Joao-Roque Literary Journal est. 2017

By John Lawrence Nazareth

Issue no. 13

The daybreak creeps in with the morn.
Under the sun’s first kiss,
The swooning night has slipped away,
And with it flee the dreams of creatures

By Salil Chaturvedi

Issue no. 13

in the scheme of things it is not as momentous as the huge chunk of
Greenland’s Peterman Glacier
breaking off and drifting out to the open sea,
and there exists
no NASA satellite image of my heart

By Santosh Alex

Issue no. 13

I searched for you
on the dining table
You were distributing bread
to the multitudes.

By Madhu Raghavendra

Issue no. 13

There is no society 
But four corners of our bed
Under a white lighting sky 
Black clouds grind our bodies 
The secret stays— what's yours, what's mine?

By Michelle D’Costa

Issue no. 13

Mom said, English will take you abroad.
Gulf will kick you out when it has sucked
the life out of you. You must go abroad. At home,

By Michelle Cahill

Issue no. 12

The road leads us away from the temple of Pārvatī,
from the iris of the spotted hawk, red and gold satin,
the smoke of burning dhoop and coconut offerings.
Away from bells touched by the fingers of pilgrims.

By Roseangelina Baptista

Issue no. 12

I myself, an Amazon child,
Became an outcast soul,
Just to know the spells of
Mandovi in June.

By Rochelle Potkar

Issue no. 12

They never disagreed - Ruby, Tessa, Helium;
he didn’t need coping mechanisms.
He sowed his oats into soft burgundy strands
or in the blonde, or the one with rolling blue eyes.

By Chandramohan S

Issue no. 11

Every river in my land
Is a pulsating relic of an
Epic outliving its origin.