Rough Sketch / Those Boys are History Now by Robert Nisbet

Rough Sketch

The sort of day I’m thinking of,
there’d be no prizes, necessarily,
nor pensions, perks, celebrity,
finance nor general purposes. There’d be
a little sunshine, maybe just
a very, very late winter’s edge
in the air, in that place
which runs the length of St. Bride’s Bay
(coves, gannets, sea crash) on to
Cardigan, lands and fields where there are
streams. I know I’d like a stream in this,
the smells of gorse, seaweed,
grass would do, and then to walk,
the hedgerows now so copious,
green as they will be through May
and June. Importantly, a row of cottages,
there as they were a century ago,
a meadow running down to
the road, a sheepdog’s crisp
bright yelp. Then, out on the sudden
orange beach, a teeming around of kites,
surfers and flying sails.



* First published in Obsessed with Pipework (Somerset) in 2010





Those Boys are History Now

I’ll sing a blues for those two boys,
cycling through their time and place,
a south-west corner of a small island,
thirteen years on from a continent’s vast war.
A tall road, summer-sweet with tarmac,
climbing from a seaside village,
from rock pool to hedgerow, tyre hum -
and the dates, the hopes, that Friday next,
the girls with pony-tails.


They are history now, those boys,
and we might search for them,
the names, the boys, the sentiments,
stacked up in family photos, newspapers,
exam results and names of teams,
postcards from Paris, microfilm.
(Praise, praise, to the stackers and recorders).

Sometimes they seem to fade, that scene, the people,
yet still they haunt that recollected tarmacked road,
evoking, evoking.



* First published in Sparks of Calliope in 2021

Robert Nisbet is from Wales, a former high school English teacher and college creative writing tutor who has been published widely in the USA, where he has four Pushcart Prize nominations, and in Britain, where his collection, In a Small County, has just been published by Seventh Quarry Press.

Life is Here / Nightscape by Donna Dallas

Life is Here

Under the soft mulch 

between blades of sprouting grass

I sift through the branches

peel the bark back

I can smell the melting frost

like blood pulsing

through the veins of this forest

under the sap 

where creatures crawl

over sudden death and its

afterbirth of decay

it’s a birth slap like first breath

with layers of organisms

cradling my cries

 

I glimpse the sun full on

at dawn

mothering me like a magnet

to pull me in

to its red breast 

along with all the forest’s aliveness

out of winter’s grasp

 

Nightscape

As the Big Dipper pours constellations

into the Little Dipper

stars seep into oceans and dreamscapes 

like flurries of forever

the Little Dipper continues to catch

all our yesterdays 

 

Somewhere now

we are together

somewhere yesterday three kings 

followed the North Star

sometime tomorrow

we will become each other's ghost

 

When I think I can see it

the big and little guys up there

they pour into tomorrow

which will soon again 

be yesterday

 

Donna Dallas has appeared in a plethora of journals, most recently Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash and Fevers of the Mind.  She is the author of Death Sisters, published by Alien Buddha Press. She has two chapbooks, Smoke and Mirrors and Megalodon. Donna has served on the editorial team of Red Fez and NYQ.

Spatter / Burnt by Diane Webster

Spatter

Corrugated metal wall

spattered with white paint

and rusted ridges

transports viewer

into a forest

of lodge pole pines.

 

Snowflakes cascade

from grey sky

into covens of snowbanks

encircling each trunk

in ring-around-the-rosy

chants echoing only

in one’s mind.

 

Burnt

 

Tall, black trees protrude

from the earth like whale ribs

exposed on the beach to bleach

over the decades into white columns

until cartilage fails, and they fall

and give themselves to decay.

 

Across the road aspen trees

applaud their green leaves

still attached and waving

until October when

everything falls to earth

to enrich the soil for future

forests to grow.

Diane Webster's poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Her haiku/senryu have appeared in failed haiku, Kokako, Enchanted Garden Haiku. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

A Swallow Without Wings / Thirsty for Time by Irma Kurti

A Swallow Without Wings

Talking with you
on the phone

is difficult—
the sound
of the call
falls into a deaf
ear, my joy
undresses slowly
from the zeal.

The minutes pass,

even the hours—
the joy writhes,
shakes in the air,
it loses height,
like a swallow
without wings
it falls
to the ground.




Thirsty for Time

I’m thirsty for time.

In the days I look
for it desperately,
it slips from my hands
and burns my fingers
like friable sand.

I am a traveler,
I walk in the desert,
the infinity extends
like a white sheet,

it waits for me to write
verses or letters.

Thirsty for time ...

Irma Kurti is an Albanian poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator. She lives in Bergamo, Italy. Irma Kurti is a member of the jury for several literary competitions in Italy and also a translator for the Ithaca Foundation in Spain. Irma Kurti has published 119 works. Her books have been published in 24 countries.

Metamorphosis by Michael Keshigian

On this particular day, when he awoke,
he found that he was not quite himself,
not the ego-centric professor,
dressing to teach,
who feigned all the answers.
Today, in a blue wave of brightness,
he was the sky, igniting the landscape.
Today, maple buds blossomed from his fingertips.
Within these deep woods of seclusion.
he somehow became
the embodiment of emanating Spring,
became the warmth
that melted edges of winter off the day,
became the breeze, that frolicked
alongside the leaves, yielded to an ant
as it crossed a thawing mulched path.
He stared at the insect, admiring its strength,
how it lived everyday to its greatest potential.
A bit of the ant crawled within him.
Then he saw a fox, a moose, and all
the other miracles fulfilling their lives
deep within the woods.
Continuing up this magic mountain,
he scaled until he reached the top
and found a reflection himself,
a culmination of all he had seen.
From the tip of this summit
in the northern woods of his psyche,
he lurched forward to embrace his potential,
became the bear, the great white whale,
a panther, a horse. His body
bloomed into the orb of a dahlia,
as his heart became a cardinal
perched upon a bony rib, red, rustling
and whistling an emphatic morning melody.

Michael Keshigian's poetry has appeared in numerous national and international journals. He has authored 14 poetry collections and has been nominated 7 times for a Pushcart prize and 3 times for Best of the Net. His latest chapbook, Poems from the Sky, was released by Cyberwit.net in March.

Wind Chimes / Cardinals in Red by Michael Lee Johnson

Wind Chimes (V3)

The wind chimes,
silver-tongued
on the balcony today,
different sounds—

cool, metallic laughter—
in all different directions.
My thoughts chase
after them.




Cardinals in Red

Cardinals don’t return to those untinged without red.
They pass seeds—love and survival—
those Indiana Hoosiers in gyms and fields.
They perch outside the yellow cornfields,
near the husk of forest green.
Where the seasons start,
connecting farm fields to winter's chill.
Worn slippers at my bedside.

My innards need to be repaired.
Old farmhouses lean towards ruin,
shadow slinger—devils, angels passed.
Covered bridges south grow colder as winter,
settles in, sleet and sorrow weeping tears.
Cardinals in red, of Rockville, Indiana
themselves the brightest backdrop,
theater shows in the snow.
Only cardinals return to those places.
Those places are colored in red.

Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 403-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 47 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 8 Pushcart Prize awards and 8 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 678 published poems.

Just Another Souvenir / Across the Road by Vandana Kumar

Just Another Souvenir

It’s nice to belong to a city
And own a souvenir shop
Magnets for a fridge
T-shirts double the price outside
That sort of place

I love to follow the outsider gaze
the curious tourists
Not knowing the local language
Doing all kinds of currency conversions
Silently in their heads

I wonder which homes
In which countries
Will be gifted
Those bubble-packed mugs

I wonder if one of those mugs
Would break in transit
If a pen to be gifted, would leak

I wonder if the memory of a city they visited
And its famed beauty
Gets defiled by these
If it makes my city
And its products
As ordinary as theirs




Across the Road

Across the road
There is this couple holding hands
Like there was no tomorrow
As though they would lose each other
Miss the train to nowhere
If they let go of each other

They haven’t done an iota of shopping
No bread
No eggs
No ham
So that their hands aren’t engaged
Holding things from their mundane list
The omelette can clearly wait

The dogs on my side
Bark just once
and lay down

Across the road
Might be a promise of forever
This side of the street
There is only the hum of air-conditioning
An inertia
That won’t swallow this summer afternoon sun

Vandana Kumar is a French teacher and multiple award-winning poet from New Delhi, India. Her poems have been published in over 150 national and international websites and anthologies of repute. She is a Pushcart prize nominee 2023 and her poetry collection ‘Mannequin of Our Times’ has won several awards.