Joao-Roque Literary Journal est. 2017

By Tino de Sa

Procession of One

Bleak, unlovely and unrepentant
for the many unspeakable sins of her arid past,
summer returns.

Without shame she uncovers the riverbed
with its harvest of pebbles,
too dry again for the melon seeds to root.

By Jessica Faleiro

During a routine consultation, the cardiac interventionist frowns at my father’s ECG reading. He’s immediately admitted into the ICU, where he’s restricted to seeing visitors for only thirty minutes, twice a day. The ICU security guard, Raj, allows me into the ward after visiting hours, when he realises that my father is in for a long haul. It occurs to me that he’s seen as many dead people wheeled out as live ones wheeled in.

By Salil Chaturvedi

Issue no 25

Sure enough
four petals a touch of orange in the stem
knee-high
That’s Farsetia.
This is the only place you will find it
On top of a hill, green in August
A short-lived trick
Then, a return to bare and rocky.

By Ritoshree Chatterjee

Issue no 25

maman, i died by the shore tonight.

the sea wept a soft lavender afterthought
and sand snuck in my heart till
a peanut-seller’s pockets spilled out the evening

maman, i died by the shore tonight

the waves lapped up my little girl’s body

By Sabah Al-Ahmed

Issue no 25

1989 –
Emperor Jehangir’s awestruck lines
from a houseboat on Dal lake
had now started to melt,
‘Gar Firdaus ruhe zamin ast,
hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin ast’
It wasn’t the paradise on earth,

By Zilka Joseph

Issue no 24

We lived in Shivaji Park when I first asked
my parents about Santa—because he brought presents,
and my picture books showed him flying—
in a sleigh drawn by reindeer over fields and mountains of
snow in cold countries where white people lived
in huge houses with fat furniture and funny things

By Malachi Edwin Vethamani

Issue no 24

Giving at Christmas
peaks on its eve.
Days have gone by
preparing the festive
cakes and palagarams.
All labours of love.

By Rashida Murphy

Issue no 24

This Christmas we’ll speak of ancestral legacies.
Those places we cannot visit.
The sleet covered valleys of your people.
The tropical cacophonies of mine.
We’ll speak of borders.

By Sara Leana Ahmad

Issue no 22

I remember this one evening when I was six watching the news with my family from our suburban home in the San Fernando Valley. During those days my mom was always crying. One of the first times I ever saw her cry was in those first days of the invasion, crouched under the dinner table, too ashamed to face us, wailing like I’d never seen since.

By Jessica Faleiro

Issue no 22

We are on summer break in Goa when my father first hears. “I was just there,” he tells everyone. “It won’t last.” We hear the stories of Kuwaitis being tortured and Indians being airlifted. I’m quickly enrolled in the local school, expected to befriend the other tenth graders. My mother brings a kitten to the place we’ve been calling home, to distract us.