Gregg Norman
A weed-choked, rutted two-track
leads from blacktop to sanctuary
inside an aged, weather-worn
shelterbelt of trees in squared rows.
Pioneer-peopled long ago, this place
was left to die of natural causes.
In a long-gone glassless window
of a two-story farmhouse
a ragged, gauzy curtain flutters.
Splintering shiplap siding
under a sagging roofline
protects nothing within,
now home only to birds and beasts.
Shards of window glass and
crockery litter rotten floorboards,
a lone, bent fork in a corner,
stairs to upstairs in disrepair.
The place has been stripped bare
but for pieces of stove-coal
heaped in a vestibule bin.
I hear the alarmed shriek
of a skittering killdeer
as I walk away, wondering–
and then a meadowlark sings.
BIO
Gregg Norman lives and writes in a lakeside cottage in Manitoba, Canada, with his wife and a small dog who runs the joint. His poetry has been placed in journals and literary magazines in Canada, the USA, the UK, Australia, Europe, and India. He was recently nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net Anthology.
Leanne Drain
I hear from a distance that one single voice straining like a note the one that stole my agenda. He continuously bickers over my identity. The faint male voice I imagine with blue pallid eyes fiercely talks through my dreams. "You can no longer be in control over your emotions I am jeopardising your bus."
I remain still frozen in time looking directly at the mirror I see myself but it's not me it's the guy whom I see in my dream he is here to take my identity he is here to lift me back into the darkness.
He is closer I feel his every sneer, his every movement, flickering in the mirror. Changing his presence again. I imagine my own heart rate panting breaths sweaty palms and a call for help from the mirror but nothing no one to turn to. He is taking over my existence like a shadowy figure stealing my soul tackling me to the ground taking out every stone that protects my heart from breaking.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This poem focuses on mental illness and how a brain can be a trigger point; for example, Bullseye is the brain, and he is the one controlling all the thoughts so he is jeopardising the bus, meaning there is no direction to take on the bus but the negative side. I have experienced mental illness and wanted to share how it can critically affect daily life. The bus idea came from a therapy session: it was a bus analogy that inspired me to write this poem.
Justin Lacour,
NOMINEE, PUSHCART PRIZE 2025
If i say i love you more than football it means you have agency i.e. you pull strings in the poem more than Hera in the Iliad but Hera described by the poet as fair-armed whatever that means could not step out of the poem like you and scare me to death so we could use a date night some vegan leather outfits after ten o’clock the diner turns into a nightclub with a diner theme there’s a slow dance with room for the Holy Ghost Who deals not in miles but nano inches so we can be close no closer and maybe this is how we stay together our one breath we pass it back and forth with our mouths
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The late Mojo Nixon has a song "Not as Much as Football", where he sings how he loves his wife more than a lot of things (e.g., ESPN, gin, Richard Petty, spaghetti), but not as much as football. That was the starting point for the poem, to say I love my wife even more than football. The line that Hera "could not step out of the poem like you and scare me to death" refers to my wife. Unlike Hera who is stuck in the poem, my wife can do whatever she wants. She can scare me to death by being distant, etc. It's a poem hoping for connection and intimacy,
BIO
Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans with his wife and three children, and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry.
Junaid Ahmed Ahangar,
NOMINEE, PUSHCART PRIZE 2025
She twirled and swayed up to the edge of the pond
Making her way through the whispering lilacs
Her feet of clay and her hands of mercy
And she called it home
He hid behind rocks and made sand castles
Fashioning thorns to draw a map
His songs of reckless abandon and his poems of disdain
And he called it home
Sighting a sobbing visage she stopped to take a look
She reached out with her heart before she reached out with her hand
She fell to her knees and asked him his name
He wept some more and called himself despair
Stumbling upon a marvelous Dervish he hastened his stride
His impatient steps and affronted heart failed him once more
The Dervish walked up to him and held his hands
Fake smiles and feigned poise was all he had on display
“What has afflicted you I wonder and what should console you?”
She asked despair with earnestness and compassion
“Bereft of my memory, I can only reminisce misery and melancholy”
He replied with a stutter and a shiver
“What made you hasten when you had to retreat?”
Enquired the Dervish with tender curiosity
“What I saw in you and what I did not”
He replied with a lament and a grumble
She tended to him gentle and stitched for him a cloak
And taught him names of sand and water and all things good
He learnt what had elapsed and he abandoned much caution
Thus she nursed his wounds, slaying awful contempt
The Dervish saw in him a roaring tempest
Raging ferociously, yet shrouded in scornful sheets
He saw chastisement and reward
But he could not tell an idyll from damnation
Amidst the vultures perched and an ominous calm
She became his shelter, his sanctuary
He ceased writing obituaries for funerals he never attended
He reveled as he sought refuge in her beautiful asylum
“Did happiness ever find you despite the vile inequities of life?”
“It did and then it withered away like an autumn without rain”
“And what did they say when they saw you happy?”
“They sought to know why, and not how.”
The wretched and the noble, the heretics and the sages
The living and the dead, it’s all the same
The consuming opulence of time
Bearing down on everything and everyone
As the idle years passed and with it, lazy sunsets
Despair grew old and feeble, wrinkled hands and sunken eyes
On his last day he decided to narrate to her a story
And thus it began, “I was once a Dervish…”
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The poem is essentially a conversation between love and despair, a dichotomy human beings jostle with. Even in terms of a distant past and possible futures.
BIO
Junaid Ahmed Ahangar works as a doctor in a tertiary care institute in Srinagar, Kashmir. He graduated from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and completed his MD at Srinagar, Kashmir. He also has an MA in English Literature from India and is in the second year of an MA in Philosophy. Junaid devotes his time between his profession and passions, which over the last few years have seen a conscious departure towards writing poetry and prose. He is also a singer-songwriter and occasional guitarist with interests in music, film-making, podcasting and theology. His poems are in The San Antonio Review, The Shallow Tales Review, The Hellebore Press, Midsummer Dream House, The Argyle Literary Magazine, The Passionfruit Review, and Osmosis Press. His short stories are in The Argyle Literary Magazine and Loft Books Volume V. He was awarded Best of the Year in Poetry by The Shallow Tales Review for his poem "Landscape of the Partisan".
Saira Rashid Khan
the shadow of the sun disguises itself as
the night sky
scintillating stars over impoverished souls.
The moon not as forlorn as we believed,
furtively holding hands with the cooler
palm of its beloved.
This is how much time I have on my hands—
unheld.
Unclothing skeletons on the edge of a chipped hill
yearning to taste the shadow of my being
like that of the sun
to zip open my spine, remove my flesh and
pour love into my soul.
BIO
Saira Rashid Khan is a poet and lover of quiet moments, finding inspiration in the beauty of words and the depth of silence. Her writing captures the heart’s hidden landscapes, weaving together dreams and realities. In addition to poetry, she writes micro and flash fiction, crafting stories that leave a lasting impression in just a few words. With a soft spot for tea, fruit, and the mystery of the skies, Saira is driven by a desire to create stories and poems that resonate and linger.
Erinfolami Mayowa Toheeb
Oh, disastrous breed!
Life has been harsh for many.
Countless trials weigh upon those who perish,
Many are injured,
Many meet their end.
So, is life.
At times, the cause eludes us,
An enigma beyond our grasp,
From the heavens, it descends.
Unstoppable, relentless,
Houses collapse, waters rise,
This is what we name "disaster".
What springs from the Supreme is natural—
Unstable,
Inevitable.
Countless lives bear the scars of its wrath.
So, is life.
How can we hope to end this?
It remains an unsolvable riddle.
For lands blessed without Thy disasters,
Thank the Supreme for His work.
To those who dwell in the shadow of calamity,
The Supreme’s work remains unfathomable.
Yet, be thankful, and find joy.
Hold fast—
For this, too, shall become a bygone tale.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I wrote this poem to show the casualties of natural disasters. The end tells the people to continue to be hopeful that such disasters will end.
BIO
Erinfolami Mayowa Toheeb (known as Mayor) is a penultimate 300-level English student in the University of Lagos, UNILAG. He has a remarkable penchant for writing poetry, with an interest in writing fiction, and is a motivational speaker. Through Amazon he published Whispers of Life and Legacy, a work of 16 poems.
Thomas Behan
I have a scar on my hand
from childhood, the result of
a difference of opinion.
I thought the special-needs child
I was picking on was powerless.
He disagreed and bit down.
As if he didn’t have enough problems,
he also had to wear braces.
The metal, not the teeth,
left me a right-hand stigma
from a time when Iran had hostages.
The scar grew as the hand did.
It has lived in many cities,
been around the world.
Held a mother dying and
two children growing.
I was capable of those things
and that thing.
I am just now looking at it
in a foreign country 8000 miles,
43 years from the original sin.
A message that outlived the
messenger by 25 years so far:
"You were mistaken."
BIO
I am a writer living in Northern Virginia, USA. My work has been published in Isele Magazine, Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections, and by The George Washington University Press. My literary-fiction short story “Symbiosis” was published in Secant Publishing's anthology Best Stories on the Human Impact of Climate Change and was nominated for the Secant Publishing Prize. I also have published a short-story collection through Alien Buddha Press. I am currently seeking publication for two upmarket novels: THE EMIGRANT, a historical thriller about an IRA volunteer haunted by a violent past and unrealized musical dreams, and THROUGHLINE, crime fiction about a dysfunctional family of outlaws and the effects of trauma across generations.
Ophelia Knight
There are dotted lines that require
our full names
each letter a message in numbered code
we are worth something
each body remembered as a transient figure to be
skinned & used for trade
by trade they mean
as cattle
as cattle
they will debase you
say that you wanted it because you were patriotic
waving flags in rectangular booths
promising your neighbors
dinner & kindness & peace
knowing
those in office
have their ovens prepped at 350
they intend
to
eat
us
whole
wash us down with warnings of
your friends
partaking of you
first
In America we will politicians to have
a heart
we are always left fighting
for our lives
& yours
& loathe it
& die
BIO
Ophelia Knight is an aspiring poet with a deep passion for exploring the intersections of nature, human emotion, and societal issues. Her two most recent works were featured in The Engine Idling (2024) and Paddler Press (2024). She hopes to one day overcome the whole "starving, tortured artist" thing (it’s a work in progress). As Ophelia continues to write and share her work, drawing inspiration from both the natural world and the cultural landscapes around her, she aims to inspire and connect with readers through her lyrical, introspective, and thought-provoking poetry.
Kate Efimochkina
I will live all these cold months
as if they were one night.
Scottish dessert,
wild grapes
and new jewellery–
I’m stocking up for the winter,
and my heart is full of sorrow.
The oak branches,
the acacia bushes,
the berries of the lily of the valley
and all the mossy stones
call to me.
I want to be a tree.
A tree in the forest.
The static part of the landscape
with trembling crown.
To catch the light
and smell the scent of apples
from the gardens.
The air is tense
with the anxiety of autumn
and filled with the poison
of ripe berries.
(The tree falls,
there is a crackling sound.
And the people in their houses hear it,
and freeze for a moment.)
BIO
Kate Efimochkina is a writer and graphic artist based in Moscow, Russia.
Enda Boyle
We have both been blown home from work by a summer storm, bedraggled
and exhausted we microwave the last of the lentil-and-barbeque-bean chilli.
While you towel off, I make tea neither of us feeling the need to say much.
Later we exchange anecdotes and stock complaints the daily catechism
of jammed printers, snail-paced commutes, canteens stinking of day-old prawns.
Retiring to bed we stream the latest peer-group-prescribed Netflix series.
As the third episode plays, I notice the wheels of boredom whirl behind your eyes.
An Anthropologist by training your mind has a tendency to undertake expeditions
and your interests are wide enough to encompass the whole of human experience.
This evening for instance I notice by your bedside table an atlas of ancient civilization,
you read aloud from it informing me of the importance of rivers to early settlements.
I relax and imagine following you down all the canals and waterways of antiquity
from Mesopotamia to Memphis down to this city sitting on top of the Farset Delta.
You carry an atlas inside of your mind, it maps out territory richer than any other I know.
BIO
Enda Boyle was born in Derry in 1994. He was educated at Ulster University and Queen's University Belfast. He currently lives in Belfast and works an office job. In 2023 he published the back room poetry chapbook Love Songs of The Precariously Employed.
KP Giordano
A poem
an old man
memorized
a long time ago
came back
as another poem
he wrote today
BIO
KP Giordano has been published previously before in Trillium. His fiction has appeared in the Fanzine. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida.
By James Tocchio
When I was six years old,
a man at church knew we were poor,
and one day he handed me
a miracle from another kind of life:
an old wristwatch.
A woven canvas strap,
numerals like the instruments of a jet,
and with a magical button,
the dial would glow
the gentle green of inchworms.
For years, I cherished it in fearful nights,
with the scent of dust, counting seconds
in the rented space,
breathing and tracking for minutes and hours
the pulse of the hands.
Through wavering tears as my parents fought,
I pressed its plastic crystal to my nose,
let its green light bleed against my retina amid
the startling violence,
like microwave popcorn.
It glowed for me when homeless,
while I wondered where my brother had gone,
its delicate heart pressed between ear and pillow
beating in the alien houses of strangers,
while I sunk into dark confusion by its light.
Today was my fortieth birthday.
My life has been shadowed by a sadness
I cannot describe or understand—
like a spider grown in a lab,
engineered without spinnerets,
unable to spin a web or to understand why.
I think it would be a comfort not to exist.
But I tell no one.
There is a responsibility
which comes from love
and pain.
My children are not homeless.
My daughters are not scared.
They do not fear the night times,
or know violence,
or feel hate.
They are loved and warm,
safe and miraculously happy.
For my birthday,
my wife and daughters gave me a watch.
The children held it,
admired its beauty.
I trembled and thanked them.
And now it is night again.
Everyone is asleep.
The house is silent.
I am alone,
with the beautiful watch,
and I stare at it,
and my heart aches so deeply,
and the tears are so thick.
I love my family and living—
but the watch stares back,
and I cry because I can’t escape
the terrible truth
That I am and will always be,
so broken.
Uchechukwu Onyedikam
It's dawn, the miracle of bread & tea
breaking the fast of yesterday, in the
sleep of the night kissing dreams only
I had, now I'm proud of how it runs.
Fresh & cold dawn—sharp five O'clock
the following day another bomb
blast at the marketplace—death
takes a toll, life destroyed by a sect
of religious extremists.
I wondered and cried in the
single language I was raised with—
my mother tongue, was cut off because
the man that enforced his "God" upon us
threatened that we will burn in "hell" if we
refused his mirror of reflection—
and labeled my dialect vernacular and passed
his onto me as the official language of
correspondence between him and I.
I am in an uncompleted building in
the rural area of a metropolitan city
taking shelter there but only at sundown
when the lights are out you may seek
me there—
I have many friends & company there;
we are all hopeless heartbreakers; sinners, homeless young
& old hustlers alike, hustling for a better time and day regardless.
For so long I have left the bosom of my
mother and the shore of my father's;
left to seek the rising of another day,
a façade impression I sold to them, they
didn't buy it with cash but with a bounced
cheque instead—
I seldom press myself: the
dark emotions, sucked it all in and smiled,
found an evidence, hit the road anyway
without feinting the response they gave me
as I set through this vale of tears
BIO
Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a Nigerian Poet/Photographer based in Lagos, Nigeria. BOTN, Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry has appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Poetic Africa, Poetry Catalog, Sky Island Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and Spillwords, among other publications. He and Christina Chin have co-written and published two poetry chapbooks. He's a contributor at Mad Swirl.
Grant Shimmin
Tears before showtime
A show perhaps we shouldn’t have staged
Because two hours north scores lay dead
For whom the day had started like so many others
For whom reverence and worship
had been on the schedule
And everywhere people were reeling
But we walked out and stood
before our shocked audience
asked them to stand with us
as we paid tribute and the tears
grasped at my eyes, the all-too-raw
recollection of images that
would never see print
but my eyes would never unsee
The sound of my children
on the phone, sirens blaring incessantly
in the background, every resource
marshalled in response to terror
So much fear
So much hatred
Can we cover the fetid stench of murderous intent
with the open-armed aroma of aroha
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Aroha is Māori for "love". On March 15, 2019, the day a white supremacist killed 51 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques, I was at work in a newspaper office two hours away in Timaru, seeing images come in of the horror. That night was the opening performance of a local drama-league production I was in.
BIO
Grant Shimmin is a South African-born new phase poet living in New Zealand who favours humanity and the natural world, which are sometimes intersecting themes in his work. An editor for Does it Have Pockets?, he has work in journals including Roi Fainéant Press, BULL, underscore_magazine, and most recently Cool Beans Lit and Stone Poetry Quarterly.
Mathieu Cailler
screaming out for me. I tried to open the basement door, but it was always locked. Deadbolted, too. When I finally found a key, my grandmother stood in front of the door, her arms crossed. Later, the SATs guarded the door along with three pristinely-sharpened number-two pencils. One morning, I thought I could break the door down with an axe, but a grand piano barricaded it. Every day there was something else there—right in front of the door—a broken-down Honda, fitted bed sheets, ants, a wedding, the IRS, a cancer specialist, six members of AT&T customer service saying, in unison, that my call was very important to them. I could still hear my purpose cry out for me. One time, I think it got hold of a broom and beat the floor beneath me. I was thrilled to see it still had strength. I pressed my lips to the hardwood and screamed, I won’t stop coming for you.
I hope my purpose heard me.
BIO
Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: a novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His work has appeared in over one hundred fifty publications, including Wigleaf, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize; a Readers’ Favorite award; and the Paris, Los Angeles, and New England Book Festival prizes.
Israel Okonji
there was this butterfly
i saw only on weekends.
my body is my only prodigality.
what are weekends to you,
butterfly?
collect my body to be your
prodigality too.
the fire i set my clothes on—
the pages of the ash formed
you,
ochre butterfly.
i chose to be selfish—
my flaming clothes are mirrored on the
butterfly’s chinoiserie wings.
the beautiful butterfly floats,
behind an harbinger of twilight.
the horizon stretched its arms
into a thin apparel of a brown
cloud retrieving the veranda.
now,
the mountains
would be ghost towns,
haunting the night sky with
a prayer for flesh, & for color.
my dysgeusia for sky mountains
doesn’t matter to me now.
my choice was to be selfish.
i will go to forage on the loamy
sand on my orchard &
pluck it with a black eye.
my preference is
breathlessly watching
ferries floating on another water.
i chose to be selfish, butterfly.
i desired an abyss—
the abyss wanted a home too.
BIO
Israel Okonji (He/Him) is an artist of poetry, storytelling, and music. Mistaken to be from Gen Z, he is a 2024 finalist for the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets, a Pushcart nominee, and a poetry editor of Akéwí magazine. He has works published in Brittle Paper, Hominum, The Milton Review, Bruiser Mag, Poetry As Promised, Isele magazine, plus others.
Oloche
Never has One loved another so
Before now, no such tale had been told
Of the throne of grace, from which love does flow
Where sinners stand before God and are bold.
All the tongues that have ever been
would not suffice to tell a story so wondrous
Of the Lamb who by all will be seen,
Who did display His love on that rugged Cross.
BIO
Joseph Oloche Onah is an avid reader and a writer of prose and poetry. He is a University student in his second year, studying English Language and Literature. His influences are Christian fiction and African literature as well as Crime fiction.
Alobu Emmanuel
today, like the six-year-old girl
who just finished crossing
a busy Lagos road, all by herself—
i am so happy.
the sun in this part of my east
rises like yeast in puff puff.
my teeth are complete.
yesternight's beans remain
quiet in the pot, waiting to save
my morning. outside, the lightning
made a mockery of the pawpaw tree
but did not come close to me—
the rain that screamed & rained
curses at my ceiling, spared my head.
so, sadness—that ugly blade of grass,
dare not cut me.
i know. i am not there yet—even this poem
may not march victorious, but
i have the greens beneath, & the sky—
a mosaic of wings & wool, has not ceased
to be my roof.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
àlàáfíà: peace, rest of mind and body (an Arabic term)
puff puff: a kind of deep-fried dough made with a mixture of flour and yeast
BIO
Alobu Emmanuel (alias Noble Alobu), Swan VIII, is a Nigerian writer and an eco-poet. He is the Chief Editor of Napsite Review (a UNILAG campus journal), the Director of Business/Partnership for SOKOKA Books, and a creative website developer/designer (powered by Weebly). He was a fellow of the 2023 Sprinng Writing Fellowship. Some of his works are featured in Poetry Sango-ota, Blue Marble Review, Brittle Paper, Poetry Column-NND, and Isele Magazine. "Do the hard things" is one of his philosophies of life.
Agboola Tariq A.
for Artemis
that orange afternoon, we were mortals. our blood was wine.
our intentions, like ray, mirrored through our crystalline bodies.
i, marveled at the way your eyes held the sun, set my misery ablaze in your gaze.
we walked down the stereo-road serenading our silly secrets. your laughter, my favourite music,
mocking the Garbage-Fuji playing from the passing Kórópe.
your cheeks, crimson-red, pressed softly on my shoulder. and
for the first time since i grasped the gravity of grief, it disappeared.
that lantern-noon, our minds, straying into curiosity—i wanted to know
the colour of your joy and the border of your sadness,
and you asked to know my shade of red.
we approached the T-junction before Bello, our bodies, knowing its sacredness, pulled
into each other—us, two matter-bodies mixed by plasma.
you joked about your desire for an Alhaji, and i televisioned us as pilgrims
searching for devotion. and here i am, keeping my purity,
and worshipping your feet for the day they walked into me.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The poem refers to a person whose path crosses with the poet persona's. This emotional intersection between the two is likened with the liminal space, Oríta Méta, where guidance is sought from the Òrìshàs—gods. In Yorùbá culture, Oríta Méta, translated as "three paths", refers to a celestial border where three or more paths meet—an intersection of both the physical & spiritual worlds. "Garbage-Fuji" is an inversion of the popular song, "Fuji Garbage", by Ayinde Barrister. Kórópe refers a "minibus" in Yorùbá. Alhaji means a Muslim pilgrim.
BIO
Agboola Tariq, Swan II, is a poet and a student of law. His works are forthcoming in Lucent Dreaming, Aké Review, ANMLY, SoFloPoJo, and others. A Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize shortlistee for poetry, he won the Blessing Kolajo Poetry Prize '24 and was 1st runner-up for the Fireflies Prize '24.
Fasasi Ridwan
Like the blade, a song, too, is capable of rebellion.
Sing to the emptiness in front of you. & listen as
it reverberates backward into the mouth. There's
mystery to the mouth. How it crafts an elegy &
hopes it doesn't come back to haunt the owner in
his death. I've learnt to surrender myself to every
sorrow walking in my bones. Nothing is more
conscious than a poem. Sharp & waiting to split the
mouth—an open wound never healing. Even time
becomes scared to stretch its hand to touch the texture
of the wound. The boy at the end of the phone says
to me: your sadness must be a garden of bougainvillea.
I have learnt, that even in softness, a poem should
be a protest. He asked again: what would my poem
remedy? What can it remedy if not my life, if not
yours? It's morning again & the sparrows are singing
to every emptiness in front of them. But I am far from
their songs like how silence is the distance between the
hand and a piano. Minutes later, A fog emerges amidst
the song-filled void & the sparrows break across the field.
A poet’s duty is to wait for God at the end of every
poem—is to be patient with the guilt of ending a song.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Inspired by the poet Van Wyk Louw’s parable “Heerser en Humanis” (Tyrant and Humanist).
BIO
Fasasi Ridwan, Swan I, is a Nigerian poet of Yorùbá descent. He is the winner of the 2024 Labari Prize for Poetry. A Pushcart Prize Nominee whose works have appeared/are forthcoming on ANMLY Lit, Chestnut Review, Eunoia Review, Lucent Dreaming, Strange Horizons, Hindsight Creative and elsewhere. He has also been shortlisted and longlisted in various poetry contests.
Fọlábòmí Àmọ̀ó
The stars
do not know
beauty
But
they twinkle
the most elegant
of lights
The oceans rise
at the moon's
mercy
and the waves
crash
to the pull
from within
The clouds
do not feel
sorrow
yet,
weep
repeatedly
till they have
nothing left
The leaves
do not hear
the music
in the air
But
they surrender,
to the melody
of the wind
These sparks
of fire
do not have
a source
but they ignite
the fiercest of currents
These crackles
of thunder
do not
hunt flesh
but they clap
the loudest of roars
These words
may not
have purpose
but they tell
the stories
of nature.
BIO
I use words to paint pictures. In fact, I have 14 different albums of poetry, filled with pictures of love and mental health.
Abiodun Ekundayo
No more caged bird singing,
only nightmarish dreams of whispering bullets
and somniloquies—hot stream breaking out of the well on your face.
Talitha koum, as if to say let there be light,
the perfect way to escape this mystery,
to start over again.
Perhaps you won't be here, no promise of staying till smokefall
no Dua fervently escaping every hole in your body.
You'll walk into light, only to make your memories stain a lover's heart.
How best can one escape tragedy if not avoidance.
Avoidance like this—getting lost.
You were never here, so when the ruins come again,
when hailstones become bullets finding rest place in bodies,
you'll be Abraham, seeking a land of your own.
Ossa sicca resurget, that's how you press rewind when you break your mother's plate.
Only that a scar follows somehow and the plate remains in ruins.
Ossa sicca resurget, that's how you press rewind hoping to wake from this dream.
No more caged bird singing
only nightmarish dreams of whispering bullets
and somniloquies — hot stream breaking out of this well on your face.
You'll wake up now and see you're still here. You'll go around and ask what's left of this rubble.
Talitha koum, to all that's left of this rubble.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The poem is inspired by the wars and insurgencies that have been going on around the world lately. The line “No more caged bird singing” references Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Talitha koum is from Mark 5:41 in the Bible and is Aramaic for “Little girl, arise”. Ossa sicca resurget is Latin for “Dry bones shall rise again”. Dua is an Arabic word that means “invocation” or “supplication”; Muslims interpret it as an act of prayer, invocation or supplication.
BIO
Abiodun Peter Ekundayo is a Nigerian poet whose works have featured or are forthcoming in League of Writers, Ponder Savant, Wripoles, Persimmon Lit, Naked Cat, INKspiredNG and elsewhere. He is a two-time runner-up for The Agidigbo Prize For Contemporary Nigerian Poetry 2023 and 2024, shortlisted for DKA Annual Poetry Prize 2024, and made the longlist for Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize 2024. Abiodun believes fantasy is another form of reality. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
Jer Hayes
Listen stranger,
do not go to Mycenae,
divine laws rule all,
duty makes them reckless,
the influence of the gods
hardens all hearts,
was it a mistake?
altars should be for
weddings,
not funerals.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
In Greek mythology, Iphigenia is one of the children of Agamemnon who is king of Mycenae. He is told that he should sacrifice Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis and that this will allow the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. In some versions of the myth, she is tricked into thinking that she is going to the altar to marry Achilles.
Joemario Umana
Sometimes, I wish to be the apple Adam and Eve
sank their teeth into—the one that stripped the scales
from their eyes, the revealer of knowledge, iridescence.
There’s too much blindness in this world, too much
ignorance like quicksand, sinking everyone into its depth,
like dug dirt thrown back into itself, suffocating stillness.
Someone called it the earth’s curse, one like a hound’s
howl that unsettles quiet. But I'd be a humbug to think
myself freed of this, to believe I could save the world.
This self-righteousness would make me no less
a blind messiah, no less than a false Jesus.
So here’s my candor—I, too, am blind as a bat—
in daylight, even with eyes open in the night.
I, too, need the wings of illumination to say
I am liberated, like morning frees a heartfelt song,
and the song unburdens a heavy heart.
I, too, need this liberation,
as am part of the world I seek to change.
BIO
Joemario Umana, Swan XVII, is a Nigerian creative writer and a performance poet who considers himself a wildflower. He was shortlisted for the Sophon Lit poetry contest and is the author of the poetry pamphlet, A flower is not the only thing that's fragile.
Vyacheslav Konoval
There is no honor
in those who know how to shoot,
who have taken the oath of allegiance,
a police patrol circle in the empty gray neighborhoods
in search of men.
The scars of war echo
in the veterans' prosthetic limbs,
a once burly man argues with the cops,
protecting a boy they caught in the hell.
The shame and courage,
they crossed the red lines of the last meanness
and intertwined into new attributes
of the eternal bloodthirsty confrontation.
BIO
Vyacheslav Konoval is a Ukrainian poet. His poems have appeared in more than 70 literary magazines and have been translated into Spanish, French, Scottish, Italian, and Polish. He is a member of the Federation of Scottish Writers.