Claire Marsden
School was not the path of gentleness
but of a thousand little fires.
“I have a kiss for you at the end of my finger,”
you smiled but glanced away,
terror the monster uninvited,
had decided to come out & play.
Your silence needed no translation.
School: a simulacrum of safety
Anannya Uberoi
Today we study los verbos como gustar,
the verbs like, to like. Repeat after me.
Amar, to love.
Doler, to hurt.
Molestar, to bother.
Parecer, to appear to be.
It appears to be that I love you,
only that it hurts the tip of my finger
to brush it off as a blush of cranberry under my eye.
No, I don’t want to be a bother, but you had me at ¡hola!
It is funny that we learned how to count together.
I make tea during lunch hour, you joke around with the girls
while I stir a honey-dipped sugar-coated spoon in
the paper cup, going over and over the colored pages
of our exercise book.
I am drawn to a painted picture of Cervantes;
you vibe more with Santana. Between classes we read
Chasqui, the Peruvian Mail. Sometimes, we share a singular
copy in the mail rack.
The cinnamon-scent still full in my mouth, you turn around
to kiss me almost, unknowing I was sitting so upclose, to return
my blue pen from yesterday, lo siento, señorita, and I cannot help
but laugh at your innocence and the rapidity of things.
Nishtha Tripathi
brown is supposed to be black’s shier sidekick, lurking in the side-lines.
the lone bench at the back was always my pick, lurking in the side-lines.
in english class, shakespeare besmirched ganymede with a honeyed hue.
my sepia soul, dismembered for a cheap trick, lurking in the side-lines.
the cafeteria echoed with ‘midget-midget’, saddled like greasy food onto a plate.
my stunted spine met with hate, the spineless prick, lurking in the side-lines.
the coach’s whistle ravaged layers of my fat, like a toenail piercing a favourite sock.
heavy disappointment tethered to a sickly stick, lurking in the side-lines.
school dances spent bereft of company, lockers vandalised every other day.
a trampled wallflower, a forgotten asterisk, lurking in the side-lines.
cello music notes melting into unwritten, unsent love notes.
loving second-hand through pitiful fanfics, sad reality lurking in the side-lines.
an army of warriors from amazon and artemis’ worshippers from temple halls,
i shall stand tall from the ashes, like a phoenix, with athena lurking in the side-lines.
Aditi Krishnakumar
School and the monsoon
Always began together.
You never remember
The smell of a classroom after it’s rained all night
As well as you do
The smell when you splash home through puddles,
Spots of mud on your shoes:
The smell they tell you is called petrichor.
You sit by the window with homework and hot pakodas.
Water drips off bushes.
Frogs croak like creaking gates.
In flashes of lightning the blossoms fall,
Jasmine and frangipani and kadambari and bougainvillea
In a pale carpet
That will turn brown and feed the grass
And it will be green tomorrow.
It’s a different smell.
Not petrichor.
The scent of the blossoms
And the earth
And the frying pakodas,
The ink and the new brown covers of your school books.
The seasons change and the clouds give way.
Is there anything as pitiless as the blue sky?
Blue sky that stretches on unending through time and space
In fourteen dimensions.
School ends on a summer day.
The monsoon comes in June,
Casting its darkness over the sky.
You don’t revel in the puddles.
You don’t look up at the clouds.
You open your umbrella and worry about the wind
And drink herbal tea and check your phone.
Sometimes you ask yourself what’s altered,
Why your dreams have withered like the carpet of flowers.
It’s the stress,
Nine to five and nine to five and nine to five
Day after day.
It’s because the dry dust smell of summer
Hasn’t been drowned in the rain.
The cuckoo never comes calling,
The blossoms fall unseen,
Like the rain unseen.
Now it’s a nuisance,
Not wet earth and jasmine and hot pakodas and new paper.
That’s what you remember,
When you remember.
When you remember
Sometimes you can smell it still,
It’s the smell of dreams and lazy afternoons,
The smell of eternity
As though when the universe is dust
Or reduced to a single speck in a sea of nothing
You’ll still know it.
The smell of home.
Noreen Ocampo
I wonder if my kids are sleeping well now,
especially the ones who spent the school year
napping in the front row. I didn’t get a chance
to say goodbye. I wish I were still jolting awake
to my first alarm & skipping breakfast to dart
after my too-early ride. The empty stomachs
were worth it—the kids would never let me
go hungry, after all, not with all the love they
miraculously had to share at the beginning of
every good morning! I miss the silly laughter,
silly pranks, silly questions—the silly “Miss”
they had to tag to the front of my name. I
didn’t get a chance to thank them. Imagine
being six-going-on-seven & already having
saved a life. Every day, they saved mine
without knowing. I wonder if they are
watching the world from their windows now,
if they are wondering about it all, too. I wish
I could be there to appease all the wonder,
to pay back all the smiles, to stand with
them as we try to make sense of the world.
Trishita Das
abstract nouns, and how to convert them
into adjectives: as if beauty could exist
only when a sixteen year old boy said “beautiful.”
facts: the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,
the sun rises in the east and sets in the west,
there are 206 bones in the human body
but heartbreak hurts worse than a fracture.
trigonometry; which i found no use for
except that meaning can be tangential,
don’t believe everything you read.
how to read maps, but not how to be
culturally sensitive in a foreign country.
history. every action has an equal and opposite
reaction (except kindness, which tends to be
taken for granted). my mother tongue,
but only the numbers up to fifty. organic
chemistry. how to dissect a frog and a flower,
but not an excuse or an apology. algebra,
because taxes and insurance policies are also
quadratic equations. anatomy, except
they forgot to mention that i was allowed
to like the ugliest parts of me. drawing margins,
an introduction to the imaginary lines
separating race, caste, gender, religion,
in an endless violent hopscotch of hate.
and music, as a reminder that even in the dark
there is singing,
there is hope,
there is poetry.
Charlotte Friedman
The school, deserted now, leftover crayon drawings
taped to windows, empty four-square & swings
barely moving in a breeze. I duck under yellow caution tape,
grab the thick chains, stretch my legs and lean
back in time, to another school, three thousand miles
from here. Watch me stride across the playground,
kicking up fresh sawdust curls. At the high bar, boys
try pull-ups, while girls balance on steel
like blue birds in a row, until, one after another,
they drop, push off backwards, catch the bar
under their knees, swing upside down, bodies
rising in the air, high enough to let go
and land. I want that. I want to drop
and spin, flip and fly, arms
stretched up and out
in triumph, life
just beginning.
Poetry Contributor
Aditi Krishnakumar is, among other things, a
writer and poet. She loves fantasy, mythology
and mathematics.
Hannah Napier Rosenberg
We need not look to the history books
to measure the strength of women.
That, we can find in our family tree.
Martha did accounting, ran the numbers for the family business until she died.
Sarah scrubbed church floors to make ends meet after her husband
lay down one day and never got up.
Vicenza took a boat to America with children in tow,
learned English and ran an inn for miners.
Pauline sold goods door to door when her husband
lost his arm in the steel mills,
making more money for the family than they had ever had before.
Other Pauline began college when she had five kids and didn’t finish
until she was a psychoanalyst.
We cling to their unwritten stories with tight fists,
promising them we won’t forget,
listen as their legacy cries quietly out to us:
women are made to carry, they are made to bear,
they are built to be strong.
Adritanaya Tiwari
I think home changes with years, and every home has its own melody.
At one, home was probably my mother’s voice, a soothing symphony, lulling me into a sound dreamless sleep.
At seven, home was the “Tring!!” of the school bell at 2 pm everyday, an annoying sound with a happy rhythm, when school was over.
At ten, home was the sound of my friends, laughing and giggling, a vibrant harmony, all because someone made a fart sound.
At fourteen, home was my own voice in music class, a humble prayer, worshipping music like I was brought up to, eyes closed, heart up in heaven.
At eighteen, home was the little sounds from flipping pages as I studied, a Linkin Park song, just waiting for the month to pass me by, and fast, in the end.
At twenty, home was the faint tune of that song my father played every morning, a devotional song, which I could hear at 6:27 am, in the east corner of the hostel roof.
I am twenty three now, and home sounds like familiarity and nostalgia, a soft ballad – still in the works, with memories for lyrics, much like me.
At twenty three I believe – I know – that I change with years, but now I think my home doesn’t; maybe a few little tweaks here and there, a change in pace, a shift in scale, maybe it’s a few octaves higher than before, maybe it’s more mellow now, maybe it’s got more depth, maybe it has less noise, maybe it’s a combination of melodies and not a repetition of just one, maybe it’s not a melody anymore, maybe it’s a song, my song.
Every home has its own melody, adding up over the years, turning into a song, maybe I am my own.