Dusk Prayer by Yongbo Ma

 

Quang Nguyen Vinh

Dusk Prayer

Life ultimately depends on forgiveness and forgetting,  

without strength enough to love your enemies,  

you must learn to pardon. Even the fiercest hatred  

drowns in time’s wasteland, collapses into a heap of causes,  

its form is unrecognizable,  

intense love and hate both drain life’s essence,  

diminish dignity—for the soul has its own purpose,  

unknown even to you.  

As years pass, love and hatred become others’ dramas,  

you retreat further into the role of spectator,

human activities drift like distant winter fields,  

you have your own questions, others bear  

no true connection, at most, they are footnotes  

in life’s textbook, references in margins.  

You linger more within your own territory,  

your solitude is a house shielding the world,  

a cliff jutting farthest into the sea,

its gabled roof, tiled in red,

its front door bolted, back door aglow,  

snow falls in its attic, and the cellar serves as a lab  

where stifled ghosts sprout from tubers,  

the laughter of countless children is hidden in the garden.  

Your slowness mirrors the stillness within,  

a single word sustains you for days,  

few external events pierce your veil—  

tides absorbed by countless tiny caverns,  

your curiosity is limited to just one old telescope, 

when you rise from your depths to peer through it  

on storm clouds surging into being at the horizon.

To lose your way is to return home,  

at last, you forgive yourself.

© ¥ongbo Ma

Yongbo Ma

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, holds a Ph.D., is a representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and is a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.

He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986, including 9 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, and Ashbery. He published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024), comprising 1178 poems, celebrates 40 years of writing poetry.

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Angela (Prose Senryu) by Selma Martin

Mahmoud Alaydi

Angela (Prose Senryu)

Drowsy and heavy, drowsy and heavy like a field of clover in the sunshine in hot July, with the bees going round and about and the butterflies too, Angela stilled in a dreamy languor on the sofa— always she went back to those fields down in cool Macondo where she jumped the brook when it was small like her little girl legs. And to the mountains to escape the present reality of the heat in Tigo's beloved Santiago.

She closed her eyes and stretched like a cat, and at that moment, the curtains must have parted; the noon wind marched in, lugging a hint of tar from the hot concrete of Main Street, tickling her nostrils, transporting her back to physical reality. She sat up precariously, pushed away from the sofa, and dragged her feet to the kitchen, looking older-- drowsy, and heavy and older.

she came to his town
a green, strong-stemmed sunflower
and the roses leered

©️ 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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IN DREAMS by Ray Whitaker

Wendelin Jacober

IN DREAMS

I

Long and dusty

a road leading to somewhere else

this, a place unspoiled

by human waste

road leading both in and out

in that place of God’s embrace,

then loosely configured rooms

with no definitive order or placement

of furniture, cabinets, chairs and sofas

time passing

every piece moved from one day to the next

yet there was purpose

in the definition of the room,

a dream sat in a blue overstuffed chair, 

just there, pouting, 

while the dream wanted to be remembered

even so, memory being fallacious

akin to some sort of blood-brain barrier

inhibiting passage of the traces.

II

Different dogs, some blue, some yellow

smiling dogs, happy

on mountain trails at elevation

a wristwatch appears on a giant arm

index finger on opposite hand

tapping it, notifying times-a-wasting,

dogs on a leash, pulling

topping a rise

seeing the valley below

a tranquil white house beside the bluest alpine lake

under a cloudless sky

a sunset just starting to the east

noticing a porch-light coming on

we hurry down the downward switchbacks

towards a quiet interlude with yellows and reds.

remembered in the morn

frowning, this would never be, dreaming.

© 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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Weathering the Storm Within by Carol Anne Johnson

 

Ray Bilcliff

Weathering the Storm Within

A Drabble on Overwhelming Emotions

The world presses in, a tide of feeling threatening to sweep me away. I pause, letting a single breath anchor me to the present. Emotions churn—loud, unruly, impossible to ignore. I picture them as a storm, fierce but passing. With trembling hands, I name each feeling as it arrives: fear, sadness, hope. The act softens their edges. I remind myself that this moment is not forever. The storm will quiet. I will find my footing again. For now, I welcome the rain, trusting that when the clouds part, I’ll stand taller, rooted in the calm that follows every tempest.

© Carol Anne Johnson

Carol Anne Johnson is in her mid-40s. She is blind and was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and complex PTSD. She is also a survivor of child abuse. She enjoys writing poetry and reading, walking, and volunteering. You can follow her on her blog, http://therapybits.com/.

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Little Red Wagon by Judith Burton, Ph.D.

 

Zen Chung

Little Red Wagon

Outside my office window

a small red wagon

once filled with colorful lush rose moss

a few tall plants adding height to the display

and flowering vines tumbling over the edge

to puddle on the ground.

The little red wagon rests at the foot 

of a flowering dogwood,

a picturesque little space I created some time ago.

Today, in August heat, 

weeds with bright green leaves

fill the wagon,

tall and rather ragged.

Little saplings from the base

of the dogwood sway in the hot breeze.

Unable to tend myself to bring

it back to its original scene.

No money for a gardener’s hand.

I’ve learned to accept joy

where I find it.

God and nature are still 

busy at work.

Green leaves.  Growth. Still alive.

© Judith Burton, Ph.D.

Dr. Judith Burton

Photography by Gretchen Nelson

Judith Burton, Ph.D., a woman of faith, is passionate about helping others stretch and grow.  Writing from her heart, she is working her way through illness and isolation, quarantined since March 16, 2020. She has published a series of children’s books starring Two Little Ponies, which aim to encourage kindness and combat bullying. They are available on Amazon.

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Stories Sung by Loralee Clark

 

Simon Berger

Stories Sung

each all

hallowed

honey    bumble   sweat 

buzz   harvest   imparts

pollinates   flys

with others       with themselves       with humanity      with time

to braid to lead to impart to incubate

the dance progeny biodiversity swarms

protect provide

ecosystems colonies 

futures

holy

© Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark.  She has a book, Solemnity Rites, forthcoming this year 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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Untitled in Blue #1 to W by Gabriella Garofalo

Mario Amé

Untitled in Blue #1 to W

Have you got time for a deep blue sky?

No, you are just waiting for light 

To rise among the branches while your days 

Fade in a shrinking desire, white with hunger 

And bodies, limbs call for a halt-

But why do you throw them away?

A big deal, as they went lost, left no trace, 

The first time, maybe a life with missing skies, 

When light kept stalking indigo winters 

For a hectic cold to gorge the skies, 

For life to skip dirty jobs, 

When light beholds briars, 

Then hides to scatter them, and you too hide 

In the blue soul desires,

Along with uncharted lands, ridges, or bays-

All right, no choice for you if she rejects new trysts, 

That bloody lair that won’t beget you, 

Just confident, cheerful, free people 

So very at ease in parks, pubs, their skin,

Then falling down, their dainty little demise 

So eager for a cup of coffee, and chit-chat, 

While watching abducted flowers close by,

Prisoners in a cage of spiky ribbons and plastic wrap-

Enough with ramblings, or waffle now,

Stop wasting time with those weird rhythm of days, 

She’s running away a bit upset,

And you, loss, stop shaking, get rid 

Of grass, branches, prophets’ fire, ask yourself

If it's fair game for the soul to be swathed in blue, 

Ask yourself if mothers are thirst or Lethes

When long white manes stalk and push her down- 

Look, Father, let’s face it, even the moon now

Swears she’ll never lie.

© Gabriella Garofalo

Gabriella Garofalo

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six, and is the author of these books: Lo sguardo di Orfeo, L’inverno di vetro, Di altre stelle polari, Casa di erba, Blue Branches, Blue Soul, and After The Blue Rush.

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