By Kristal Peace This old house has plenty of room For misunderstandingsPlenty of space forThe silent treatment: There are four elegant bedrooms that lend comfortTo each person nursing a grudge;The spacious, sunlit kitchen accommodates everyoneAs they take their meals alone.The living room is a cozy gathering placeFor insults, accusations, evasions,…
By Benjamin J.Chase Always, my father standsin the gravel drivewayof whatever eveningI happen to be leaving. Smiling, he waves. He stands as if to sayeverything else can wait—he will be a father,even into the cold night.As if this were no departure.
By Milton Ehrlich After celebrating my wife’s 89th birthday,we googled a man who knows answersto all of life’s fundamental questions.He lived far away, and parking was impossible. I left our car alongside a moat guarding a castle.Screeching white egrets patrolled the grounds.A longtime hiker, I could walk around the world,but…
By Benjamin J. Chase Sometimes I spend an afternoonon those half-padded seatsfacing glass panelsin the arrivals section,as if at the movie theater,to watch the droves of peopleentering my life. It’s cheating, I know, a way to stealan expectant glancefrom a stranger who might mistake me,for an instant,as a friend. But…
By Matthew Corsi A survival rate does not exist this morning.The wind levies her threat my God, what a mess.A coral reef of death swarms the sky, veins entwined, a single unit of red plushcreates a landscape of rush. Everywhere, everywhere, it becomesthe unit of fatigue. Life is Done for.
By Adiela Akoo I am a flower that bloomsPerfume filtering the airI am a veiled mysteryTo hearts that don’t understandAnd eyes that cannot yet seeI am a reflectionI am a teacherI am a lessonI am the yang and the yinI am the quiet voice amidst the dinI am a stranger,…
By Shah Tazrian Ashrafi I saw how the forest below was burning And elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, deer, sun-bears, hornbills were climbing the air A crazy, colorful, biodiverse amalgamation. I saw how the dead drifted away like smoke Both from cities, from forests. How the animals’ and the humans’ phantoms became…
By Adiela Akoo When it rains, it pours!! These last few days epitomized this, with no less than four family members being rushed to the hospital, two requiring urgent operations! The usually effervescent energy of the family chat group quickly shifted to a somberness that weighed heavily on the chest,…
By David Tuvell I used to run to you, whenever people were too hard, but now I’m underneath of you, and I’ve never been so scared.
by Liane St. Laurent and so the days become less golden. yielding to the weightof their august fruit, blackberry canes lean acutely angled. theyellow cat’s thirsty bones cry from under the forsythia and thewaning moon nods in agreement: soon. but right now there areno vacancies in this carnival of symmetries…