Antonela Pallini Zemin was born and raised in Argentina. She write both in Spanish and English and is currently attending the MA in Creative Writing at University of East Anglia. As challenging as it may sound, the majority of her work is in a language that is not even her second language, but which doesn’t read as a translation. Reading and writing in two languages gives a special flavour to writers’ work.

Into the Woods

Through the branches
of a ghostly forest
there appears
the nameless face
of a figure
I dare guess.

The chilly freeze
brings no embrace
but rises gently
over my face.

A name or grace
that’s not pronounced,
a heart whose beats
I recognise.

And as I sit still
I stroll aloft
into the woods,
whose core as yours
is fairly good.

There is no twist,
no turning point,
just the breath
of this wood
and of my own.

Terry Has been painting for over forty five years. He started creating Poems, he has had five poems in the Salt Lake City Weekly. Four E- Books. Variant and Tide Anthologies. Poems in 2 Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed, 2 juet Milieu Lit and Utah Life Magazine. Three at Poem Village, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, In Parentheses.

Drinking Spotter

Beer seeps in a ghost woman vat
She needs a drinking spotter
Horizontal cracks in White Flint Glass
Black Forest Grandmother clock
Irish face cloth at last
Dark Lady Fair Man won’t talk
She just pinched his ass
We just heard a shoot out on the sidewalk

Born in the U.K., Ann van Wijgerden has spent most of her life in the Netherlands and the Philippines. Ann works with an NGO providing education for children living in Manila’s slum areas. See: www.youngfocus.org

Courage when I need it

As the approach of rain
Hurls tight twists the air
Into sudden moist swellings
Of imminence

Courage comes
Unknown unwelcome friend
While lightening splits
Our worlds apart

Maggie Babb is a working poet and prose writer with an interest in Investigative and Documentary Poetics. She is a member of the Hollowdeck Writers Guild in Maryland, USA. She lives with her African Grey parrot and German Shepherd.

Echo Farm

At the stove braising ribs stands a mother.
Evening light straddles the barn.
Across grazed fields the girl rides her pony
choosing to wait under the trees
for her trusted confidant, the moon.
Around her play the elementals.

They come in different shapes, these elementals
imperceptible to the mother
who denies her connection to the moon
and seldom ventures into the barn
or wanders out under the trees
where stands the trusty little pony.

This little dappled grey pony
is envoy to the elementals
who live among the trees
unacknowledged by the mother.
A sanctuary masquerading as a barn
waits ready under the cold moon.

In all her rich fullness the moon,
protector to the child and pony,
conducts lessons in the barn
under the gaze of the elementals
standing between child and mother
guarded all around by trees.

Deep rooted and wise, the trees
oak, pine, hemlock, apple, serve the moon.
Unnoticed, they minister to the mother
who allows the child to have the pony
prearranged by the elementals
under the cover of the barn.

The old stone and timbered barn
still stands among the trees
tended by the elementals
and the waning, worm moon.
Long gone is the pony
and the fretful, absent mother.

The moon reflects the memory of the pony.
The absolved mother sleeps under the trees
while the elementals watch over the barn.

upon leaving Welcome Home Farm

another morning dawns clear and bright
the songs of nuthatch, wren and bluebird thrill
my heart joins the songs that break the night

how can I say farewell and stay upright?
tell me! I beg the nodding daffodil
another morning dawns clear and bright

across the farm the mist gives way to light
and in me leaps a joy that rolls and rills
my heart joins the songs that break the night

from ice and snow to summer’s deep delight
every season serves from bog to hill
another morning dawns clear and bright

countless gifts flow in, my heart ignites
as this chapter closes with goodwill
my heart joins the songs that break the night

with gratitude and grace I’ll shift my sight
and now I’ll say good-bye with angels’ skill
another morning dawns clear and bright
my heart joins the songs that wake the night

Lynda V. E. Crawford is a poet who has lived in the USA longer than her childhood home Barbados, a fact that sways and punctuates her writing. She’s let go of journalism, copywriting, website management, and email marketing. Poetry won’t let go of her.

Mangoes

Mangoes drop down
from trees, the weight of

their ripeness too much
to stop the motion; too

heavy to shun the lane
where a baby sleeps, in

a pram, waiting.

Eric Merriweather is an emerging writer as well as a recent graduate, with a BA in English, from Kennesaw State University, in Georgia. His aim is to become a novelist and an established poet.

Sitting Never Won Any Wars

Languid arches,
A heel inclined
To tell a tale of mounds tamed
And marches famed to pass
Callused pads
To a younger generation

Chipped toenails, from scraping concrete
(Soaked in hose water)
Sing a song of
Feet tried and put to test
Over coals and
Freeze-dried pig’s feet
(That never had any soles),
Pickle jars with human hearts
Long-since pickled & broken

With no blood to the legs,
The body falls
Prey to sheathed tingly needles
At home in its cushioned & reclined repose
To ponder a swollen tiredness
The shoes have never shown
From a war never fought by the lackadaisical

Alisha Kumar is a junior in high school in Chicago. She writes poetry at 2 am, in the middle of storms, and when she’s home alone because, really, are there any better times?

goodbye to a friend

i brought a knife to a gunfight
you brought a quiver and a bow
(maybe we’re more alike than we think)
dark room, bloody walls, overdramatic
just the way you liked it, yeah?
the carnage invisible
to everyone but the fighters
(a battle with room for two)
my riposte against your poisoned arrows
i dealt in pain
but you deal in death.
does bleeding out
mean i was alive then?
that IT didn’t swallow me whole?
that i was still human?
you didn’t seem to think so.
(but i got the last word,
not that it matters.)

A Jill-of-all-trades (master of one: disco dancing), Sydney Smith has published poems and biophysics research. Suffering from FOMO, she studied both physics and philosophy. Nature’s mystique inspires her to share science through storytelling. She can be reached at sydneylynsmith@gmail.com

She can be reached at sydneylynsmith@gmail.com

Daytime Fireflies

The hike down to the waterfall is as slippery
as buttered corn on the cob with a few bites missing.
A throaty shhhh warns of the bubbly white horizon,
and audible power seeps into open ears, taking residence
in the space once occupied by meditations on balance.
But it is the daytime fireflies who enchant.
I mean the ones birthed as jutting rocks cut
the falls open, spurting the fireflies into life.
Into a chaotic descent, a quantization of the waterfall
whose whole flow, in turn, smooths the rocks.
We each help form the world in which we live
as we spin our webs ‘til they catch,
our individual souls forged by our own falls.
And, you know, the daytime fireflies
look like they’re having so much fun
it almost makes you want to jump with them.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, taught English for many years before retiring to write full time. She enjoys travelling, genealogy, reading, and learning Italian in order to speak to and correspond with her newly-discovered cousins in Bergamo. Her latest book of poetry is EDGES.

Rooms

The old floorboards creak
with life after life.

Parquet lies deep in thought,
echoing footfalls

in a house of few rooms.
Strife and merriment,

imprisoned in small spaces,
emerge in golden afternoons,

filtering the oncoming dusk,
welcoming fireflies and bats.

Bedroom nights catch
a corner of the moon

in the shaved sunlight
of winter mornings.

Windows

Something about walls
demands space

for distant vision—sky,
cloud, and the light silence

of dragonflies in sunlit noons.
My Italian grandmother

used to lean on the windowsill,
looking down on the streets

of West New York, waiting for cars,
watching mothers walk to market,

their children lagging behind,
clutching chalk for hopscotch.

She knew that out there
was a world beyond

mothballed linens, iron bedsteads,
scrubbed linoleum, plaster saints,

and pasta al dente. I lift my head
above my books to watch

the ever-shifting horizon,
to view something beyond

word and desk, far from
the syllables I’ve sought since youth,

seeking the dappled truth of fog,
the untranslatable language of rain.

Richard LeDue currently lives and teaches in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada, where the winter nights are long and cold. This is why he writes so much poetry in the winter months, but he also hates the heat, so the summer months also prove productive. It is almost a guarantee that any of his work that speaks of nature is based on pure hearsay.

Tennyson Probably Never Had Pink Eye

They want aspiring poet laureates,
not a guy who writes about squirrels
in his garbage cans, and can’t figure out
how to potty train his four year old
autistic son. They want someone
who won’t forget to wear gloves
every-time those same squirrels eat
around old diapers, or who’ll
remember to wash his hands
before removing his contact lenses.

Brothers and Sisters

Abandoned among tall grass,
he panics,
runs so hard that the tomato soup
from lunch jumps up his throat,
burns away his fear,
leaves only anger,
while his older sister laughs-
all part of an ancient game
that no one bothered to give a name.

Statement of Claim

How much flesh has been sold
in these grocery coolers?
Written in black Comic Sans,
a blood red sign exclaims
that the veal is sold out
again
next to pre-cooked chicken,
long dead in a box.
Even produce section stinks
of pesticides-
I want a refund for a life
dependent on buying food like this.