Today’s choice
Previous poems
Mallika Bhaumik
In search of a tawaif’s tale (Dilli love)
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
make it; his own.
My first impression of Dilli is that of an ageless ‘tawaif’
whose charm, chaos and charisma can effortlessly incite a visitor to indulge in voyeurism.
The city; an interesting tapestry of time; woven haphazardly.
The sprawling concrete habitat has the sloganeering youth, the policymaking bureaucracy, the migrant labour, the affluent and not so affluent –
officers, clerks, artists, judges, doctors, traders, ministers, eunuchs all jostling for space, wishing to call it ‘home.’
While the metro rail track crisscrosses the landmass of the tawaif’s body,
there are tabla beats accentuating the qawwali,
smell of paranthas and kebabs wafting through the lanes and bylanes,
the grandeur of Indo Persian architecture vying for footfall alongside the cold corridors of bureaucratic power.
The real and surreal blend in the midnight hour
when history rewrites itself with the fluttering tiranga and ‘tryst with destiny.’
The faint hum of Ghalib’s ghazals leave behind a residue of unrequited love and regret across the halls and charbaghs,
the veiled faces of once beautiful begums fade away with the morning mist,
the tawaif heaves a sigh as the sky is tinged with the rays of the morning sun.
A steady stream of cars, buses, autos, with their grey fumes script the itinerary of another day of heat and dust.
Glossary
Tawaif ~ cultured female entertainer and courtesan during Mughal era known for their mastery of classical music and dance.
Qawwali ~a style of Sufi devotional music
ghazal ~ In Middle Eastern and Indian literature a lyrics poem with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme scheme
Charbagh ~ four gardens in Persian and also refers to a walled garden divided in four equal quadrants
Parantha ~ a popular South Asian flat bread
Kebab ~ a type of meat preparation
Tiranga ~ The tricolour/ Indian Flag
Mallika Bhaumik was a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry in the year 2019. She is the author of three poetry books. Her latest book When time is a magic jar was published by Red River Press in February 2025, and has received encouraging reviews from Cha: An Asian Literary Journal & Scroll.in among others. She lives and writes from Kolkata, India.
Freya Cook, Amii Griffith and The Mollusc Dimension on our fourth and final day of our Pride Feature
Love Poem to June After Paul Monette if every window filled with light it would refract ten thousand rainbows at least twelve would hit you and if i say you are beautiful in this light you would say this is your light the only one you want to be...
Aisha Odette and Carmilla for the Third Day of our Pride Feature
Glitch
Last night
my brain dreamt
of freshly-braided hair
mine, cocoa sipped pre-bedtime
yours, morning-wet mascara…
– Aisha Odette
(un)natural
They are unfamiliar to me.
Every sand grain,
every stone,
every leaf,
every needle,
every trunk,
every path…
– Carmilla
Beth Davies, Fee Marshall and Fiona Broadhurst for Day 2 of our Pride Feature
Trick Question
It was a simple game.
One wall meant Yes. The other meant No.
The teacher would ask a question and we’d each run towards our answer.
Once, she asked “Have you ever been in love?”
At six years old, I ran with certainty towards Yes.
I reached it but found myself alone.
Surprised, I looked over at the others
crowded together on the other side.
“Don’t you love your parents?” I asked,
with all the indignance of a child
who doesn’t understand her mistake.
“Don’t you love your friends?”
Beth Davies
Ace Sex
Sex is when a train runs into a portal
Flies off to outer space
It’s when you suddenly remember the old block tellie
With no channels
That you had to switch on at the block
Sex is
I think it’s an ice cream
One of them novelty flavours like
Popping Raspberry Unicorn
It’s a weird fad but we’re pretty sure
Salted Caramel’s making a comeback
Fee Marshall
Polyamory is wrong
(Mixing Greek and Latin roots? Wrong!)
Polyamory is less orgies, or threesomes
& more Google calendar, blocking out
precious time, increments of love
portioned out as slices of 3.14159,
infinite, neverending & always fulfilling
Fiona Broadhurst
Lara Mae Simpson and Siobhan Dunlop for Day 1 of our Pride Feature
How to Love the Word “Lesbian”
We took the bus in tutus & fairy wings,
gripped on to the cowboy hat
trying to fly from your curls in July’s breeze.
In Trafalgar Square, floats of rainbow
companies waltzed by & we rolled
our eyes, couldn’t see past tall men,
– Lara Mae Simpson (they/she)
On nights I am
a girl again
I am unemployable as
woman don’t do the
work beg at corner
of ends on leg
too short for the cripwalk
-Noah Jacob
dreaming of the velvet goldmines
i want to be a skinny pretty boy rockstar
without the height or the coke habit
or needing to strictly be a boy at all
-Siobhan Dunlop (they/them)
Paul Stephenson
The Conversation
It’s been quite a while now and…
You know we get on like a house…
August twelfth, a year ago, can you…
I bet you thank your lucky…
Things have evolved, haven’t…
Can you believe we’re both still …
Hannah Linden
She gives me a word to look up
in a dictionary of obscure sorrows.
I, who try to decipher echoes from
other people’s reaction to my words
throw down a bucket into the well
recognise water when people tell me
Nelly Bryce
Longing curls its legs up on the sofa in our house.
There’s a dip there now.
How I long to turn us into a day trip.
You belong in that chair over there
asking what happened with that text
and where I bought this jumper,
Cameron Tricker
See the local estate agent crooks
Ten a penny
Smoking their rollies, washed down with
protein
Pigeons with emerald necks
Elizabeth Osmond
Difficult doctors don’t care about their patients,
They are filling up hospitals and GP practices with their difficult bodies.
They are often late to work and shuffle into handover . . .