Flowers In a Wooden Basin With Holes by Selma Martin

Woman in the Garden of Monsieur ForestHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec French

1889–9. Public Domain: 

Flowers In a Wooden Basin With Holes

In an old wooden basin with holes, 
I planted gardenias for your repose 
down by the ditch where no one goes 
I left the basin where lilacs grow

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

Selma Martin

Selma Martin is a retired English teacher with 20 years of experience teaching ESL to children. She believes in people’s goodness and in finding balance in simple living. She lives in Japan with her husband of 35 years. In 2018, Selma participated in a networking course that culminated in a final lesson to publish a story on Amazon. She completed the course and self-published her short story, "Wanted: Husband/Handyman," in 2019. Later, collaborating with peers from that course, she published "Wanted: Husband/Handyman" in "Once Upon A Story: A Short Fiction Anthology." Selma has published stories on Medium for many years, in MasticadoresUSA, The Poetorium at Starlight, Short Fiction Break, Lit eZine, and Spillwords. In July 2023, she published her debut poetry collection, In the Shadow of Rainbows (Experiments in Fiction). You can find Selma as selmawrites on Instagram and Twitter, and on her website, selmamartin.com.

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For Where You Are Going by Catherine Zickgraf

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

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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Harp Musings by Michael Brockley

 

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.  

© Michael Brockley

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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The Old Art of Handwriting by Kushal Poddar

 

Image / Katya Wolf

The Old Art of Handwriting 

         To Mitarik 

The old art you practice neither 

in a lit-up room nor on a Burmese 

teak writing desk, as if 

you nurse the golden shyness 

on the rocks in a virgin glass heart, 

but sometimes, in the moonlight, 

in the cold of the river, on 

a rectangle of paper kept on the knees 

balanced between the front and the back seats 

of the very autorickshaw that passed 

your old neighbourhood on its way 

to the water. You try the old art 

and handwrite your name. 

Sometimes it brings back the endless 

number of letters, unsigned, grenaded 

through the windows of the Girls' School, 

and some nights it sniffs out 

the scent of your silhouette 

lost in the undergrowth. 

© Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar has authored ten books, the latest being A White Can For The Blind Lane, and his works have been translated into twelve languages. He is a co-editor for Outlook Magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing. He does illustrations and sketches for various magazines.

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The Woods: A Prologue by Loralee Clark

 

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).

© Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. She has a book, Solemnity Rites, forthcoming in 2025 from Prolific Pulse Press LLC. She has been published most recently in Periwinkle Pelican, White Stag Journal, Chewers by Masticadores, Nude Bruce Review, Lucky Leaves, Everscribe, The Rockford Review, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine.

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THE EPIC OF THE PHOENIX by Angela Kosta

 

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…

©Angela Kosta

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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Eighth Magnitude Decline by Richard King Perkins II

 

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

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.

I Blinked by Lee Robison

Image / Evelin Magnus

I Blinked 

just now and the snow

brightened; nothing  

else changed; the sun,

a dim disk

still suspended;

the willows, bare sticks  

along the ditch, still;

nothing else changed, 

just this sudden 

shadow leaving snow. © Lee Robison

Lee Robison

Lee Robison has retired from Federal service. He lives with his wife in Montana on a sliver of the ranch he grew up on, a couple of mountain valleys west of The Paradise. Lee currently works as a potter, poet, and storyteller. His collection of poems, Have, was published by David Robert Books in 2019. 

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