The Wait by Supatra Sen

Rakibul alam khan

The Wait

At dawn she would rush to the river

Then to the temple the market and others

The whole day she would be at work

Cooking, washing, sewing, mending, cleaning

Every dirt and grime

And then from nowhere

The flute would play 

A lingering note

A melody to make one forget all

Even existence…

She would rush out

Run to the river

To seek the elusive

The player

The creator…

The sky would paint itself 

In a thousand hues

The river adorn

A rainbow palette 

The trees would come to life

Swaying rustling whispering

A divine fragrance of unknown forest flowers

The river gently would embrace the shores

Balancing two ends in a wondrous curve

And she would sit and wait

Work undone

Duties forgotten

For what 

For whom

She didn’t know…

The eternal wait

A lifetime of waiting…

 © Supatra Sen

Supatra Sen, Ph.D.

Supatra Sen, Ph.D., alumnus of Presidency College and Ph.D. University of Calcutta is an Associate Professor with 125 academic publications in Botany and Environment. She is the founder and Chief Editor of an ISSN peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary journal ‘Harvest’. She has two poetry anthologies, ‘My Autumn Sonata’ and ‘Sojourns in Autumn’.

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A Haloed Moon by Don Brandis

 

Thắng-Nhật Trần

A Haloed Moon

A harvest moon this time, bold as a rooster’s crow

showing what we’d watched growing, nurturing

but not harvesting, as a mostly 

but not entirely an imperfect witness

surrounding it as a halo, diffusing its light 

blurring, scattering, distorting its clarity 

softening, mythologizing what would be 

just what it is and us seeing it so.

Voices of ice particles in the upper atmosphere

as fog haloes approach headlights

in the night.  Can we just see, without reflection?

Stonehouse, in his mountain hut,

regards us as he does his books of sutras

long unread that have become home to silverfish. 

He’s become a source of sutras, no longer 

needs their texts as he would have us do.

Anyone can do this, he says.

When we feel his eye upon us 

not just across 7 centuries 

but in the timeless Now,

we look away.   © Don Brandis

Don Brandis

Don Brandis lives quietly outside Seattle, reading and writing poems when they show up.  He has a degree in philosophy and a long fascination with Zen.  Some of his poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Black Moon Magazine, Blue Unicorn, Last Leaves, and elsewhere.  A book of his poems, called Paper Birds (Unsolicited Press, 2021), is available.  He hasn’t read your poems either, unless he did so without knowing they were yours.  

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Let’s Meet in This Place by Arvilla Fee

 

Image / Daniel & Hannah Snipes

Let’s Meet in This Place

there’s no room for perfection,

as none of us will ever reach that

pinnacle upon which we place impossible

desires; so, let’s meet, shall we, somewhere

in the middle, somewhere that allows your molecules

and mine to exist, if not in harmony, then in tolerance

and grace—let’s clasp each other’s hands, hands

that heal and never harm, always pulling up rather

than tearing down; and it’s in this place you and I

shall change the world, shall tip it on its axis,

making future relationships that are born of kindness and steeped in love. 

© Arvilla Fee

Arvilla Fee

Arvilla Fee, from Dayton, Ohio, has been published in numerous presses, and her poetry books, The Human Side, This is Life, and Mosaic: A Million Little Pieces are available on Amazon. Arvilla’s life advice: Never travel without snacks. To learn more, visit her website and her new magazine: https://soulpoetry7.com/

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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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