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.

Albino Turtles / Half-caste by Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan

Albino Turtles

On tiptoes, my little one
leaned into the concrete tank,
squealed at the different one,
a bent index jabbing
at the unusual silver-blue
of the painted tank —
the colour that lurks
in murky moonstones.
The absent colour on the shell
glared back at us.
You are the last ones for the day,
the minder shrugged. The albino turtle is rare,
one in thousands, a million, she said,
it would never survive its sea,
and any darkness
a deep blue might conceal.
I took a picture, and in its frame,
on the still ripples of transparent
water, our reflections were caught,
my son laughing, and I
watching, in my half-caste skin.




Half-caste

Half-caste I, my face
rarely blotched,
my eyes as serene as colour zoned
amethyst crystals, I stand like
a weed stalk waiting
for the push-pull hoe
in the church hall, drenched
by the sermon, insides
quivering ever so slightly, yet
they only see that I don’t
cross myself when I should have,
and their eyes flicker
with the question,
Did his mother not teach him?

Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan is a nephrologist, clinician-educator, and researcher based in Kozhikode, India. His debut poetry collection, The Coppiced House (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2024), was followed by Almanac of the Sickle Moon (Hawakal Publishers, 2025). The Coppiced House received the Kala Prathibha Award at the Kala Literature Awards 2026.

Carrots / More Than Words by William Ogden Haynes

Carrots

After the fire, they stood in the pilsner light of a late
summer afternoon, squinting through the still-rising

smoke from the rubble. They were looking at the
bones of their family home scorched black, with only

the chimney left standing like a gravestone. Ancestors
of the family had lived in that old shotgun house for a

hundred years. But now, they’ve lost everything. All
that remains is a seared, crinkled snapshot, darkened

silverware, a ceramic doll turned black, a charred
refrigerator, cracked dinnerware, and skeletons of burnt

furniture. The house was the anchor of the family through
four generations and those irreplaceable burned artifacts

marked the milestones of their lives. But soon, the memories
will gradually fall away, like when grandma washed carrots

from the garden in the kitchen sink, flushing the soil they
grew up in, down the drain, as if they came from nowhere.




More Than Words

You read the words. They speak of love
and loss, dreams and despair, of the

overlooked beauty in the mundane. But,
a poem, if written well, goes beyond the

literal meaning and grammar. It begins
as a small disruption you can’t ignore, a

mosquito that comes and goes, whining
in your ear. Poetry borrows the familiar

and gives it back transformed into something
relevant to you. That love it describes, becomes

your girlfriend, and the loss speaks of your
grandmother’s death. It unlocks a room you’re

already in and strikes a match, lighting it
just enough for you to see the revelation.

Poetry does not explain but stimulates. A
poem is more than words on a page. It’s about

the moment you find yourself in a stranger’s
work and feel it was written for you alone.

William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan. He has published several collections of poetry and many of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. http://www.williamogdenhaynes.com.