Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry and BestNewPoemsOnline, among others.

My Crows

1/

Still, still hidden
Behind old shirts and pants
Like an inflated sock
Hung on a slanting coat hanger

With a prophecy stuck in its throat
Probably too dark or ominous
To yaw, even to breathe

No one knows when or how
It will fly out of the closet, and call

2/

Like billions of dark butterflies
Beating their wings
Against nightmares, rather
Like myriads of
Spirited coal-flakes
Spread from the sky
Of another world
A heavy black snow
Falls, falling, fallen
Down towards the horizon
Of my mind, where a little crow
White as a lost patch
Of autumn fog
Is trying to fly, flapping
From bough to bough

Dixon Hearne is the editor-in-chief of Delta Poetry Review. He writes in Louisiana, where he grew up along the quiet bayous and river traces. He is a recently retired academic and writer–assisted by his clever bichon Junie. His work has been nominated for the PEN/Hemingway award and several times for the Pushcart.

Crossing Over

The downtowns were joined
by a narrow brick-and-steel bridge
across the darkly beautiful Ouachita–
river of life, river of death
sauntering south like a summer stroll,
then raging and brimming
with spring thaw,
completely indifferent
to human affairs on either side.

Crowds the mind with memories,
sense memories of time and place
now all but obliterated by fickle
tastes and whim change.
From Western Union,
which hugged the bridge,
to the crisscross tracks at Five Points—
reminder of days when streetcars
carried shoppers and workers
on their daily routes.

Along the wide sidewalks on either side,
tacky items fill showroom windows
where once the finest to be found
was vainly displayed—dreams and wishes.
Now Swept aside and relocated
to suburban hubs
of the beehive variety
in the name of progress.
the fate of most large towns
now rediscovering the value,
the wisdom of town centers.
malls now inverting,
store entries on the outside,
reclaiming the village model
where shoppers stroll
in fresh, open air.
A new idea, many say
whose knowledge
has not yet ripened
into wisdom.

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals. These include: The Lake; Seventh Quarry Press; Marble Journal; New Binary Press; Stanzas; Crossways; Ygdrasil; Seventh Quarry; The Fractured Nuance; Revival Magazine; Ink Sweat and Tears; Drunk Monkeys; Hesterglock Press; Linnet’s Wing, Narrator International, The Galway Review; Poethead and The Evening Echo.

Freak show Saga

Being quiet on delicate matters, love permitting
white flowers cascade on the windowsill
the designated day off calls the blink missed
this artisan audience knows better than that
watered and fed under cover of critical mass.

Fearing ruin over breakfast, newspapers as well,
coffee sunk slowly, more lukewarm the better,
sharpening appetite on a watery diet
purchasing freedom on back of a blood test
loving, like a rock, caring little for decorum.

Called by the wrong name, invited to a table
apologised to, the dark veins of a friend,
cracking down on entitlement, this allowing
producing books only the select will read
that is enough, as is said, for another day.

Being looked after is all that truly matters,
seethed though Facebook, awaiting the train,
inexistent crises rummaging in losing handbags
conserving food in face of disastrous teeth
looking pregnant, unproductive, in an age’s heart.

Typing up bygones, the better for wear, again
startled out of time, being the more mature
accepting oneself as per se, free travel abound
as much on the one page, constraints being
destroying all knowledge of previous incarnations.

George Keyes is a writer who lives in the Mojave Desert, east of Bakersfield, California, with his family. Besides enjoying writing he loves photography and chest. His work has appeared in Scarlet Leaf Press, Literary Yard and Taft College among others. He was an awarded author from the International Latino Book Awards. He is currently working in a book, The Portrait of Oscar Wilde.

         Below the sun,
His starched valley
Seems starving with happiness

         Running
Like a kid
         I feel the sound
Life lifting me
Among the leaves of a petal…

        The fear slaps
The flow of the birds
        Under the golden shadow
While underneath it,
        I am waiting.

In this mountain
        The barefoot are digging heavily
Over the wide, narrow view!

Sarah Henry is retired from a major American newspaper. She lives in a small Pennsylvania town without distractions. Sarah prefers readable poetry that wasn’t written by Martians.

Asteroid

It’s a small world
like an asteroid.
One crosses Paris
in a single day
or grows bored with
the coast of Hawaii.
My niece sends love
from the tundra.
I pass my ex
and blink like a signal.
An asteroid sails through
space until it wobbles.
They catch a thief
running off on film.
It’s a small world
and they’re all watching.
They’re all watching
but I am innocent.
I sit at a desk
on my asteroid.
I open my journal
and grab a pen.
It’s a small world.
I travel on paper.

Renee Butner particularly loves the ocean, cooking, painting, her three young grandsons and dark chocolate. She and her husband own a Kilwins franchise in Winston-Salem, NC, where they reside, so this fondness for chocolate has a perfect outlet. She is a member of the NC Haiku Society and Winston-Salem Writers and has had works published in numerous publications. Her website is www.reneebutner.wordpress.com.

Waltz

Nightly I dip
and turn in a slow waltz
with insomnia.
He spins me in his arms,
I grasp his shoulder
too tightly
and his clasp at my waist
is firm
and unyielding.
We glide and revolve
in and out of a haze
of consciousness.
I attempt a monotonous
count in my head
backwards,
forwards.
He the victor,
I the spoils.
There is a tantalizing lightening
in the dusky sky
to the east.

Keith Kennedy lives in Vancouver with his keen, lustrous wife.

The Practise of the Instant

Is that rain?
(Mars on the television)
A racoon? No, nothing to be frightened of.
Just the rain.
(Panning back, a red dot in the blackness)
I like the sound of rain once I’m sure
It’s not someone climbing up my balcony
Coming to kill me.
(Does Mars have rain?)
No. That’s stupid.
(Does Mars have killers?)
It will, says the rain.
Pitter – Patter.

Llewellyn Gannon is a poet, a visual artist, as well as a mother and a wife. She is currently working on a compilation of poems from her experiences in love throughout life. She is calling it, Upon Paper Lips. Taking poems from 20 years to narrate her story. A coming of age and beyond.

Safe From Home

You must feel safe cause I don’t know
where you sleep at night.
Safely tucked in sweet illusion
pretending you were right.

You’re mistake’less in forsake’ness.
Only in your dreams.
With a new twist… My replacement.
No time to cry for me.

You may be safe from my hands.
Slipped away into the night.
Safe in the fact that darkness
steals time and steals your sight.

Don’t you see it crawling towards you?
Creeping up, in your mind?
Lonely, no where to turn to
in the corner of your eye.

Can’t you hear me like a heartbeat
pound on these walls, alone?
Can’t you feel me, like a heartbreak?
Or are you safe from home?

Lindsey Schaffer is a current undergraduate at The College of Saint Benedict. When she is not reading or writing she is running, cooking, or travelling.

A Dance at Midnight

The moon calls her to dance
Igniting a fire in her heart
That can only be extinguished in the heart of the forest
Where, surrounded by the tinder of stinging cicada songs and siphoned starlight
She dances around a bonfire of fever dreams
Her freckles fuze with the silty earth
As fireflies and spotted frogs emerge to join her jovial dance
A spark of calculated movements, extending one arm after the other
The blood in her veins attune to that of invisible violins and ancient drums
Materialized in the friction of a nearby stream and the beating of her heart
Above her the sky smiles, its teeth a cooling translucence of stars and mist
Here she is called to a dance
And so she does.

Alyona Rychkova-Zakablukovskaya is an author from Russia. She was born in Siberia in 1973. She studied Psychology at the Academy of Law, Economics and Management. Her first book of poetry, “In Bogorodsky Garden,” was published in Irkutsk in 2015. Her second book, “The Forty Winters Bird” was published in 2018. 

The Baby Pochard

So many days have passed,
but I remember this.
The autumn glass of the chilly Angara.
A sleepy October day had lured us out, to the water beyond the Meget,
and gave us its gifts. We had expected silence,
but there was none: just the voices of birds and wind.

Wading across the rapids, fishing rod in hand,
you saw a moving blob.
An indistinct speck was crossing the river,
propelling itself forward, despite the waves.
At last, it stopped at the big man’s feet.
You picked it up and recognized it.
A duckling, baby pochard, in your hands
was trembling and jerking its legs.

Animated by a funny spirit of struggle,
it was still rushing through the water.
It swam, and swam, and swam.
But soon its eyes got dim – the god of birds
blew the duckling’s conscience out.
The shard of living universe on my bosom
Got warm and fell asleep.

I had already made peace with the idea
that I’d have to catch flies to feed it
and look for a foster family for it.
I was trying to remember someone
who could adopt a duckling,
but soon decided I would love it myself…
But suddenly the tiny thing returned to life and pulled itself together,
aware of the warmth of the hands it didn’t need.
The whole plan of its future captivity
flashed in the beads of its eyes.

An anger and fright started to build up in its body.
“Set me free! Set me free or I’ll die!”
The stubborn duckling, as quick as an athlete
was slipping out of my fingers, testing my strength.
“Set me free! Set me free. I’m feeling bad! Bad! Bad!”
Afraid to break the duckling’s neck,
we carried it to the river.
O, how proudly it swam! How happily it hurried,
splitting the waves like a torpedo!
It was so endlessly alive in this brief moment.

I’m sentimental. I am quick to tears.
Their tart smoke already stings my eyes.
I had no regrets at all,
only admiration and a quiet sorrow.
It was so brave, so certain of its way.
So what if it would probably be eaten by a bored burbot,
by hungry bird flying towards its cheeping.
Or killed by a two-legged beast
who wears a cross or doesn’t wear it…

You may ask me why I relive the past.
I think the truth is simple.
I think that each of us has our own way,
mysterious and strange. And each of us has our own time.
That’s why the baby pochard of my soul
still flies to the hazy river…

(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)