The Promised Land

The Promised Land - Sushma Joshi - in ITCH - Journal of Creative Expression - Issue 6 - 29th June 2010.

December 16, 2013 I was moved to see all the Mandela memorial events this week. And it reminded me that I'd had a story published in ITCH, a South African journal, in 2010. So, in his memory and with South Africa on my mind ...

beyond today

Umesh Acharya, only son of an illustrious family of judges and diplomats, inheritor of lavish acres of land in Banepa, and owner of two centrally located Kathmandu apartment buildings, decided to leave for America a week after his marriage...

beyond the valley of home

But Umesh, who had watched all his friends leave Kathmandu one by one...

could the light be brighter

if he attended community college for a year and improved his grades, he could transfer to a better college...

could I learn more

Umesh reached Ohio in the middle of September.

but the leaves are turning

Welcome to America," he said, taking out Umesh's Samsonite suitcases and dragging them into the narrow, carpeted hallway. It smelled of old cats.

the warmth is dying

"Its expensive to live alone, so all eight of us in the college share the rooms," Abhisekh explained

we cannot be what we were

All of us work these kinds of jobs. Remember Kundan-Sir?" "Our physics teacher?" "That's right. He is stacking boxes at a supermarket right now in New York. Remember Suresh? He was a batch behind us?" "What about him?" "He pumps gas at a station in Idaho." "I don't believe it," was all Umesh could say. "Remember Ranay?" Abhisekh continued pitilessly. "Ranay who wanted to be a doctor?" "Ranay works at an Indian restaurant now, waiting tables. He dropped out of college and is illegal."

we cannot become

more than we were

Was this the America that all his other friends had gone to, or had he arrived at a special nightmare version?

we have lost 

'Have I come thousand of miles and paid ten times more for an education that was worse than a public college in Kathmandu?' he thought. 

I have lost

"The Promised Land," said somber ochre letters outside the funeral parlor where Purna dropped him off.

I can only

light

the ashes


MORE BY SUSHMA JOSHI
Shelling Peas and History Lessons - Mascara Literary review


NOTE
I intercepted her words with side-track poetry
which becomes my review

The Line

The Line (2010) - Teri Hall


 Away
Crossing
 Labor Pools
The Council
Unified States

 Away
Close the door to problems
Mandatory status
Streamlined dystopia
Unified States

Elizabeth Moore
Matriarch of The Property
Vivian
Single mother
Rachel her daughter
Groomed in controlled beliefs
Apprentice orchid keeper

Away
Pathik
Jab
Kinec

Empathy
Stab
Kinetic

Curious gifts arise from
The bombs of change

 Unified States
Close the door to problems
Away

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Line by Teri Hall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Line is like the threatening, divisive prohibition of a Berlin Wall without the visibles of boundary and barbed wire. US - Unified States - alienate those trapped in Away due to Holocaustic circumstance. And Rachel, one of the young Regs, decides to connect with Pathik in the Away world, offering help and seeking answers to her own father's disappearance. The setting is intriguing but tends to dominate the novel. Somehow the questions around Ms Moore's The Property on the US side become a little weathered, verging on repetitive and there's a frustrating urge to get on with some action. We spend too long with the orchids in the greenhouse and too long gazing at digims (photos). There is a sequel called Away. Perhaps this long-winded "prologue" may seem more valid in the sequel.

View all my reviews

Poetry of The Midnight Zoo

Gypsy child
In a world of rumbling 
Extermination 
Machines
12 year old Andrej
Leads 9 year old Tomas
And both share a Mum role for
Baby Wilma

Imagine these shreds of life
In the cloak of midnights
Stumbling into a zoo

Where 
For a star gate of  
Magical time
The animals who sense more than
You will ever know

Try to tell you

And Alice
In her dark
Long
Woollen cloak 
Waits
To lead them all


p.1 ...the tower now stood against the sky like a blunt unfinished question.
p.3 They were younger than Night had ever been, two scraps of life with scanty limbs clad in worn jackets and boots.
p.91 We Rom are closer to the animals than to people like that. Unburdened, unowned and free.
p.155 But there are many kinds of hungers.
p.157 Her muzzle wrinkled, and Andrej saw a glimpse of teeth and pale tongue. 'They smell the same,' the lioness murmured. 'My cubs smelt as she does. Like pollen.'
p.162 These are cages, so there must be keys.

The Midnight Zoo (2010) - Sonya Hartnett

GOODREADS REVIEW

  The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here is a novel about children but hardly for children. It needs an adult audience (touting some historical baggage) who seeks a glimpse of a child's world. Here are the Rom, those gypsy wanderers persecuted alongside the Jews in Hitler's madness. And Andrej, Tomas and Wilma are parentless, Rom children. But don't seek some historical jaunt. Feel the cursed? wandering spirit of a child seeking answers of place and identity. What is freedom? There are many kinds of freedoms and hungers. The animals know.
This novel has the fantasy of a parable and the realism of a holocaust.
Imagine these shreds of life
In the cloak of midnights
Stumbling into a zoo
- Extract from my poetic review on my blog Songlines on the Winds

View all my reviews

N.B. Sparkle and Nightflower (1986) - The first book I read by Sonya Hartnett.
A delicious journey of mother and son through some tawdry, weathered inner and outer landscapes.
I read it aloud - cover to cover - to my wild, "non-reading" bunch of Year 10's at the time, and they loved it!

Linking to:
dVerse Open Link Night