a single cloud
grazes over another
in an azure sky
the nothing and everything
of my moods
—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from India. She loves experimenting with all forms of the written word, and has found her niche in Japanese short-forms and found poetry. Her works have recently appeared in Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Oddball Magazine, Poetry WTF?!, Of/with and so on. She is also the founding editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom.
She was visiting for the first time. Over the next few days, our only not-so-hidden-agenda was to forget ourselves. The weather was brewed and just right for poetry. A haiku here, a tanka there, and a little free verse to drown in. Our faces beamed with happiness, and were also tinged with the temporality of it all. She would go back. I would be left all by myself again. I received a book of Gulzar’s poems as a gift from her. And a box of chocolates.
A month later, all that remains are a few wrappers in the drawer.
winter rain…
eavesdropping I listen
to nothing
but the sound of my breath
bounce off the walls
—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.
Note: ‘motionless’ is a found/erasure haiku from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Large Bad Picture”
—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.
Life stagnates as people start trickling back to their houses. Some look forward to the expectant faces of their children, while some others dread their churlish wives. As they saunter along doggedly, the day’s events play like a broken record in their heads – a mimicry of sanity. A crow caws somewhere as though lovesick. Streetlights come on and fireflies hover in a daze. Bicycles, cricket bats, and skipping ropes are lugged back home by children who are repeatedly beckoned by overbearing mothers. Almost in a trance, the buzz of the day fades away as a feigned tranquility descends.
molten skyline…
an earthworm buries
itself deeper
—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.
eventide a gull’s cry so familiar
—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in two dozen anthologies including Chronicles of Urban Nomads, The Dance of the Peacock, Emanations IV, The Living Haiku Anthology, Family Matters, The Traversal of Lines, and Eastern Voices among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku, tanka, and haibun, have appeared in numerous print and online journals.
