FINAL RESTING PLACE

by Kashiana Singh

An American dream turned nightmare: Four members of a Sikh family in California kidnapped and killed. —CNN, 6 October 2022

Merced County, California

harvested ground, haze of vijay dashmi

            lingering, skull smashing night

            of rakshasa's ten heads, family

            of four, found. tossed. taken. 

sweet daughter of god, Aroohi nestled

asleep, an orchard of almonds

her bed, maggots swimming 

in a baby’s gourmand breath

a nip in California air, draped them

            as complicit as a shroud of

velvet cases on edible nuts

            a blush ash on their eyelids

at home, a bowl of blessed parshad

            is untouched, effigies of the

            demon king ablaze, shrouds

            of starlings depart, crowning

at the feet of a mother, wailing fists

            on breast, a lamenting hum

rises, a rasp from her throat

a paddock of grief ruptured

erasing the monsters of distant love

            father, eyes jittery like locusts

hands peeling the skins of five

blanched almonds, organic raw 

california grown, new day breaks into

            night, a kite across an ocean of

            fairytales, heavy footed he steps

            forward, to bring cadavers back

Kashiana Singh strives to embody the essence of her TEDx talk—Work as Worship into her everyday. Her newest full-length collection Woman by the Door was released in 2022 with Apprentice House Press. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills with Yavanika Press is a loco descriptive journey through 10 cities. Kashiana lives in North Carolina and carries her various geopolitical homes within her poetry.

IN THE AFTERMATH

OF KASHMIR'S FEBRUARY 14, 2019 ATTACK ON AN INDIAN ARMY CONVOY

by Huma Sheikh

A bitter winter in Srinagar had just started to ease when the latest crisis in Kashmir was sparked on 14 February. That afternoon a local member of a Pakistan-based militant group rammed a car laden with explosives into a bus carrying Indian paramilitaries. The explosion was heard for miles around. At least 40 people were killed, the highest death toll from a single attack in the history of the insurgency. Above: A Kashmiri Muslim woman looks on as Indian government forces stand guard after clashes with separatist protesters. Photograph: Yawar Nazir/Getty Images. —The Guardian, March 2, 2019

No matter what the glistening forms
in blue cosmic wings tell me, I see
drones soaring in despair.

I left Kashmir lives ago and my veins
drained of past gore,
hallucinate in this world—Florida’s panhandle,
pounding, floating wraiths, spanning the distance,
gasping—
Rumi’s chaotic freedom.

Today, on the internet, a deceased trooper's daughter wailing;
forty mugshots scrolling the dead across the screen;
Kashmiri students, children of Indian Kashmir,
disappearing in Dehradun dungeons,
eyes of Sikh keepers burning a storm—protestors’ roar outside;
Kashmiri traders in Lucknow, whipped and kicked;
pack animals, carrying identity wares.

How to rebuild a sense of refuge when hope beans spill,
dissolve, in a battle?
Hadn’t these students, traders, escaped warfare in Kashmir?
Deaths bloom for the kith of the slain;
memories of dear ones an endless crackle of real flesh storm
dropping to ashes.
For Kashmiris still there,
war an everyday meal,
some eat, some fast by chance.

I question violence;
India and Pakistan’s territorial land-grab war,
ask myself if voicing feelings,
otherness, isn’t transcending bitterness?

Kashmir floats with me even here,
new crises piled on old ones—
a pedantic coop, winged prison,
war crumb confetti.
I do the ant’s painstaking
weight lifting of fragments—
senile Socrates.


Huma Sheikh is originally from Kashmir, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Florida State. Her prose and verse have appeared in various journals and magazines. A memoir and book of poems are in progress.

HALLOWEEN FOR A NEW GENERATION

by Lois Leveen

Photo by Sarah Gould.

It's odd to dress up
as a Jew when you
are already a Jew
but I do. Costume
myself in calf
length skirt, bright blue
blouse, covered head. The nose
I have with me always.
At my throat, sixteen
carat  מָגֵן דָּוִד shield of David
dangling from rope
chain. I clutch prayer
book instead of purse.
Apply make up to make
a bullet hole between my eyes, another
at my heart.

When I arrive at the party
vampires and zombies
snub me. Skeletons turn
their scapulared backs.
A werewolf at the punchbowl
mutters asshole.
Undaunted by the undead
I search the crowded room for a black
kid killed in the park by a cop,
queers of color gunned down
on the dance floor, teacher
and students schooled
to death by a lone shooter, any one
of fifty-eight massacred country
music festival attendees. But not even
the Sikh slain for being
Muslim has come. You're a fright
to behold! screams
the glow-in-the-dark tshirt of the ghoul
who tells me to leave. A fright not
to be held in this house
of horrors, I step into the dark
and stormy night of America. America opens
its arms to ones like me.

Lois Leveen is old enough to remember when adults didn’t go to Halloween parties and children to go through active shooter drills in school. She is the author of the novels Juliet's Nurse (Simon and Schuster) and The Secrets of Mary Bowser (HarperCollins). Her poetry and short prose have appeared on/in Ars Medica, The Atlantic, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, The Chicago Tribune, cloudbank, Culminate, Hawai'i Pacific Review, The Intima, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Monkey Puzzle, The New York Times, NPR, and The Southhampton Review; one of her poems is inscribed on a hospital wall.

KOMAGATU MARU

by Akua Lezli Hope





Forgiveness,
                      an evolution
Apology
                is          
                     revolution
Acknowledgment
                               does not redeem
                               but embodies
growth                          maturity                understanding
re                                   cog                                nition            
               known
                                see            again
                                             grant permission        
 now                            better                        now now now    
the  denied
                       arrival
                              has landed
disembark

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, wearables, jewelry, adornments and peace whenever possible. A third generation Caribbean American, New Yorker and firstborn, she has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts,  Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. Her manuscript, Them Gone, won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in 2016.