In the Displacement Camp

You sit there and look at me.

In that look is all of life,

pared down to the eyes of one woman

who sits on the ground

in an echoing, empty tent.

You’re surrounded

by the discarded rubbish

of all those who have already been moved.

Why not you?

Veiled,

you...

                                                           I did not enter

...

If Abe Lincoln came back to life he'd lose.

The American people I have made great again

are fed up of this down home Honky Tonk crew

Trash from shithole counties

disregarding our flag, the national anthem

there's blame on both sides now and my wife says

I really don't care,...

To Settle

He’s young

A boy, really

Sweat makes the fabric cling

To muscles

It could be that his torso is strapped

With explosives

Or that he worries

About food

He greets a merchant

He knows well

Produce, ready

And restored cell phones

Within a plastic container

Beneath the peaches

(I...

NIMISHA MENON

Empty cartridges lay strewn across the bloodied garden. 1650 bullets were spent on 1516 unarmed civilians. It didn’t take long for the wailing to be replaced with cold rage. You see, the spring of 1919 didn’t bloom flowers in Jallianwala Baug (a garden in...

Our men and boys who left us

left their fields, their shops, their trades

left their families and loved ones

left this village, left England

Went as if taken in a trance

their staring eyes

leading them to recruiting stations

and from there to France

They knew suffering and pai...

On YouTube a 60’s newsreel.

A black and white Dunoon.

A smartly dressed Ban the Bomber

waves a To Hell with Polaris placard

reminding us that H stands for Hiroshima

as well as Holy Loch.

A lone folkie strums as he marches.

 Ban Polaris Hallelujah,

… and send the Yankees home!

T...

Their late blooming spears spill from my beds  

 reliable as the poppy pinned to your coat

well into November

leave ointment pink medals

like skin grafts on fallen leaves

the lapsing ghosts of stems, and I think

they are taking back their dead

sentries for a season

and th...

Rectangle of grey-green grass and memory

Holding 273 years of myth between its fingertips

Its air calling to us:

Lingering war-cries mix with June rain

And fuel ghost-stories at family dinners

Culloden lets people cross the bridge

From contemporary Scotland to 1746,

To a time...

Mohammed scrunches his eyes

to gaze at the forever blue of the sky

above the razor wire fence

he can feel his quickening breath, moisten

the black and white Kaffiyeh he uses to hide

his head and face.

At nineteen he has no prospect of a job

and in the living space he shares

wi...