Expressing by Sushant Thapa

B Pexels

Expressing

I want to spill,
To kiss,
To rejoice
Under the blanket of peace.

To keep up
With my spirit
Of adventure.

To read you
And not just write.

To see closely
What I cannot hide.

This agony
To bear happiness
At any cost.

This being human
Among digital lives.

I want to earn
To keep
And express.
To not be weak. 

© Sushant Thapa

Sushant Thapa

Sushant Thapa is a Nepalese poet who holds an M.A. in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, with nine books of English poems and one short story collection to his credit. His poems are published at The Kathmandu Post, Trouvaille Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Outlook India, Corporeal Lit Mag, Feed the Holy, Masticadores USA,  Indian Review, etc. He is an English lecturer in Biratnagar, Nepal. 

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Fire Kept Some Memories by Kushal Poddar

Mikhail Nilov

Fire Kept Some Memories 

Fire kept the memories 

of some dances. 

Others in the smoke,

in the Brownian motion,

zigzag and ebb beyond. 

When it passes through 

the junkyard of hair on my head 

the whispering reminds me

what my mother used to say

about her meeting my father. 

The story was hardly interesting 

except that a war was in the background. 

© 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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Ars Poetica by Michael Brockley

 

Mike Art 🎥 Visual Creator | Photography and Video 📸

Ars Poetica

The heron hides its sleek shadow within the river’s shadow. The grandfather tells his grandchildren to let the river find them. The current hurries over the falls. Swamp sunflowers blossom on the far bank. The poet once wrote about the last burst of sunlight along the river. In the evening, raccoons visit their infinite industry along these banks. Their agile hands washing a late August pear. Or dexterously cleaning the river’s harvest. “Half again,” the father advised the apprentice poet. And half again once more.

© 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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THOROUGHFARES CADRALOR by Sterling Warner

Neilstha Firman

THOROUGHFARES CADRALOR

1.  Freddy Cannon’s Organ

Come gather at nightfall at New Jersey’s Palisades Park;

just follow the sounds of shrill brass whistles, cow bells,

and off-pitch fanfare from steam-powered calliopes.

2.  Goodyear Theatre

Crawling through holes in cyclone fences

Ted scurried inside the abandoned tire factory

reciting Macbeth to a critical mass of machines.

 

3.  Sidewalk Inequity 

Bloated bellies rumble, parched lips remain silent

and empty eyes fixate on graffiti like holy scriptures

seek a balance between the marginalized and entitled. 

4.  Evading Harmony House

Leaves fall through rafters, dust silver goblets, and rest on Dossets

scattered across kitchen counters like pharmacy grail: the familiar

abandoned, my Aunt fled her home to live life in obscurity.   

5.  Orpheus’ Lyre

Autumn maple leaves drop and float on angry gusts

Sasquatch windchimes clang; I want angelic choirs

to mourn Carole’s death and chant solemn elegies.

© Sterling Warner

Sterling Warner

Washington-based author, poet, and educator Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Verse-Virtual and Ekphrastic Review. Warner’s poetry/fiction includes Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps: Poems, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas: Poems, Gunilla’s Garden: Poems (2025), and Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories.  He currently writes, hosts “virtual” poetry/fiction readings, and enjoys fishing along the Hood Canal.

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Bam by Michael Braswell

Pixabay

Bam!

Out of the corner of your eye, you sensed the truck was going to run the red light. In the nanosecond you froze before stepping on the gas—BAM!

You thought things were getting serious . . . in a good way. Love or something like it was in the air. Time to take the next step. Time to make your move. Except. In a hidden corner of your heart, you thought you might have heard a barely audible hissing sound. Probably your imagination. Until after the last sip of the house wine you were both drinking, someone said—BAM-- “I’m leaving.”

You worked long and hard for the promotion, leaving no doubt you had traveled the extra mile more than once. You deserved it. Everyone said so. Until the boss flicked a sidewise glance toward Nancy before announcing his decision. It was—BAM-- the flaming flick of a dream-busting arsonist who burned you to the ground. 

More than once, in one way or another, the big BAM sneaks up when we’re not looking and blindsides us, leaving a broken heap of next to nothing. Where do we go then? Where do we take our Humpty Dumpty selves to be put back together?

Strange as it may seem, sometimes we have to be broken in order to become open.

Open to something else, something different, something we didn’t expect.

Our friends can comfort us. Counselors can counsel us. Our pastors can pray for us. And physicians can even medicate us. 

All of these can be good and worthy things, but in the end, still not enough.

Leaving us issues to face and personal work to do.

No one else can fill the hole we or someone else dug for us.

Sometimes we have to walk the lonesome valley of life all by ourselves—at least part of the way.

Our loved ones may complement the qualities that make us who we are, but they can’t complete us.

Completion, not perfection. Going inside, not looking outside.

We can start by being honest. Taking our masks off one by one.

And not pretending to be someone else. 

We can quit hiding the lies that live in our closets until they take up all the room in our lives.

In the end, nobody cares. Why should they? Why should we?

We can learn to let go of what we think others think about us.

We can even learn to let go of what we think about ourselves. 

We open our eyes, heart, and mind – leaving the fast lane, and entering the vast lane.

We take a different fork in the road.

Even if we are afraid, we take it anyway.

Sure thing. No thing. Some thing.

The thing-ness of whatever it is passes in time.

We don’t have to go along for the ride.

We can stay put.

The Universe knows more than we do.

We can rest in the quiet of a timeless moment. 

Clouds of misperception and confusion don’t have to carry us away.

The sky remains when storms pass.

We can remain with it. 

And let the big Mystery live within us.

We can see and feel more widely and deeply.

Holding on with a light touch and learning to let go,

We can trust something greater than ourselves.

We can breathe.

We can be. 

Previously published in Gracious Plenty

© Michael Braswell

Michael Braswell

Michael Braswell has published books on ethics, justice issues, and the spiritual journey, as well as four short story collections. His poems and stories have appeared in several publications, including Foreshadow, Mobius, and Literary Heist. His most recent books are When Jesus Came to the Cracker Barrel (2024) and Gracious Plenty (2025).

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The Season of Falling Leaves by Yongbo Ma

 

Christina & Peter

The Season of Falling Leaves

To vie with me in age, you must gather

more chill within your bones first

"old age" is a lump of hard candy

that won’t dissolve

lodged in our throats that grow thinner

by the day

lies are lights of paper, their warmth and screams

pricked through with the slimmest of fingers

The source runs clear; the higher it climbs,

the colder it grows

the source hides itself again in mist

and ice and snow

mountains recede into the distance

like a figure vanishing beneath a hat

One cannot demand every rainfall

bring a harvest

yet a single word can break the same sentence,

over and over

the cyan heels of childhood, the stiff waist

of middle years

the feverish forehead of old age—all are narrow bridges

to cross the river

While the pungent fallen leaves press

shut the sprites’ eyes

let us gaze at the fish in the mountain stream,

then turn back

beneath the colorful drift of leaves, they are sleeping

those leaves will take a long, long time to sink

© Yongbo 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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Recalibrating the Self: A Meditation by Snigdha Agrawal

 

 Iván Cisneros 

Recalibrating the Self: A Meditation

When the sun drops its bright curtain
and withdraws from the stage
It does not disappear
It entrusts the horizon,
with the memory of light.

Radiance thins into ash-rose restraint;
warmth gathers inward;
and darkness studies a new grammar of being
Nothing is lost
Only translated

So too with aging
It is not erosion
But revision
A slower syntax of breath.
A deliberate editing
of excess.

The eyes learn economy
The body consults its limits,
and calls them teachers
Ambition loosens its grip
Urgency retires from command
What remains is ember
No more a spectacle,
but sustained fire.

There is dignity in this recalibration:
to step aside from the center
without feeling displaced;
to release the addiction to motion;
to choose presence over pursuit;
to remain useful
without petitioning for relevance.

Survival, then,
is not defiance against dimming
but intimacy with it.
No more seeking applause
But alignment.
A quiet coherence with one’s own season.

The day concludes
without apology.
The sky relinquishes brightness
without shame.

And I,
learning from its descent,
accept that becoming less visible
is not becoming less.

It is retiring into the green room
where make-up doesn’t help,
but understands itself.

© Snigdha Agrawal

Snigdha Agrawal

Snigdha Agrawal (née Banerjee) holds an MBA in Marketing and has over two decades of corporate experience. She enjoys writing in all genres, including poetry, prose, short stories, and travel diaries.  Educated in Loreto Institutions, run by the Irish Nuns, and brought up in a cosmopolitan environment, she has learned the best of the East and West. She is a published author of four books.  Her works have appeared in several anthologies and e-journals, published in India and overseas. She has recently been nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize in poetry.

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