So We Don’t Sleep by Souad Zakaran

Gabriel González Encarnación

So We Don’t Sleep

I’m afraid to close my eyes, 
O mother,

your eyelashes raise one question after another. 
There is a story in your eyes—speak it. 
Words yawn on my tongue; 
they’ve lived there long enough. 
Arise, O rubble, 
Come out of me!

Perhaps I could breathe,

with a body freed from shrouds.

Can we tidy the house one last time 
before we’re displaced? 
Can we photograph it for memory— 
Store our laughter, our tears, and our screams— 
then leave? 
O sea stacked before us 
like a shy embrace 
in a world not ours, 
Can you send our echo to nearby oceans

so a giant whale strikes the occupier’s base? 
Can we invent a new alphabet 
for fear, for pain, for home, 
So the world hears 
That gray, continuous sound above us— 
Buzzing planes, 
Roaring rockets 
Above green, above ruin, 
Above a gravestone 
Scrawled in charcoal on a burnt house, 
The trace of a Firebolt?

A thousand times, the eyes sip from the sky 
while we search for warmth 
to gently carry us to sleep 
under our balcony,
a seamless sleep that tickles the stars.

I want… to sleep. 
I dreamed of some leader speaking— 
do you hear, mother? 
I see you laughing, feeding the birds. 
I see you playing on the swing of paradise, 
Iridescent colors glowing in a rainbow slumber, 
Like a bottle shaken—dreams all mixed inside. 
O mother, I swear I saw it: 
One shroud in Gaza holding 
the bodies of three martyrs.

I became a worn, wounded body 
groaning with pain. 
I want to hear the heartbeat of the sun— 
or the heart itself… that sponge 
which has grown hard. 
That’s how we walk—on feathers— 
until we reach the peak of exhaustion 
In full daylight and say:

We shall live here.

© Souad Zakaran

Souad Zakaran

Souad Zakaran is a Moroccan writer, poet, and translator. She graduated with a Bachelor's in French literature and English Linguistics. She worked as a foreign language teacher at a language institute in Casablanca. She currently works as a translator for a local newspaper and has poetry, narrative, and critical contributions in various regional and international literary newspapers and magazines. Her works are featured in several anthologies worldwide, including Poems for Rich, Centenary Project, Oldham Poetry, Well Read, Hooligan Street, and others. Her poem "Weiß" was shortlisted for the Ulrich GRASNICK Lyrikpreis 2025. Her poem “Sauberer Erde” earned third place in the Friedrich Schiller International Poetry Competition 2025.

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All Roads Lead Somewhere by Michael Braswell

 

James Wheeler

All Roads Lead Somewhere

All roads lead somewhere.

Even the ones we don’t know we are on.

Even the paths we believe

will lead us to a promised land.

Especially the dead ends.

Back up.

Turn around.

Head in a different direction.

The broad avenue of our youth

becomes a narrow lane in old age,

bringing us back

to the place we started from.

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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Beholden by Nancy K. Jentsch

Pixabay

Beholden

I am beholden to the bowl in my fridge

where subtly bubbling sourdough gently

rises, awaits baking day a week hence.

It breathes, relying on microbes thriving

in my kitchen, makes me smile, as do

the tiny thoughts that render these times

bearable—the cotton content of my socks,

fair trade beans magicked to bars of dark

heaven, rows of tariff-free salsa, crowding

vintage freezer’s cold, a mighty lungful

enlivening yoga’s child’s pose before bed.

In the vault of night—as in the fridge where

dough sleeps—there must be music beyond

our hearing that sparks what began as dust

into a crusty loaf, a poem or even more.

© Nancy K. Jentsch

Nancy K. Jentsch

Nancy K. Jentsch’s poetry has appeared recently in Amethyst Review, Braided Way, and Verse-Virtual. Her chapbook, Authorized Visitors, was published by Cherry Grove Collections, and her first collection, Between the Rows (Shanti Arts), debuted in 2022. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site. 

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Some Images and Actions are Prayers by Ajanta Paul

 

Anna Pou

Some Images and Actions are Prayers

Every time I steep tea,

measuring tea leaves 

into the kettle and the

liquor gains an orange blush

I think of Baba sipping 

his fragrant flush,

and that image is a prayer

a silent intercession 

for his wellbeing, wherever 

he is; an invisible orison,

instinctive and natural. 

When I place lit candles

on my doorstep at Diwali,

each flame, supple and ardent 

is a reminder of a dear one

lost to the shadows.

Simple superstitions, silly habits

sometimes become unuttered 

invocations to an unseen power.

Counting stars in the evening sky,

for instance, is my ritual of vespers,

and soft autumnal breezes

my evensong of hushed voices raised in tuneful supplication. 

© 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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Better To Reign by Jack D. Harvey

 

DORÉ, Gustave Lucifer 1866
 

Better to Reign

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

   Pieter Breugel the Elder

So Lucifer, that force

that never stops trying

to undo the fabric of creation

never stops trying to break

that divine universe of order

never stoops to obeisance

of its captain and creator.

In the divine plan

in the face of eternity

can his stubborn perversity,

his destructive persistence

be explained?

Numinous envious Lucifer,

once numbered among

the angels above,

who fell from grace

in a paroxysm of envy,

an excess of vitality,

his gigantic wings still

flailing as he fell,

carried by the will of God

to that place below, still spiteful,

still sinning against the light, still

with his cohorts of translated fiends,

burning, glorious, spitting fire,

ready to challenge eternally

God and his works.

By any stretch, a rebellion

from the start

doomed to failure.

Who fights with God?

And for what? 

In the dutiful waiting-room

of creation who cares

what's at the core? 

Good or bad, light or dark,

the tyranny of the womb remains,

rolling out all things perforce,

pouring out a sea of forms

tireless creator

indifferent to their destinies.

What's really at stake here

in this rebellion of the angels?

In this unnecessary doubling of the frame,

in this Manichean complication? 

In our proprietary Christian myth, 

we hear the music of God 

and the good angels

already celebrating;

the preordained war is over

before it started.

What chance did Lucifer have?

Look at Breugel's painting,

the fall of the rebel angels;

in its premise

in the landscape itself

a foregone conclusion.

God's gentle voluminous angels

go about their business, 

abstractedly beating down

the rebellious foe, caught in the act,

a horde of fanciful creatures, mutants,

a hybridized crawling, flying, whirling

patchwork of half-human, half-beast

half-plant, half-assed whatnots

unready for the fray,

looking as frightened as fish

in a dangerous aquarium.

And there is Saint Michael,

leading the fight from on high,

a skinny fantoccio 

in drab cutout armor

thoughtfully swatting away

at this colorful garden 

of slapdash monstrosities

this cabinet of curios

less suited to fight

than provide amusement 

and a light workout for

the Heavenly Host.

Breugel the Elder, Bosch as well

shared a sly and secretive

sense of humor,

a sense of balance

about the Four Last Things.

It shows in their work,

especially this Fall

of the Rebel Angels,

its emphasis on how strange

and silly evil can look

and good dull and detached 

in the midst of primal battle;

the two sides

supposedly fighting it out

for the greater glory of God,

His sanitary minions somehow

maintaining His dignity

against a foolish fearful troop 

of willful grotesqueries,

a surreal crew

popping out in all directions;

rebel angels limned

not at all as angels

but as stand-ins, placeholders

for humanity or worse,

the whole world gone to a hell

of ingenious contraptions

to better illustrate our vices,

our weaknesses, our failings

and perhaps God's ultimate failure

to keep us safe.

Well, it all ends,

one way or another,

in art, in life,

and leaves us thinking

there's much to be said

for Heaven and Hell.

We like the idea 

we have someplace to go

after here, so why not

light-filled and sky-high

billowing or, worse luck,

down in the dark

and tortured cockeyed till

the end of time?

Breugel the Elder and Bosch

painted both kingdoms 

to perverse perfection.

There they are,

my blue heaven

with saints and angels

peeping out of a paradise 

bizarre as the Tower of Babel

and a hell as full 

of crazy dislocations

and false shapes 

as a Lenten carnival.

As far as Lucifer's

heroic desperate rebellion 

he never had a chance in hell,

so to speak, 

his only chance

and as his only chance  there he ended.  

(First published in Compass Rose Magazine.)

© Jack D. Harvey

Jack D. Harvey

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and has been published in a few anthologies over the years.

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