the highest surfing

the teeter-totter as would-be

usurpers swoop and rush.

 

A flurry of miners

lancing through—

 

a dog barking somewhere down

below in the gully, not mine

who is sitting up beside me

adrift in our treetop bower

sniffing the late afternoon

faux-autumn air

for answers

to unasked questions,

my sons’ voices rising

from the neighbour’s garden

as I take up my iPhone

to grow a small poem.

(Written while reading ‘Landscape with iPhone’ by Emily Mohn-State in New Ohio Review, Issue 25 2019.)

 

Anne Casey has worked for 30 years as a journalist, magazine editor, media communications director and legal author. Her poetry ranks in The Irish Times Most-Read and is widely published internationally—The Irish Times, Entropy, apt, Murmur House, Quiddity, Barzakh, FourXFour, Cordite, The Canberra Times and Plumwood Mountain among others. She is Senior Poetry Editor of Other Terrain Journal and Backstory Journal (Swinburne University, Melbourne) and a member of several literary editorial boards.

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From Pratik's Current Issue: American poet, David Axelrod's new poem, "The Guru gives me advice"

 DAVID AXELROD

The Guru gives me advice

(For Dr. Bob Schenck, aka Swami AnandVeetkam)

 

Your laugh tickles my telephone

as you tell me, “There is no evil.

It’s all the same. Just how things

are.” I’m infuriated when some

bureaucrat says, “I understand,

but there’s nothing I can do.”

You cackle, “Perfect! Of course

there’s nothing anyone has to do.”

Someone stymies my plan. You

ask, “Why do you complain?

You picked this.” But I’m like

the man at the zoo who is told

that hyenas mate infrequently.”

Imagine that sad fact. You say,

“Broken plans just teach us that

our desires are just our vanity.”

I wonder why the hyena is laughing.

 

 

David Axelrod, Ph.D., is an alumnus of the University of Iowa Writing Workshop (MFA/Poetry) and a self-proclaimed “populist” poet whose mission is to promote the appreciation and writing of poetry. He is a three-time Fulbright grantee, and was the first “Fulbright Poet-in-Residence” in the China. He has shared the stage with such notables as Robert Bly and Allen Ginsberg, and has performed at the United Nations.

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From Pratik's Archives: Irish Poet Steven O’Brien's new poem, "Nimue"

STEVEN O’BRIEN

Nimue

 

Dark is the loom tide of the lake.

I have flickered through blind fathoms

To the clear still shallows

Of the water-fasten that holds

My country apart from yours.

 

I bring a wish blade made itself all of water

To the upper world

Hammered from deep cold stone water

In the springs of midnightwater

And the higher I reach the more it becomes.

 

I have nursed it for a moon time;

A silver fin etched on both sides

In a hoar frost tongue of blue verglas -

‘Take Me Up’ it says and ‘Cast Me Away.’

 

Skim-ice along its edges clave

The pitch of the currents  as I rose.

Now it shears the surface of the pool

That was unbroken by rain.

 

This man approaching  

Has walked a holloway of alder and willow.

His face eddies like a lily,

Wary eyed, as if he is questioning his journey,

This proffered treasure.

 

Well might he hesitate,

As I hang among the trout glades

With the washed steel singing above me,

Its point biting my palm.

 

For all his life will be a racing torrent

Like a mountain beck in the spring thaw.

 

When first he draws this sword

It will shriek like an eagle

And dazzle his enemies.

It will also bind him and he will forever 

Be a man wading the marches

Between waking and dreaming.

This is the gift.

 

Yet now

It is enough

To see how the hairs on his arm move

As he reaches to take the hilt.

And then I sink.

 

Steven O’Brien is a poet, novelist and mythographer. He has been editor of The London Magazine since 2009. He leads the MA and PhD programmes in Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth. He is also a Trustee of the Vatican Patrons of the Arts.

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HIGHLIGHT from Pratik's Current Issue:American Poet Charles Bernstein's Two New Poems

  

CHARLES BERNSTEIN

Two Poems

 

1.

because they

see my scraggly

beard, my crooked

hat, and the dark

shine from my

glasses, they say

I am a poet

 

 

after Leon de Greiff

(Medellin subway)

 

 

2.

After Stephen Ratcliffe

 

Horizon line shimmers

At edge of light

Umbra calls echo

 

            Branch’s horizontal intrusion

            Or is it claw?

 

            Not even quite white or blue

            Turquoise smudge winks

 

Fading pink fingers of mist

Evanescent liquid dissolving

Moment of change

 

Recipient of the Bollingen Prize from Yale University,  Charles Bernstein is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary scholar. He  is the Donald T. Regan Professor, Emeritus, Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the most prominent members of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=Eor Language poets. His selected poems, All the Whiskey in Heaven, was published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 

 

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