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)

Kevin DeMello Schutt is a Brazilian American poet and writer living and working in Boston M.A. He is a graduate from the MFA at Emerson College and a recipient of the Academy Of American Poets Award. His work has appeared on Poets.org and in Swamp Ape Review, Driftwood Press and Emerge Literary Journal.

Mula Sem Cabesa

it was dead already        the mule was
tom stole his  dad’s hatchet     we was

gonna throw it at a fence post   on the farm
the bank took from mr. abernathy

we didn’t kill it we swear        we wanted to
be like those hunters      have a trophy of our own

tom got the switch for stealing his dad’s hatchet
I got a hug and therapy       for coming    home

covered in blood             and everyone else
got a ghost story     about a lady         who fucked a priest

Robin Ray is writer from Port Townsend, WA. His works have appeared online at Red Fez, Darkest Before the Dawn, Fairy Tale Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review and elsewhere.

Oxtail Stew

Ahem.
Let me explain something to you.
What I couldn’t convey in this parasitic
English is that I’m not yours, I don’t
belong to you, and have never been yours,
and like crystallized Lladró in your
étagère, I choose to emit scattered light.

You acknowledge I’m a burden to this
complex I reside in. Maybe I’m the nylon
mesh you cannot stain or the unopened
cans of Oaxaca chili that’s supposed to
weather us through a nuclear holocaust.

I could be your path to a hidden copper
mine. You know, I can somersault through
your suburban backyard and make you
believe I’m a modern-day Marcel Marceau
rehearsing some new routine while eyeing
your valuables, but not today.

Incidentally, that pungent odor assaulting
your fragile nostrils, causing you to thrust
your windows ajar, is oxtail stew and steamed
cabbage. Remorse? Nope. Yours to enjoy.