PM Review

  হে স্বর্গীয়কৌতুকপ্রিয় মর্তবাসীগণ! হে স্বর্গীয়কৌতুকপ্রিয় মর্তবাসীগণ! এইবার একটু ধীর হও। হাওয়ার ধূলোয় রাখো কান। শুনো- বহুবাহু বলে মনভূমি লুন্ঠন চলবেই কি? সূর্যদীঘল মন, আপন নির্জন কোণ রেখে অনাবাদী। অনিঃশেষ, চিরন্তন। এইবার একটু ঘন হও। জলের পাতায় রাখো চোখ। দেখো- দুনিয়ার এতো যে দঙ্গল। মানুষের এতো যে কোন্দল। তপ্তবায়ুর রুদ্ধশ্বাসে ঘুরঘুর পাক খাচ্ছে।   এইবার একটু চলিষ্ণু হও। পাথরের স্বরে কন্ঠ দাও। বলো- শূন্যরেখার ছায়াগুলো, দিনের আলো কাধে নিয়ে পৃথিবীর পথে বেরিয়ে পড়ে কোথায় যায়?

  An Art of Leaving Palash Mahmud   When you set foot To cross the door leaving Everything behind. To walk alone. Knowing- No longer you Coming back. Do you feel what you feel? Clipping- Your past with glue Behind the curtain Hanging on the wall at the north corner. Despite your splendid ignorance. Who will be your new past? Have you ever bought any scale? To measure- Who loses whom? In the scratches of an act of leaving 

  Dearly My Sighs Are Hanging by Palash Mahmud Here at the periphery of chaos my longing surrenders into the slant shadows [ earnestly] There in the middle of hatr'd my voice stops on a numb'd note [ weightlessly] In a graceless reign where my way I am losin' [ effortlessly] by a shackl'd ray. In a dried desert where my sighs are hangin' [ dearly] on a poisonous tree.

  Between Two Rivers By Palash Mahmud A man in the force wrestlin’ into the blood of the boy he shot.   The boy’s last breath crept down the stairs of the Turkish Restaurant Over the Sadoun street Immixin’ with the sodden pebbles of Tigris Euphrates.   A woman on the Square Turnin’ into a Cypress tree Metamorphosed 500 bullets into redleaves Engravin’ the names of Hammurabi Nebuchadnezzar Alexander Ali.   A goddess in a glazed brick Gatherin’ in a vigil with Dragon, Bull Lion.   To find a way to drive away the smoke Of chaos, Rockin’ the cradle of civilization.   To define freedom! The most romantic invention In space for whom we Swimin’ into The dialectical lake  

  This Mournable Body”: Transference from Colonial Captivity to Democratic Domestication There is a fish in the mirror , this very first line in the “This Mournable Body,” a novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga, distorts the reality that what you see out there, probably and/or actually, is not what it is; and opens up the truth that the “coolest cruising” of our expectations and the arrival of our promised land are always either suspended or ebbing.  This Mournable Body  (Graywolf, 2018 & Faber & Faber, 2020), one of the shortlisted fiction for the 2020 Booker Prize, is the last installment of her trilogy,  Nervous Conditions  (1988), which was enlisted in the list of BBC’s top 100 books that shaped the world, which she wrote at the advent of Zimbabwean independence but its narrative line was set during the colonial Rhodesia in the early 1960s when the nation and the land were going through the identity crisis, a story of Zimbabwean girl’s, Tambudzai Sigauke, enlightenment with that “it

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi – On Fractional View of Self and Reality    In this literary essay, Palash Mahmud writes about  Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar  and sheds a light on her verisimility of her life with the story’s root and very reasonably his personal experience and memoir of a grandmother who had been suffering from Alzheimer for over twenty-five years. It was the night before- a pattern of time dilation that makes different realities, so do our memories- the announcement of the long list of the 2020 Booker Prize, I was returning home from work; I was also thinking about Toni Morrison’s debut novel,  The Bluest Eyes  (1970) and its 50 th  anniversary this year and how can I commemorate her phenomenal literary premier in this tumultuous pandemic age? A notification from  Granta  had popped up on Facebook alluring me to read an excerpt of  Burnt Sugar , an exciting debut by Avni Doshi, an Indian-American writer based in Dubai. As soon as I had tapped the thumb of my right hand, the fir

 Cease the Greedy Knives by Palash Mahmud When the sun has scratched a ring of fire up in the air Down here the whistling woods are burning and blare. The more the greener the grasses, the most the deepest The sighs fusing with spouting smokes that are thickest.  When the moon has dropped melting lights down the river Up there the carnival of breath ends in death and dare. The less the size the more the numbers, the less the cruel The more the wounds making the landscapes a charcoal. Yet not we compel the wind to pause the raging line Not even we plead the water not to flush the bristlecone pine. Alas! we are in competition to outnumber moneys than leaves We fail to force the gods, the kings to cease the greedy knives.  At last we have made our own hell sitting on a throne of spike At least the woods, the roots know how the hell looks like.