covert by Amrita Skye Blaine

Monstera Production

covert  

not only sly or secret—

protected, interior

place of solace

around the cloister’s 

center

free of life’s

pressing concerns

in this refuge

a full breath

flies

walks apace

and breathes some more

© Amrita Skye Blaine

Amrita Skye Blaine

Amrita Skye Blaine develops themes of aging, disability, and awakening. She received a PocketMFA in poetry in 2024. She has published a memoir and a three-novel trilogy, and her work has appeared in fourteen poetry anthologies and numerous literary magazines. Two poetry collections, every riven thing and strange grace, were released in Spring 2025.  

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Surrounded by the Sacred by Selma Martin

 

Atlantic Ambience

Surrounded by The Sacred

Like a thin slice of morning sunshine
like a lapse of empty space in the void
I am surrounded by what is sacred
in the territory I know as home

here, life finds its soul's unfolding
here, life purls and mends to noble hours
and embroiders me with its currents
oh, instant of mellow fruitfulness

the winnowing wind soft-lifts my hair
entranced I ooze hour after hour
here, beauty emerges and moves
away the pall that conceals it

until my nebula yarn joins with yours
and the world broods with the warmth
of a friendship hemmed and winged
in God's grand magnificence.

©️ 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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BIG TREES by Ray Whitaker

Umay Isik

BIG TREES

There are so few of them

the Ents guarding the great, green forests have failed

chainsaws grind with impunity

whenever, wherever we foolish humans decide.

One has to travel to find any a’tall

a blue horse can carry you

a few still stand

and grow even taller, bigger, where

two humans cannot get their arms around them.

These found in the great verdant swales, 

also mountain coves too hard to reach

in the Alps 

or the Blue Ridge

perhaps in the Rocky Mountains

the journey difficult

loose grey and white stones are on rocky paths.

That is where The Bone Strikers make their stand

Battle-painted Kiowa military warriors

will fight the saws to the death.

They fight for the Earth. They fight for all of us.

© Ray Whitaker

Ray Whitaker

Ray has four books published and two chapbooks. His work has been published in eleven different countries. Ray was a Delegate to the 2024 Writers’ International Panorama Festival. He participates regularly in several Zoom poetic events worldwide. Among them, he has been spotlighted on a US National Poetry broadcast from Quintessential Listening Poetry Online Radio in 2024, and also an International Poetry Recital hosted by The Fertile Minds out of India.  In July 2025, he was the featured poet in David Leo Sirois’

Spoken World Online, which is associated with Spoken Word Paris.

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Young Street by Ian C Smith

Min An

Young Street

This street replays in his mind, a street at the terminus of a city railway line in Australia where a platform ramp emptied into a bus station and taxi rank, where scenes in a movie about the world’s end would be shot, where a glamorous actor and actress guided by an acclaimed director would then vanish into movie history, phantasms on celluloid, with the cameramen, crew, extras, leaving the bright light of one day in the past captured on a reel, a street where a boy lugged holiday travellers’ bulging bags for tips, smoked cigarettes between train arrivals, plotting his escape from a home stained by unhappiness, his thoughts of the glittering city fizzing with speculation about obsessed novelists tapping at typewriters, gangsters swaggering, noirish women shimmying in black lingerie, a demi-monde of whisky-drinking musicians, gesticulating artists silhouetted in wood-panelled bars, before believing nobody could step back into this street the way it was, this relic that, so many trains, so many movies, so many whiskies later, wafts into view when he is alone, won’t be erased.   

© Ian C. Smith

Ian C. Smith

Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, North of Oxford, Rundelania, Stand, & Westerly.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.

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Dilapidated by Kushal Poddar

 

Dương Nhân

Dilapidated 

A sheet of tin guards the edentulous 

set of front-facing windows. Wind 

still conveys the messages of winter. 

The lady wears her anniversary 

blouse that was bought on the spur

of the moment twenty-four years

ago. The same December her spouse 

parted. She reads the cold texts 

with all her bones. A couple 

of wood pigeons fly in through their 

secret ingress. Her palms, light as light,

hold the weight of their flight pattern

and the particles of memory 

always here but only a ray can highlight. 

© 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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Pieces by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Pixabay

Birds

birds in sakura branches

sugar feathers glisten 

in the sunlight

 

no one can endure muteness

no one can endure muteness

and a little boy with his throat cut sings with blood in the clear air

singing is an artistic brush

humanity's easel stained with re-excavated plague

Loneliness is a room in which it snows

Loneliness is a room in which it snows

A cluster of lonelinesses is a vase in which death grows

Between the silence and emptiness there is nothing -

That is what loneliness is

Father's library went out

All the libraries of the world burned in the shadow

But who casts this shadow?

This shadow constantly disappears to infinity

(Even birds can't melt so unnoticed in the dark)

I molded bread from ice for your lips

I died, crumbled, disintegrated, turned into bread crumbs

You are blind like a stone that sinks in water

It's funny that you can't swim although you were born in the water of your belly

If anyone knows where this language of rocks leads, then it's a trap

A dead end for people who are looking for something resembling the truth

We drowned like drowned men who have swum out three times

The candle has all flowed down your hands, Lord

I call you God like a barbarian who doesn't understand anything in this world

I love you

I call you, God

I don't love myself or the grass

The temple doesn't call itself anything I will die without knowing the name of your hands

© Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, and many others.

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The Human Thing to Do by Steven Bruce

 

Art by Steven Bruce

The Human Thing to Do

FOR HERMAN

Winter knocks,

the cold seeps in.

A small bug clings

to the door frame.

At night it scuttles closer.

You’re suspicious, need to know

what it’s up to.

You read about it.

Conifer seed bug.

Harmless to humans.

Eats nuts and seeds.

You put out a crushed almond,

a little water,

and name him Herman.

Each night he sits with you,

crawls over your cardigan,

across the laptop screen,

while you drink coffee and write

as if tomorrow won’t come.

You tell him things,

the shape of your poems,

knowing he won’t understand.

One morning you find him

in the hall,

stiff as a wine cork.

You think he came in

out of the cold

so he wouldn’t die alone.

But we all do.

You tuck him in a matchbox,

toss him into the furnace,

cremate him,

like so many family members.

And now he’s smoke above the house, a little soot settling on the walnut tree.

© Steven Bruce

Steven Bruce

Steven Bruce is a writer and a multiple-award-winning author. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous international anthologies and magazines. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. You can follow Steven on his website: www.stevenbrucewriter.co.uk.

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Communion by Ajanta Paul

 

RDNE Stock project

Communion

When did you last speak 

to me, or I to you?

Speak about real things,

that is, not phrases 

that make a conversation 

but do not achieve communication. 

When did our silences

last merge like pools

in the cracked and fissured 

earth of everyday concourse,

aiding tender, green shoots

of understanding to emerge?

Long ago we used to peel

the shells of words from 

their kernels of meaning

tossing the nuts into our mouths

chewing on the taste of truth

holding on to the sustenance derived.

Were we then the ghosts 

of our present selves,

or true beings in communion 

with self, other and world?

Maybe we had defeated chronology 

and become wiser before our time. 

© Ajanta Paul

Ajanta Paul, Ph.D.

 Ajanta Paul, Ph.D., is a widely published poet, short story writer, and literary critic who was a former Principal of Women's Christian College, Kolkata. A Pushcart nominee, Ajanta has been published in journals including Capella Biannual Journal, Offcourse, The Statesman, The Wild Word, Atticus Review, and Spadina Literary Review. 

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