The double glass sent back my first reflection;
unrecognisable, a lack with eyes
I’ve searched for answers on my mother’s breast,
a Hera with her spurting milk creating chaos
I’ve searched for meaning through shuttered words,
anthologies and lexicons, but none of it was found
I’ve searched for polis within myself,
because the Alexandrian poet said so, but still,
its iron gates were in-and-out locked down
I’ve searched for sun rays in Bible texts,
but darkness looms in doubtless quests,
the candle light again, violently, put out
I’ve searched for laughter on mountain peaks,
the Muses and the Titans refused to laugh out loud
I’ve searched for caves, the black abyss,
I swam in oceans I could drown;
“Behold!”
the great philosopher commands,
“Let’s start to go down!”

Elena Pitsilidou is based in Cyprus. Her poetry has won the 7th Undergraduate Poetry Competition 2020 of the University of Cyprus. Her writing has also appeared in print and online publications in the UK and the US, such as The Psychologist, Reader’s Digest, and We Said Go Travel.

Image via Pixabay

in your mind Einstein’s walking
with the attributes of thought
in your heart Joyce’s talking
existential tension taut

pencil broken paperwork
sleepy Einstein’s bending time
howling of an introvert
brave Ulysses skipping rhyme

these two met where borders blend
where hearts and minds still can meet
pub pints quenched by older men
words and numbers still compete

You can write a universe
in an ordinary day,
tell me how the moons traverse,
or this tab you’ll surely pay.

Joyce responds with scolding brands –
Make our universe sublime,
do the math for holding-hands
in my heart and in your mind.

Bill Fay has been published by Puget Sound Poetry Connection, Creative Colloquy, and the Virginia V Foundation, among others. Bill lives with his beautiful wife and their bodacious cats, Tucker and Annie, on Fox Island in Puget Sound, near Seattle. Favorite quote: “When the quill is sharp, the mind is never dull”.

Image via Pixabay

Loose shingles,
gutter dust washed out
like government issued
grass seed. What now?
The president, China,
Tim Allen. Making lists as healthcare.

Remember when the wind said,
“Hold Me”
and it wasn’t a whisper?
We both heard it,
louder than a train whistle,
clearer than the leaded glass
of your father’s liquor cabinet.
In broad daylight, we ran like dogs
being pelted by steel bolts.

Around the fire now,
the stalking glow of ember, as it was
thousands of years ago when the first
story was told—but it’s not the only light
that can pull me away,
a flash from the forest,
an echo.

No comfort these days.
Without you now. Still waiting
for the day when the wind
comes for me again.

John T. Leonard is an award-winning writer, English teacher, and poetry editor for Twyckenham Notes. He holds an M.A. in English from Indiana University. His previous works have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, december, Chiron Review, North Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, Punt Volat, High Shelf Press, Rappahannock Review, Jelly Bucket, Mud Season Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Genre: Urban Arts, Stonecoast Review, and Trailer Park Quarterly. He lives in Elkhart, Indiana with his wife, three cats, and two dogs. You can follow him on Twitter at @jotyleon and @TwyckenhamNotes.

Image via Pixabay

Flocks of seagull’s dive with mighty beaks
Yawing open, tongues whipping.
I run, only finding corridors of empty doors
And faceless people
With tears where eyes
Should
Be.
I look down at the blood where if cascades
Down my legs,
With clots, chunks of liver.
A baby is screaming in my arms
Its mouth open
But filled
With
Hot tar
Melting its face away.
Until the child is just molten wax
Dripping down me,
Hardening onto a sea of blood.
I walk away with Daddy Longlegs.
His taps singing, a knife on crystal.
So, we toast the admiral
In his tricorn
Hat.
Who looks at me like I’m nothing?
I feel the sweat burn my brow
And slip between my breasts.
A bald man sucks my nipple
I swat him away
And keep
Walking.
Naked.

Jane Langan’s poems were published in the anthology, Footprints and Echoes, shortlisted in the Lockdown Haiku competition with Fish Publishing, and had a special mention from The Welsh Poetry Competition. She was longlisted in the Mairtin Crawford Awards. Jane just completed an MA in Creative Writing. Jane’s Blog: http://howilikemycoffee.blogspot.com/

Image via Pixabay

A girl forgets she has a body
she can feel, that she exists
outside this bubble she’s created.
Once she would choose escape, run
away to a place with warm skies
and salty air. Now she stays grounded
or at least tries. She nods to the other
runners she sees, fewer each day. No
words are exchanged, a mute nod
of encouragement, sometimes
a wave. This world looks so
different from what she imagined.
She sometimes wishes to go back
to when the anxiety that raced
through her blood was due to the lover
whose name she rarely breathed
into existence. Now she stares
out windows, the world trudging
forward in a strangely silent way—
like a movie without sound, her
motions exaggerated. But if there’s no
one to witness it does it matter
if she cooks in her underwear? Does
it matter if she dances to 80s hits
at midnight? She bakes brownies,
licks the spatula, pulls the pan
out early so the brownies are so gooey
she needs a spoon to eat them. She does
this, cross-legged on the couch, her dog
curled up beside her, the world slowly
turning outside, death creeping
a little closer each day.

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), chapbooks All in the Family (Bottlecap Press) and The Violence Within (Flutter Press). She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She has her MBA from University of Baltimore and her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Read her publications on her blog: http://www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79.

Image via Pixabay

A month gone
since you spoke to anyone
not a checkout robot.

Unexpected item
in the living area –
you put the kettle on.

Indeed,
it gives you pause
to mark yourself unmissed,

alone with your operas
– Farscape, Galactica, Blake –
and no idea what happened.

When did everyone disperse?
Was it after that new father
passed out in his car?

You assume that the breeders
paired off and the bailout
shut their silos.

Or was it that
you blacked out once
too often? No one said it

to your face. They left you
with the spectres you detect
from time to time,

the white-smoke silhouettes
losing definition in the mist
of your malignant shame.

Now, the kettle starts to
cough, and you remember her –
the woman in that dream.

Skeleton found
in her tower-block flat.
Debits collected direct.

Until money ran out
and a bill went unmet,
no one called.

You scald the pot
and light the first
of many cigarettes.

It’s time for tea
and Christmas cake
on Terminal with Servalan.

Image via Pixabay

Societal progression is diminished
When discourse is quelled
And consumed by bias fervor,

Where to believe is to be severed,
Struck down for thoughts contrary
To a mass collective,

Merely a manipulated flock
Stricken with agendas
Solely not their own,

And derived from sweet tears
Of ancestors long gone
And ashen,

But there is no growth is systemic hatred,
Nor no power in moral judgements
Subjective, and ever contradictory,

No, there is no power in oppression,
No matter ideology,
No, no matter collective assumptions

Driven by skewed discourse contrived.

A R Salandy is a mixed-race poet & writer whose work tends to focus on social inequality throughout late-modern society. Anthony travels frequently and has spent most of his life in Kuwait jostling between the UK & America. Anthony’s work has been published 130 times. Anthony has 1 published chapbook titled ‘The Great Northern Journey’.
Twitter/Instagram: @anthony64120 https://arsalandywriter.com/ Anthony is the Co-Eic of Fahmidan Journal.

Image via Pixabay

for Rotimi

It must’ve been the Harmattan, this time;
I know, I know — this is Alaska, not Africa,
but my Nigerian friend said it’s a “pesky” wind
that bears this name, and I have to believe
the suddenness with which the latest gale blew in —
all its rage and paradoxical warmth
tearing through town in a few hours —
makes it such a force, built under pressure,
kicking that sand-like dirt in our faces (as if
we were characters in a billboard Queen song)
leaving us with nothing but the bitter,
below-zero chill, slippery roads,
and an irritatingly low level of snow
that would otherwise brighten
these black winter nights.

I believe our good friend H,
as we’ll call him, was on vacation
from West Africa, but got lost
on his way to Florida or California,
pulled along by the current of another wind,
which erred in its assumption
of his desired destination,
thus moving him to air his grievances
with us, as if we were to blame
for his unfortunate detour.

So goodbye, H — I know your
true nature now, and pray
we never meet again.

Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum is a writer and teacher born and raised in Alaska. She has a Master of Arts in Teaching and a B.A. in English and Japanese Studies with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She currently serves as the Mat-Su Vice President of Alaska Writers Guild. Connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @caitbuxbaum

Image via Pixabay

I was knuckle-deep in the governor
when the phone call came, something about a pardon
some random fluttermoth that needed to be cut free
of its cocoon. The governor muttered something
about straight razors and handkerchiefs
blood evidence and popular opinion
finished with a parable about woodchucks.
I felt the tremors begin in my hands, come up
through the floor. It was too early to give name to forgiveness.

Later that night, I dreamed
I was sleeping with the governor of the state of Indiana
and my mother had been arrested for shoplifting.
In my dream, she brought her knitting bag to her electrocution
covered her lap with a blanket and curled her feet beneath her
as if preparing to watch a nature special on TV:
something about skyscrapers and whistlepigs
two of three things that still grow in Texas.

Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest full-length poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).

Image via Pixabay

It isn’t the missing, as such,
(although it is that),
not the physical,
the hands,
the four o’clock silences,
(although it is.)
It isn’t the being unanchored,
uncertain,
unsheltered,
head of the queue now.
(Is it?)
It isn’t the day’s fragments
saved up to tell,
the absent reassurance,
the unshared celebration.

It is the never,
the always,
the gone,
the where,
the what the hell.

The gone.

The always.

Sherri Turner has had numerous short stories published in magazines and has won prizes for both poetry and short stories in competitions including the Bristol Prize, the Wells Literary Festival and the Bridport Prize. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies. She tweets at @STurner4077.

Image via Pixabay