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| Silvia Trigo |
Birthday Party: A Cherita
~dedicated to BL on her birthday
birthday party
when the sky is tinged
with pastel colours
kite flying brings
a sense of freedom and joy
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| Barbara Anna Gaiardoni |
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| 1889–9. Public Domain: |
Flowers In a Wooden Basin With Holes
and return to the life you vacated.
I visit ‘tween showers every April,
and regard the blooms beguiled.
I stand still to let a drunken bee pass
and a moth to finalize her consultation.
At my turn, I reach for your petals,
silky smooth—reminds of your cold lips.
I cut one and wrap it in my apron
and promise to visit next year, God willing.
In the meantime, you'll abide with me in old
tunes, in poetry, and the indivisible fire of
my heart, while I bide my time and wait to
cross over to that side of the river with you.
©️ Selma Martin
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| Image / Bella White |
For Where You Are Going
This shell came from the waves
in curves and sapphire shades
with maps in the iridescence
to help you navigate.
Here’s a pillowcase to catch the clouds
and glide wind-blown with the current.
Search always the soft line of horizon
by the star that glows at noon.
Though you leave me to sail the sparkling azure
and disappear in sky and wide-open ocean,
I will wait for you at the edge of day.
May you make your own joy and swim away.
© Catherine Zickgraf
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| Catherine Zickgraf |
Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are writing and hanging out with her family. You can find her work in Pank, Deep Water Literary Journal, and 7th-Circle Pyrite. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Kelsay Books. Find her socially in the Bluesky and watch/read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com |
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| Jan Brndiar |
Harp Musings
The harpist plays “Hotel California” during the first Rock the Arts benefit fair. You struggle to write a poem about Joni Mitchell at a poems-on-demand table while the fair vendors around you ply t-shirts, handmade earrings, and mocktails. While the aerial silk dancers weave scarves around their graceful bodies as they pose in mid-air. Mitchell wrote “Both Sides, Now” after reading about Henderson the Rain King’s airplane trip. About seeing clouds from above as well as below. She never finished the novel. You buy a stuffed peanut butter cookie from Coop’s Creations and discuss Wile E. Coyote and poets laureate with a descendant of French flag bearers.You skim through a poem by Dean Young on your iPhone. Fiddle with a fine-point pen until you break it. The harpist plucks the first strands of Mitchell’s “The Case of You.” Mitchell willed herself to walk when she had polio. Was named Sparkling White Bear Woman by the Saulteaux Nation on her 75th birthday. After an aneurysm, she learned to sing again. Around you, the harpist is singing about living in a box of paints. About the woman who knows a lover’s devils and deeds. And you’re sitting in the front row at a Sparkling White Bear Woman concert in a Joni Mitchell aloha shirt while the reckless daughter herself spends the evening singing to you.
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| Michael Brockley |
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His prose poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, Doublespeak Mag, and Keeping the Flame Alive. In addition, Brockley's prose poems are forthcoming in Bay to Ocean Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark VI, and Stormwash: Environmental Poems, Volume II.
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| Image / Katya Wolf |
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| Kushal Poddar |
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| Image / Matheus Bertelli |
The Woods: A Prologue
In all my memories I am eight.
In spring, I walk past the boulders (no yelling)
piled at the edge of the back lawn, (no judgement)
out to the sinkhole filled with water,
inky with leaf tannins, to pretend
I was fishing; stick in hand (no baiting)
to flip the stacks of leaves at (no traps)
the bottom, pollywogs darting away.
In summer, years upon years of pine needles
cushioning the ground, (no slamming doors)
leading the way to a neighbor’s house; even
if I was off by a few minutes, (no slapping)
I still got out to the other side.
I was never lost.
In winter, the snowmobile tracks behind
the Cook’s trailer, curving in arcs through (no loneliness)
their property, ours, and the Holt’s. Miles
of mechanical doodling.
Once the ponds froze over, Stacy, Stephen
and I would skate, avoiding the dried clumps of grass
sticking up through the ice; coming in (no martyrdom)
only when we could no longer
feel our toes and the dusk
made it hard to see. (no shouting)
In the woods: freedom,
imagination, tools for important work. (no neglect)
Calming, predictable through the seasons
but surprising when a bird perched close, (no threats)
when a ladybug would land, when I saw
a piece of wood chewed by a porcupine. (no intentional
silence)
"The Woods: A Prologue" is from A Harmony in the Key of Trees: A Healing Myth (Dancing Girl Press).
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| Loralee Clark |
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| Image / Tiến Nguyễn |
THE EPIC OF THE PHOENIX
Sun-dust glimmers 'neath craters unsealed,
Untold triumphs time has concealed,
Carved in tempests, on stone and flame,
By a tyrant hand with no name.
The blood-drenched Phoenix, whirls the sphere,
Thirsting in hell’s own frontier,
Burns to ash 'neath ruins deep
Then rises again, its vow to keep:
To rule the world anew, unbowed,
Above the silence of the crowd.
And we are mute…
I am mute…
Stripped of power, stripped of truth.
I cannot fight what mercy feigns,
Nor time’s cruel chain that still remains.
Beheaded, blind, we linger still,
Shadows of glory, bent by will.
We leave behind the sneer of loss,
Bear time’s burden, feel its cross,
And chew the darkness of the soul
No tears to cleanse, no centuries whole…
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| Angela Kosta |
Angela Kosta was born in Elbasan, Albania, and lives in Italy. She is a writer, poet, translator, journalist, and cultural promoter. A member of numerous international academies and associations, she has represented Albanian literature at various festivals and competitions. Her work has been translated into 45 languages and published in many countries. In 2024 alone, her works appeared in over 170 international magazines and newspapers. She has received significant awards, including Best Translator from OBELISK magazine for translating poems by Giosuè Carducci, and the title of Important Figure from the Moroccan newspaper Akhbar7 (2023). She was also listed among the 100 most prominent figures in Arabic literature by Al-Rowad News in 2024. Angela is an active member of academies in Italy, the USA, China, Greece, Poland, and other countries. Her work promotes dialogue between cultures through the written word, building literary bridges worldwide.
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| Gordon Bishop |
Eighth Magnitude Decline
In a chilblain forest
a clearing admits the passage of moonlight
as the white bells of snowdrops
crackle slightly beneath your eyes.
Your naked vision finds Neptune,
the faintest of captured pearls
even in its eighth magnitude decline.
Beneath the rise of your uplifted chin
a Lenten rose emerges
mistaking your flesh for the first sign of spring.
© Richard King Perkins II
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| Richard King Perkins II |
Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Huntley, IL, with his wife, Vickie, and daughter, Sage. His work has appeared in more than fifteen hundred publications.
Silvia Trigo Birthday Party: A Cherita ~dedicated to BL on her birthday birthday party when the sky is tinged with pastel colours kite...
