From the recent prompt of Chaucer, who wrote much of his content with wit, insight, combining elements at times, of romance, comedy or moral allegory, we also asked poets to write along that same line, crafting an experience which could have been something outside of their comfort zone, or a reflection of their own or a more profound occasion that sparked their muse.
SHORT STORY: "THE JOURNEY OF A DEJECTED HEART"
He looked at her with a deep glare, she wished she could feel that look and make it find its way to her heart.
He came near her and murmured, "You look beautiful and you smell like a summer breeze upon a deserted
shore." She smiled and appreciated his poetic aspect of giving and sending roses to a middle-aged woman.
They waited until the end of the party before he tried to touch her left hand and brought it to his lips, she suddenly
drew it back.
She looked at her short skirt and tried to pull it down to her knees. She had been putting on weight ever since
the death of her dear ones and her family, and felt an unfathomable loss. Though she could not deny that piling
up pounds was also due to age and the drastic dwindling of her physical activity...she looked at him, she did not
want to say anything. He opened the car door and asked her in, she silently accepted the invitation and went.
"When do birds come home," he asked. She smiled and answered, "When I prepare their nest."
He seemed happy with her answer and tried to hug her with one hand, this time she did not retreat. She neared
her head and buried it in the pit of his shoulder. "I feel cold, she said, winter in my life has devoured spring dawns."
He lowered his eyes to meet hers and murmured, "We will greet dawn very soon and we'll borrow some rays of the day's baby son."
She sighed and wished she could confess, "I am too old to have a baby" but she did not want to flaunt desire in his eyes. She did not take garments with her, just the outlets she was wearing that night, she felt a bit cold as the ride was long. She wanted to ask him about the destination but she was keen on tasting the flare of suprise.
The mist behind the windshield's front glass was thick, it had borrowed a lot from the mist that had reigned over
her heart for all these years. She smiled at the mist and tried to stretch a hand to grasp the droplets of rain beating
her left seat glass, she knew that these drips had sprung from her eyes, something which had deeper furrows on her face.
How could he find her, still beautiful when some other people have already thought her over the hill?
"Where are we going?", she finally asked. "Our destination shall be determined by the amount of fuel in the car, when the engine stops, we will bid goodbye to the previous life and start a new one."
She looked and smiled with her dejected heart, took his hand and kissed it.
© SIHEM CHERIF
Tunisia
SHORT STORY: HUMAN EXPERIENCE of PRESENT DAY: "HAPPY AT MY DEPARTURE - AN ANECDOTE"
The room reverberated with hushed whisperings, and it sounded like a lounge of humming bees.
We're sitting in the Oberoi dning hall, for a lunch out with Chancellor of our University. The lady Vice-Chancellor
was tense and her face was dripping with sweat, which she was trying to wipe with her cotton kerchief. But the kerchief, already wet to the limit, failed to clean her face.
By then, we had exhausted the biographical anecdotes of our guest, which were far from endearing or in anyway encouraging. A person's (dis -) - reputation travels faster than himself.
The Vice-Chancellor's discomfort and uneasiness contaminated us in equal measures. Those least bothered, were doing all sorts of pantomime acts to their best of abilities. It was a scene worth watching.
The Chancellor entered at the dot; his eyes fixed on his wrist watch, as he stepped into the dining hall. A thin, dusky and long figure, neatly booted and suited, his tie tightly knotted and tucked under his three-piece suit, he carried himself with a dashing disregard for the heat and humidity of the summer.
Formalities over, we sat down for lunch. The hotel had 5 stars, and the bill was, as was expected, unusually high, keeping with its star value. The dishes were, of course, nice and tasty and, in our innocuous thinking, had to have had entertained our honorable guest suitably, keeping his status and importance in view. Although we didn't expect a friendly pat on the back, we hoped the aftermath to pass on without hiccups.
Smiling and wiping his hands with a kerchief, the Chancellor looked, with an invisible quirky smirk on his lips, at the Vice Chancellor, and said in a tone which, although not pronounced sarcastically, was not unambiguously honest, either. "It seems, Ma'am Vice Chancellor has enough funds at her disposal to entertain her guests so lavishly, whereas I, on the other hand, find it very difficult to entertain my guests even in a humbler way in my kitchen."
Shell shocked, we were at a loss whether to take it as a compliment, or a disparaging remark at the opulent way we tried to impress His Excellency.
But the final salvo was yet to come. At the airport, while seeing him off, the Vice Chancellor, now visibly relaxed after a grueling three-day, minute-to-minute itinerary of the Hon'ble Chancellor, committed the crime of smiling while the Chancellor was in his last leg of departure.
Looking at her smiling face, the Hon'ble Chancellor quipped, "It seems the Vice Chancellor is happy at my departure," she tried to explain away the discomfiture. But, he had already turned his back, and climbing the steps. We stood still, motionless and expressionless, on the tarmac until the planet took off to the skies, and reached a safe distance. This is how reptutations are made and morphed into anecdotes, before floating in the air.
KALUCHARAN SAHU
India
POEM: "WHEN WILL I LEARN TO SAY KNOW?"
I wait for the dawn to break
to rise from this inner darkness
muscles do not relax
bones do not bend
the earth beneath my feet shakes
I wet the hands with flood of eyes
to wipe the fog from the old mirror
chain of customs chokes my chest
the world to me is a box of lies
longing for the day I can say no
and dust the burden off my head
melting emotions cast a spell
all is dark, I have nowhere to go
© Rafiya Sayeed Jammu/Kashmir, India
