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Contents Taylor Crowshaw ........................................................................................... 4

Always Yesterday ....................................................................................... 5 The Matriarch ............................................................................................. 6

Jonathan Dowdle ............................................................................................ 7 Dream Traffic ............................................................................................. 8 Observation ................................................................................................ 9

Nels Hanson ................................................................................................. 10 Pluto ......................................................................................................... 11 Sentinels ................................................................................................... 12

Simon Perchik .............................................................................................. 13 Untitled Poem 1 ........................................................................................ 14 Untitled Poem 2 ........................................................................................ 15

Adrian Flett .................................................................................................. 16 No Need of a Wide Vista .......................................................................... 17 The Demise the Rise of the Day ................................................................ 18

Edward Lee .................................................................................................. 19 A Pleasant Recollection ............................................................................ 20 Forest ....................................................................................................... 21

George Freek ................................................................................................ 22 A Spring Storm (After Mei Yao Chen) ...................................................... 23 Death Is Not An Illusion (After Tu Fu) ..................................................... 24

Sandip Saha .................................................................................................. 25 I Am Alone ............................................................................................... 26 In My Imagination .................................................................................... 27

Ben Crawford ............................................................................................... 28 I Test ........................................................................................................ 29 Thicker Blood ........................................................................................... 30

Ann Chiappetta ............................................................................................. 31 Botany ...................................................................................................... 32 First Fruit.................................................................................................. 33

Robin Ray .................................................................................................... 34 Alpha Particle ........................................................................................... 35 Terminal Velocity ..................................................................................... 36

E. Martin Pedersen ....................................................................................... 37 Her Space ................................................................................................. 38

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MRI .......................................................................................................... 39 Sudeep Soparkar ........................................................................................... 40

Energy ...................................................................................................... 41 Duane Anderson ........................................................................................... 42

Final Resting Spot..................................................................................... 43 The Life of a Dandelion ............................................................................ 44

Edward L. Canavan ...................................................................................... 45 Into the Naught ......................................................................................... 46 It All Ends ................................................................................................ 47

Cliff Saunders ............................................................................................... 48 A Matter of Life and Death ....................................................................... 49 The Crying Map........................................................................................ 50

Hibah Shabkhez ............................................................................................ 51 Vexed Watch-Paperweight ........................................................................ 52

Clinton Inman ............................................................................................... 53 God Particle .............................................................................................. 54 Piper Pann ................................................................................................ 55

Bruce McRae ................................................................................................ 56 Little Said Is Soonest Mended ................................................................... 57

DS Maolalai ................................................................................................. 58 Charm....................................................................................................... 59 Family Holidays ....................................................................................... 60

David Francis ............................................................................................... 61 Rediscovery .............................................................................................. 62 Endpaper .................................................................................................. 63

Silviu Craciunas ........................................................................................... 64 If the Universe Would Be.......................................................................... 65 The Last War ............................................................................................ 66

Nolo Segundo ............................................................................................... 67 The Tempering of the Soul ........................................................................ 68 A Letter from God .................................................................................... 69

4

Taylor Crowshaw

Taylor is a retired Insurance Underwriter. She lives in Ireland, on a smallholding surrounded by her various animals. Her passion for poetry has been a thread which has woven its way through her life. Her poetry is drawn from her own experiences. One of her inspirations is the pine forest which surrounds her home. She has

self published several books one of which is a unique autobiographical book written in rhyme.

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Always Yesterday Taylor Crowshaw

I saw you yesterday,

only for the briefest moment; when you thought nobody was watching.

Your smile slipped and your shoulders drooped; it was only the briefest moment,

when you thought nobody was watching.

I saw you yesterday. You flinched when we embraced; you thought I would not notice,

when you quickly pulled away.

The last time I saw you, we tenderly embraced.

A pungent sourness invaded my nostrils; I gagged.. and hoped you did not notice.

Now as I look upon your face,

fixed forever in a grimace. Belly swollen.

Lifeless, empty. I hope you did not notice.

To me; it is always, only yesterday.

6

The Matriarch Taylor Crowshaw

Swaying gently in the breeze, I am one of the tall pine trees.

Needles fall like rain, upon the forest's counterpane.

Cones like hailstones to the ground.

The forest animals alert to every sound. Stirrings from the forest floor, I wait to oversee proceedings,

a performance which I am leading.

You dare to sit on my branches birds. I shake you off, you flock,

as if you dare to mock.

The shadow which I cast afar, reaching upwards to the stars.

I am the overseer,

the matriarch. The immense tower of bark.

My roots an anchor from the wind,

my branches home to those with wings.

I have stood for decades here, the forest over which I preside,

the creatures who use my trees to hide.

This forest of pine..dozey but never completely asleep. Throughout the seasons we can see,

the comings and goings amongst the trees.

Stand I will for decades more, until finally my time will come.

When I will hear the deafening roar, and the machine will arrive with its mighty saw.

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Jonathan Dowdle Jonathan Douglas Dowdle was born in Nashua, NH and has traveled throughout the US, he currently resides in South Carolina. Previous works have appeared or are appearing in: Hobo Camp Review, 322 Review, The Opiate, The Right Place At The Write Time, Blue Hour Review, Whimperbang,

After The pause, Midnight Lane Boutique, Visitant, Adelaide, Blue Moon, Bitchin’ Kitsch And The Big Windows Review.

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Dream Traffic Jonathan Dowdle

Roads where all the lights go out; letters erased With trembling hands that try to read The thoughts that once spoke like heartbeats, Pressed to record the beat and rhythm; To rain emotional velvet out over The heart open wide to the rain of the thought. Lights that once spoke with life's thunder, Caught in the last of their glimmer before cracking; Stars, tragic in the last of their falling; Whisper wishes of one last breath of their life Before plummeting into the background; Where even silence would be a whisper, But the world is filled with the stillness of A gathering of collective hesitations. Nothing left to spell out but how the same old Soldiers of soul line up and fire; Woman on the wire hit and caught in the free fall; One more crash of what memory was, fit For the burial; knock of the train crashing Through some other door of tomorrow. The world that darkens like the final turn of a knife; That cuts out the thought that once bled sweet; A space for the light that might be heaven sent, That leads you down the darkened, dead end street; Where you rise from the broken thought that Clipped your weary knees; Where you rise to the waking of tomorrow's dream, From today's waking defeat.

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Observation Jonathan Dowdle

There are words wich proceeded these, though They are only the knots of glances, tied by memory, They are the rope of a body, the line that all limbs hang from; And how strange it is to wish for fresh horizons; go unknown among The dark streets and watch how the light cuts like a knife Through the dancing shadows, through the darkness. What few hours we have, and how wasted they feel If they bring not the constant traffic of joy, crossing the avenues, Lining the world with such gentle sparks, that the body Speaks in the traffic of its own glow. What strangeness of living, to do so much business with The phantoms of the skull and heart, and never settle into The touch that awakens the flesh and bone. If life is the wisdom that beckons from every corner, we remain strangers Even to ourselves in our deafness, and the poverty of our heart is The poverty of our life. What richness then, in the gentle gazes, and what wealth In the bodies that embrace the miracles of the day As it unfolds, like fingers waiting for their invitation to be accepted; For the dance of the heart to take place across the hour of the day. There are words which should follow these ones, expressions, glances, Glimpses, but some things are no better understood in speech, than they would be In silence.

10

Nels Hanson

Nels Hanson grew up on a small raisin and tree fruit farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014

Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

11

Pluto Nels Hanson

Once Pluto was a planet, then a dwarf planet and now scientists write in the journal Icarus our Sun’s farthest satellite is likely a giant comet or conglomeration of a billion comets and asteroids from the crowded Kuiper Belt beyond ringed blue Neptune’s orbit. Pluto was God of the Underworld and like dead souls streaking chunks of ice containing nitrogen may have gathered to make a world where the deceased might rest from Earth no longer home, the living busy with their repeating rounds of love and hate, frail peace and war, six or seven billon of us breathing now. The study is based on recent data from the European Rosetta spacecraft launched in 2004, then NASA’s New Horizon in 2006, eight years to reach the frozen land circling the Sun on an inclined plane, aslant to other members of the solar system, its journey elliptical, at times nearer our star than its closest neighbors, Sea God with his Triton and 13 smaller moons, an afterlife at times more sunlit four and a half billion miles from us.

12

Sentinels Nels Hanson

In a movie the plop of bullets piercing water like shot rockets that soon expend themselves, slow and drift down with the weight of lead like any stone’s brings an odd joy like the poured bucket’s triumph when the campfire’s ashes hiss. Shaking the burned-out bulb to hear its failed filament rattle is as good as throwing the broken clock on the dump. Children love to break windows of old houses. That relief lasts only for a while. Spiders are watching from quiet corners and moist dark of drains, silverfish emerge as evening falls. Outside, eyes arranged like Saturn’s rings encircle the house, animals our cars killed arrived as sentinels, fox and rabbit, masked raccoon, lowly opossum. Things we made, creatures already here say there’s no escape from time, fire, the food we’ll become, short span of deer.

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Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2019. For more information including free e-books and his essay

Magic, Illusion and Other Realities please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

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Untitled Poem 1 Simon Perchik

You no longer dig for shadows as if this hillside depends on you for water –what you hear is trapped between two suns one circling the other till nothing’s left but the afternoon and beneath letting its pieces fall off –you dead are always listening for the gesture the lowering that sweeps in those pebbles mourners leave as words, overflowing, certain now is the time –it’s not the time this dirt is afraid to open become a rain again, be a sky let it speak by throwing the Earth and over your shoulder, eyes closed though there is no grass and your arms a Weber, Miller, Marie.

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Untitled Poem 2 Simon Perchik

Even as silence you dead favor knots, brought here the way each grave is tightened counts on constant gathering and the arm over arm that hold the skies together as if some nesting bird would fly out from this hillside and leave behind its wings spread-eagle, letting go those small rocks mourners bring for your shoulders –you want rope not for its name but the weight still taking shape inside, kept empty and all around you the lowering.

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Adrian Flett

Adrian Flett born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal (1936) and grew up on a farm in the Richmond area. Farm schooled in early years and then Richmond School, from age 8 years then high school, Maritzburg College, 1950-1953. Self-employed Accounting and Tax Practice from 2001-2015. Now living in Howick, Natal. Studied through

UNISA majoring in English. Widowed with four children and seven grandchildren. He started writing at an early age, short stories, poems and three novels to date. Now an active member of PoemHunter and poems have been published in various poetry journals including AVBOB Poetry Project, Fidelities 2000-2002, VI-IX, a selection of contemporary poetry from South Africa.

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No Need of a Wide Vista Adrian Flett

Over early grass dew drops gather shaft sun’s oblique colour arrays stayed there in red yellow green and white, a colourful display. While the sun, ever still in this early time of day watches dew drops, me move as those refracted lights play. I have no need of a wide vista here is enough to fill the mind. My view of dew gathered sparkles leaves all troubled thoughts behind. While an oriole without response hounds this one-sided argument from a distant space, to his melodious notes I’m mute to respond If only I had the voice to enter the debate.

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The Demise the Rise of the Day Adrian Flett

The sun curls up folds itself away inward in a crepuscular way, fades into itself and gives sway as dusk draws in at the end of the day. What of the new day to come with vast vigour of the young, so filled with promise and expectation, packed prospects, and clarity of inception. So the demise of the day brings the hope of a better way, the rise of a new day we can trust to follow, to be even more robust.

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Edward Lee

Edward Lee‘s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

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A Pleasant Recollection Edward Lee

On occasion I find myself thinking of you, though I cannot remember your name, if I knew it at all; a chance encounter on the way home from the pub, led to an invite in, another drink, not needed, then some exploratory hours in your sheet-less bed, followed by conversation consisting of our separate dreams, hopes, broken by jokes, laughter, imaginings of other nights like this. I left as a lazy sun streaked the sky and never saw you again, though phone numbers were exchanged (I wonder which of us lost the other's first), and never really thought of you beyond moments like this, when my brain does some kind of mental stock-take, remainders of the pleasures of the past when hard days need softening. I hope you found someone to share laughter with everyday, someone to talk to through nights and into early mornings, and more than anything I hope all your dreams came true. Some of mine did, the ones that mattered, in the end.

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Forest Edward Lee

A forest grows in my heart, each tree's leafless branches scraping its four chambers, like fingernails on an icy window, the tightening sound they make echoing out through its muscled walls to paint my bones with paper thin cracks, out of which marrow leaks, darkening my already troubled blood until my skin bulges, each bump a shadow, each shadow a reminder of the delicate and temperamental nature of the heart, and the care one should embrace when handing it to someone with their own piercing forest in their own tender heart.

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George Freek

George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, IL. His poetry has recently appeared in Big Windows Review, The Chiron Review, Torrid Literature and The Adelaide magazine. His plays are published by Playscripts, Inc., Lazy Bee Scripts and Off

The Wall Plays.

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A Spring Storm (After Mei Yao Chen) George Freek

The spring floods have arrived. The river is swollen by an incoming tide. Boats move in and out, like a door was suddenly opened. Only last week they were frozen to the shore. Spring stirs thoughts of new beginnings. Flowers will emerge again. In a gentle spring rain, I momentarily forget winter I forget I’m fifty-six. But night brings a chill. The stars are far away, and when the moon’s rays break through the clouds, they shine on my wife’s grave.

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Death Is Not An Illusion (After Tu Fu) George Freek

A dismal line of people crawls along the dark street, like a snake shedding its skin. Stars throb like guitars, playing funereal tunes. Dimly shining in a black sky, is a weary moon. I have grown old too soon. I draw my shades, and turn off my lights. The darkness is unnerving. There’s no reason to procrastinate. There’s nothing left to write. I stay in my room. I pull my shade and wait. For what I can’t say, but it’s getting very late.

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Sandip Saha

Sandip Saha is a chemical engineer and doctorate (PhD) in metallurgical engineering from India. He has got three awards for his scientific work and 33 publications on his scientific research work including three patents. He is a winner of Poetry Matters Project Lit Prize-2018. He has published one collection of poems

(anthology), Quest for freedom available in amazon.com. He is published in many poetry journals including Better Than Starbucks Poetry Magazine, Pif Magazine, The Cape Rock: Poetry, Las Positas Anthology- Havik, Pasadena City College Inscape Magazine, Shot Glass Journal, The Wayne Literary Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, felan, Oddball, Snapdragon, The Ghazal Page all USA, in VerbalArt, Phenomenal Literature, India and in The Pangolin Review, Mauritius. North Dakota Quarterly, USA has accepted his poem for publication in upcoming issue.

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I Am Alone Sandip Saha

A deserted place divided by a fence nobody is around only a meadow is present there no other life. It is a barren land. Question arises and I look into myself. It is as if my life a photo copy created. I am standing in a landscape, a symbol of my life. Nobody really bothers for me whether I remain or not. It is true for all. Every inch of my life I alone have to live. Others will come and go. They will live their lives like me. When I was born I came alone, when I am fighting to live my life I am alone, when I shall leave I alone have to go, nobody will accompany me.

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In My Imagination Sandip Saha

I read through the pages of life to glimpse those very moments when some blessings came down from sacred place of consciousness. It was like a sweet dreamyou came in effulgent light flashing, mesmerizing the surrounding in the divine color and blissful presence. Was it only my imagination? I am not very sure, may be. Meditation went on and on you were walking in rhythm showering grace with wonderful affection. I looked at you and was amazed seeing you smiling. I lost my narrowness also worldly sense. A supreme feeling of fulfillment awakened me I bowed down praying to take me back to you.

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Ben Crawford

Ben Crawford is a writer, editor, and proofreader by profession. I have a self-published book of my early poems on Amazon (Early Poems and a Haiku). I enjoy traveling and writing about those experiences and the events around me. I play baseball,

tennis, and practice drumming and yoga in my spare time.

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I Test Ben Crawford

I don’t know when I first knew death was out for me. In church, I gave myself the “I” test. – Who am I? When am I? What am I? – I was in church after all. I thought, I’ll go see him. I’ll get baptized. I’ll wait my life out. Then I’ll ask. I’m waiting, so I pondered death, and how to make it fair to Heaven. No suicide – that’s out. Be neighborly. Neighbors made that stressful. I found heaven and God unassured. I asked, what next? What will hunting death bring me? I was no longer guaranteed my family or soul. I dropped both. I implore god no longer. He’s there waiting with anticipated glee. I think of death in the meantime. For life is trivial, as at its ending, I will have had no answers, no sureties, from the Almighty. I strive in aimless pursuit of the question that only arrives at death. I boringly wait for that onrushing answer. The Death God answers.

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Thicker Blood Ben Crawford

Marty etched on the underside, Lifted, exalted, and cheered. Friends drinking the thicker liquid In steins Hung above bartops grimy Acid dripping From the cirrhosis compacting Yesterday’s intake. The brotherhood that exits neon Arrives pale-shaded Wives’ gloom storm the fortress Filed fingernails A head smacking on the bathroom floor Sirens slur. Cars parked straightly ordering after-work-time Sipping stifles Conversations of subjective reports Police and financial Cars parked coiled after-beer-time Mumbles muffled Candice in black and blue doppler shifts In time, rhythm to melody, With the blinkers blinding bystanders, Children, Needing bloated organs Awaiting thicker blood.

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Ann Chiappetta

Ann Chiappetta M.S. is an author and poet. Her writing has been featured in many small press publications and collegiate journals. Ann’s nonfiction essays have been printed in Dialogue magazine. And her poems are often featured in Poesis, The Pangolin Review and Magnets and Ladders. Her poetry is also included in Breath and Shadow’s 2016

debut anthology, Dozen: The Best of Breath and Shadow. Her books, a poetry collection, UPWELLING: POEMS C 2016, memoir, FOLLOW YOUR DOG A STORY OF LOVE AND TRUST C 2017, and WORDS OF LIFE: POEMS AND ESSAYS C 2019 are available in both e-book and print formats from www.dldbooks.com/annchiappetta/. Ann’s blog: www.thought-wheel.com. Ann’s personal website: www.annchiappetta.com

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Botany Ann Chiappetta

softly pointed silken petals unfolded delicately. Some spiral to the ground. Such a sweet nectar. forssythia blooms trumpet-buds announce flavors of honey-sweet spring.

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First Fruit Ann Chiappetta

The self-medicating stroll Through the loamy groves and orchards Pacing among gnarled limbs Fruit dangling, unharvested thoughts Pass over the mealy, macantosh Consider and reject the romes and grannys Find the row of fujus, sweet-tart and crunchy It satisfies the tongue like a vivid recollection The organic globe Stirs temptation invites the evil within.

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Robin Ray

Robin Ray, formerly from Trinidad & Tobago, lives in Port Townsend, WA. Educated in English Composition at Iowa State University, his works have appeared at Aphelion, Spark, Flash Fiction World, Neologism Poetry Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, Red Fez, and elsewhere.

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Alpha Particle Robin Ray

Miles the Davis kind lift in my Manhattan studio thought i saw arcus senilis milky gray ring around his irises they stared into mine afraid to offer my hand rumored trumpet players would rather pound kebab spears in their knees than suffer broken phalanges silent legend at least one million questions flooded my brain none escaped just a bow an acknowledgement at the lip of an ocean I was in the presence of Alexander the Great.

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Terminal Velocity Robin Ray

downtown bus terminals playgrounds for villains no place to kiss in LA steal your babies if you snooze Denver pickpockets are showboat magicians imagine your wallet in their hands and it happens if you snooze Chicago out-lucked by a firearm quell the itch to disappear within you if you snooze by snooze i don’t mean sleep that’s for the surrendered i mean awareness cameras in your clavicles third eye uncovered smiles are doubled-edged swords engagingly distracting nefarious fingers at work be switched on like Bach don’t say you haven’t been warned.

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E. Martin Pedersen

E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over 35 years in eastern Sicily where he teaches English at the local university. His poetry has appeared in The James Dickey Review, Ink in Thirds, Mused, Oddville, Former People, The Bitchin’ Kitsch and others. Martin is an alum of the Squaw

Valley Community of Writers.

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Her Space E. Martin Pedersen

Inside every woman Is the dark vacuum of space A universe of stars, planets Comets, black holes, radioactive rings And so much emptiness That whatever activity occurs Good or bad are not considerations We thrill with interest As movement and interaction Imply life, or at least Spectacle. We believe that if you shout No one will hear But there is life on billions of planets Out there all over It only seems like the cosmos is large Really it’s a teeming city crammed With commerce, trash and laughter Beyond all literary limits. Does one space rock crashing Into another go thud? A splash with dust arising When something flames into The atmosphere of something else Does it make heat, friction? How far away can you feel it? These old philosophical questions Are very important to A woman. When a big burning ball flies Through an area of no-oxygen air A storm presumed incoming Outside she seems crabby today “Why can’t you ever Load the dishwasher right?” I’m too dumb to guess The cause – a military meteor shower Of splendid holy illumination To so much going on In her space.

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MRI E. Martin Pedersen

I just want this to be over Staring at the pale yellow light Staring at the light Listening to the worst electronic music I just want this to be over My head is pounding My shoulders hurt My chest rises and falls stay still I need to swallow I want this to be over Help, I am a prisoner here Locked in, my head and torso in a bucket of neutrons damaging my insides I wish this were over I could see the clouds Breathe the air by the orchards See women and children first But it’s not over stay still What if it’s never over This my eternal lot No escape, that’s life What’s life? A drink of water The sun on your hair My fingers in your hair or hers I just want this to be over I really really … Would liberation be enough? Freedom of movement To spin like a gyroscope a whirling dervish Yearning for magnetic north Home school job family plot blur What we think of as enough Enough or is it I just want this to be over.

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Sudeep Soparkar

Sudeep is a creative nerd and a recovering addict who loves to express himself through poems. Currently working in the field of engineering, he finds a sense of satisfaction in writing poems.

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Energy Sudeep Soparkar

Letting go of the thoughts That race through my mind And patiently wait For the stillness inside A connection to peace Dwells within With a quiet mind My journey begins My body null And wonderfully void As I seep through the walls That hold back the quiet Blissfully lost As I move past my mind And enter the gap And become one with the Divine Instantly molten As I seamlessly blend With the energy of life No beginning, no end I am fire and ice I am the blackness of light And the stars that shine In the heavens so bright I am the waves that lap And polish the shore As I dance and dazzle In the salt sea air I am the rains that fall From the swollen sky And the winds that sweep Across the mountains high I find my way To the valleys below Around each turn To the ocean I flow I am the ocean With strength and might I am thunder and lightning And I am the night I am the grass, hills and trees The moonbeams, the sun rays A warm playful breeze I am one, I am all.

42

Duane Anderson

Duane currently lives in La Vista, NE. He graduated from Augustana College located in Rock Island, IL and worked at Union Pacific Railroad for 37 years where he retired from in 2013. After his retirement, he started writing poetry again after too long of an absence. He now volunteers with the American

Red Cross as a Donor Ambassador on their blood drives. He has had poems published in Poetry Quarterly, Fine Lines, The Sea Letter, Cholla Needles, Wilderness House Literary Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine and several other publications.

43

Final Resting Spot Duane Anderson

The neighbor’s potted plant rested on the deck in their backyard, its leaves and stems brown, its roots no longer requiring water or leaves requiring sunlight from the frost having taken its once flourishing life, and now it is winter, covered by snow, sitting next to deck furniture that would not see any use for months, until warmer weather had returned and the snow had melted allowing one to sit in comfort without the use of a warm coat and hat. As for the plant, there did not seem to be any plans in the near future for a celebration of life service, or any burial, unless one calls the snow now covering it as its final resting spot.

44

The Life of a Dandelion Duane Anderson

I noticed him holding a dandelion puller as I strolled past him on my walk, telling me that they all seemed to disappear when he held it out in plain sight, as if the dandelions could see what tool of destruction he had in place for them, or at least sensed its threat. I just laughed and pointed one out to him having no trouble finding them, especially when they showed everyone their true colors, their yellow flower in full bloom, just hoping to live long enough to allow its flower to dry up then wait for the wind to harvest its seeds and distribute them over other parts of the yard so its children too would have a chance to grow and prosper. As I continued my walk, I wished him good luck, hoping that he succeeded with his dandelion infected yard.

45

Edward L. Canavan

Edward L. Canavan is an American poet whose work has been published in The Opiate, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Cholla Needles. His first poetry collection entitled Wreck Collection was recently released by Cyberwit Press. Edward currently resides in North Hollywood, California.

46

Into the Naught Edward L. Canavan

blue roses beyond comprehension whispers strum the mist like the strings of a burning harp a stillborn song stuck in the throat a suite of beautifu l atrocity nailed to our cross to bear.

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It All Ends Edward L. Canavan

good things gone maybe better remembered as nothing more than a near miss and on to the next no reason to remain time eventually disappears from the equation revealed as the swirling illusion it is and all you’re left with is whatever holds your heart.

48

Cliff Saunders

Cliff Saunders has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Arizona. His poems have appeared recently in The Wayne Literary Review, Pedestal Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Pinyon, San Pedro River Review, North of Oxford, and Cardinal Sins. He lives in Myrtle Beach, where he serves as co-coordinator of The Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series.

49

A Matter of Life and Death Cliff Saunders

A dying man isn’t dying, he’s flying into his own hands like a bird when it opens its wings. He walks as he runs: toward a battle of giant pandas, toward self-acceptance. Will he hear the footsteps? Finally put it all together? Perhaps not, but he can’t stop wearing black. He’s back: a changeling himself who isn’t there until he dies. He’s a very good one to unleash the fire from a jar of dependability. Near the end, wind drives him wild as it strengthens by his bed. On his back, he looks like a determined cloud painter, a seal pup on a wintry beach. As old as jazz itself, he keeps a magic number in his blood, a heavenly hand in his heart. He milks sweet surrender for the glory of love. His dreams are haunted by the sound of water trickling through a rocky path. He hears village clocks ticking while he’s sleeping. He flies too near the sun. Soon he’ll run over a bridge with his icy guitar in his hands. He will run because he has to. There he is! That’s him, sprinting naked in the cold past nests along the shore.

50

The Crying Map Cliff Saunders

Fall’s evening light has me hooked on the horizon, where I come to get some peace and quiet, where eagles fly over the skeptics who believe that kites are the flipside of motherhood. The shape of light is my home. Far from home, I see a bright painted bunting pulled from its silence by lightning over a composer’s dwelling. I have nothing to hide today because of rain that’s not too hot, and everything I refuse to surrender to the birds on Saturday should hang in every woman’s closet. It’s surprising how fast the nest of desperation triples in size. The temporary kingdom of night makes me feel like entering sunset with the wind in my pocket. But the map of freedom acryin’ over my radio is my priority now. In the end, take me to the river that runs through grief, through blockades of ice. Take me along its return to the others, the rocky coast and the pines. The heart says: Hear me. Let me think about it. I say: New magma mixes with old. My heart is throbbing, but this time I believe it’s simply full. My heart—it’s everywhere now!

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Hibah Shabkhez

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in The Mojave Heart Review, Third Wednesday, Brine, and a number of other literary

magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Blog: https://hibahshabkhezxicc.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @hibahshabkhez

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Vexed Watch-Paperweight Hibah Shabkhez

Chaining to its sister wood the blank stretch Of squirming sheet that you pierce and begrime I am now a paper-jailor. A wretch On the wane, a faded effigy of time. Then set in leather and gilt on your wrist, Now sleepwalking to death in a shame-mist.

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Clinton Inman

Born in England, graduated SDSU in 1977, retired England teacher Tampa, now living with wife, Elba, in Florida.

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God Particle Clinton Inman

You were quite perennial in purple robes Proud first principle with golden nimbus Prime Mover with a handful of alphas and omegas Perfect paragon, once the standard model Now they say you are just a charged particle And all quite mathematical and symmetrical From Nu to Zeta Bosons in massive force Spinning in their chaotic quantum course. I looked for you as I poked through the ashes Smashed to bits by the altar of atomic physics They say you are no longer in the syllabus Or in any of the equations of analytic calculus Yet still I hold onto your Platonic puzzle And believe you are in there somewhere, Father Particle.

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Piper Pann Clinton Inman

Out fr om his grotto and grassy glen The Piper Pan will play again Casting his charms for all to hear Over the fields and forests near. Dizzy the dance in moonlight dells With golden cups and magic spells As the Piper plays his rustic pipes While Bacchus rounds the purple rites. The pastoral pipes play so clear The Sylvan songs we long to hear As Dionysian delights return again When the piper will play again.

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Bruce McRae

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,500 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An

Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

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Little Said Is Soonest Mended Bruce McRae

A wink and a nod as lingua franca. Blood spilt over le mot juste. The interpreter and interlocutor at odds over a t someone neglected to cross in their hurry. The sticks and stones of words that only hurt you. How insults are hurled and spells cast, a mouthful of mumble and mumbo jumbo. Gossip and rumour the sewn mouth’s ineloquence. So hold your tongue, words are on the wind. Bite your lip, lest the truth be said and done. If you tell the waters of the world your secret they shall reveal them to the sea.

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DS Maolalai

DS Maolalai is a poet from Ireland, currently back there after some time living in Toronto. His work has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking

Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)

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Charm DS Maolalai

like kicking the teeth of a piano or barging into it at a party when finally you've grown drunk enough to play. storms come down with fingers in a barrage of bad confidence but still sometimes good enough to impress.

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Family Holidays DS Maolalai

trapped between trucks on a three lane motorway. roars all over and the world only ahead of us. boxed in, like looking through a basement window. and smoke all up, oil burning, the radio on and the whole of our right side reading P&O FERRIES. outside louder than god kicking wasp-nests. my sister rolling up her windows, my dad stressed and cursing all lorry drivers, my mother bent forward, her knuckles immobile, tight at the top of the wheel.

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David Francis

David Francis has produced six albums of songs, one of poems, and Always/Far, a chapbook of lyrics and drawings. He has written and directed the films Village Folksinger (2013) and Memory Journey (2018). His poetry and short stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.

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Rediscovery David Francis

It is very quiet in Soho on a Saturday night if you stand still on lower Crosby Street and look up at six lit windows then the cornice, the sky sure, the echo of the siren is loud but it is still silent and the first excitement stirs in you and frees you of what you had come from on the numbing, stalling train: the preponderance of unremembered dreams scores to settle or repress the alienating crowds the tyranny of your thoughts if you stand still and look up it is quiet, even silent a man runs on the cobblestones clutching white and gold balloons trying to get home it must be Christmastime the SHAFTWAY is in red lettering on upper Mercer Street.

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Endpaper David Francis

Man is a lonely blight upon the world putting words out in space like frozen breath meanwhile deep flowing translucent water lets sunlight penetrate it with beauty

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Silviu Craciunas

Silviu Crăciunaș holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and was an Associate Professor at the University of Sibiu, Romania, before retiring and dedicating himself to writing. He started writing poetry and prose, texts published in literary magazines (Everyday Poems, The Transnational, Section 8

Magazine, Indian Literature Review, Panel Magazine, Oglinda literară, Rapsodia, Alternațe). His first novel In Destiny’s Shadow, based on the 1999 NATO bombing of Surdulica, was published by Excelsior Art Publishing House. His second novel Lazaret – Wandering Souls, published by Eikon Publishing House, is the story of a doctor in training at a psychiatric hospital who, while treating a young lady, lives the experience of his own split personality.

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If the Universe Would Be Silviu Craciunas

If the Universe would be just a dream, if the earth would be just something lost in the Universe’s mind, if the whole sky would be a magic mirror to say what we really are, if we all spoke the same language, the Universe’s language, and if we would embrace nights of fear with the sun of love, I really ask me do we need a God? I do not know, but I know that no one ever dreams and there are too many angels on the altar of too many beliefs.

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The Last War Silviu Craciunas

War is breathing in the loins of life, laughing far away from the bullet of justice leaving traps of weapons' games, spraying blood, hurling entrails. War hides in innocent speeches, histories of justice and lies about states, nations, wealth, honour, destinies, born in palaces and bathed in feasts. War rises from the fields of life, breath freezing the crops of the harvest, a rain of tears gets lost in the pain and words forgotten in realms of silence. War lives with the times to come, running around the world, gets lost, returns, turning to ash the edifice of the mind with open eyes, lost due to feelings. From bodies hidden by the forgetful instant, through broken stones, smiling at the indifference, rise gardens filled with life's fragrance far away, lost, in haze forgotten. It is the day plucked from passed night and Man looks at the embers he rummages, orphaned by war, he's left alone in the world, by his side, the enemy, lifeless, unnamed.

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Nolo Segundo

The poet is in his 70's now and has lead a peaceful life since his marriage almost 40 years ago. But his 20's-- the time he came of age-- were more like Dickins' '...the best of times, the worst of times...'. At 20 he went to England to do his junior year abroad. A couple years after college he suffered a major clinical depression;

he almost drowned in a Vermont river and had a near-death experience, one that shook his former agnosticism to the core. He was opposed to the Vietnam War yet for some reason, still rather inscrutable to him, he went to teach ESL in the war zone of Phnom-Penh, Cambodia, in '73-'74. There he developed a deep affection for the Cambodian people, and though he heard stories about the brutality of the Khmer Rouge towards their own people, he could not believe they would have been capable of the genocide of the 'killing fields'. After the war forced him to leave Cambodia, he spent over a year teaching ESL in Taipei and later Tokyo. A year after he returned, he met the woman he would married. Some of his poems are about the strange thing called aging and its paradox of wearing down the body while gradually-- or so it seems to him-- freeing the soul. The rest try to explore that inexplicable Mystery permeating each one of us and that seems to manifest Itself every so often, in ways subtle or strange. At times the poet has felt that life is just one long dream, and he has dreamt such dreams many, many times before.

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The Tempering of the Soul Nolo Segundo

I have lived a thousand lives, Died a thousand deaths. I have loved women unbounded And fathered an army of children. I have killed and healed, Stolen and blessed, Fought and fled. Jew, Christian, Muslim I have been, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain too. I worshipped the sun and Thor, And pagan gods galore. I was atheistic, agnostic, Marxist And often, just indifferent. I was poet and philanderer, Philosopher and philanthropist, Theologian and scientist—also Guard and prisoner, Lover and betrayed. All my lives were dreams, Each slipping away forgotten Early in dawn of the next life, None to be recalled Until I awaken In the time beyond time.

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A Letter from God Nolo Segundo

Why are we so stupid, Lord? Why do we yell and shout, Rant and rave, pillage and kill? Why do we cheat and lie, Ignore and disdain, Leave and abandon? We could all be so close, So loving, so kind. After all— We all share the same things: The fresh air, the blue sky, The moonlit nights. We all have the same fears: Loneliness and sickness, Poverty and death. We all hold fast To the same hopes and dreams— Friends and family of love, perhaps Happy children whirling Like small dervishes In their own little worlds. A bit of praise, a kind word, Work that goes well. I wrote this as a poem But it is really a prayer. I spoke it aloud so many times, Even unto the thick part Of the blackest night Until I fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke the next morn, The mail had come early. I opened an envelope That had no stamp. Handwritten in unreal beauty, It began quite formally:

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Dear Mr. and my name, I have broken my own rule To write you, but you are So very persistent! If life were easy, You would not feel alive. [over] If love were easy, You would not value it. And if I were easy, You would never seek me. Faithfully yours, God

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Taylor CrowshawAlways YesterdayThe Matriarch

Jonathan DowdleDream TrafficObservation

Nels HansonPlutoSentinels

Simon PerchikUntitled Poem 1Untitled Poem 2

Adrian FlettNo Need of a Wide VistaThe Demise the Rise of the Day

Edward LeeA Pleasant RecollectionForest

George FreekA Spring Storm (After Mei Yao Chen)Death Is Not An Illusion (After Tu Fu)

Sandip SahaI Am AloneIn My Imagination

Ben CrawfordI TestThicker Blood

Ann ChiappettaBotanyFirst Fruit

Robin RayAlpha ParticleTerminal Velocity

E. Martin PedersenHer SpaceMRI

Sudeep SoparkarEnergy

Duane AndersonFinal Resting SpotThe Life of a Dandelion

Edward L. CanavanInto the NaughtIt All Ends

Cliff SaundersA Matter of Life and DeathThe Crying Map

Hibah ShabkhezVexed Watch-Paperweight

Clinton InmanGod ParticlePiper Pann

Bruce McRaeLittle Said Is Soonest Mended

DS MaolalaiCharmFamily Holidays

David FrancisRediscoveryEndpaper

Silviu CraciunasIf the Universe Would BeThe Last War

Nolo SegundoThe Tempering of the SoulA Letter from God