Lynn Long is a poet, writer, voice artist, aspiring screenwriter/lyricist, floating on moonbeams adrift in hope. She has had six poetry books published and a new one entitled The Muse Within will be published soon. She considers her writings as reflections of reverie as she journeys on the path back to her.
Here are some poems by Lynn Long:
Time Effervescent
Memories of childhood For me, a blur… A contortion of thoughts Rooms larger in my child’s mind Filled with music and light And shadows too. Hidden in plain sight Where a thinly disguised veil often hung Casually draped over the windows and above the doors A remnant of youth I carry with me Alas, all that is seen is never truly as it seems. And though the veil disguised Remained There awaited a magical place Just beyond its reach Lined with citrus and magnolia trees Beckoning with the first rays of dawn I can still remember sitting beneath those trees. The feelings of innocence shared with friends and siblings- as we told stories and took swigs from a soda bottle Germs… never a forefront of thought in our minds Dreaming of future worlds… Knowing we’d someday leave this one behind. And time… effervescent as the bubbles in Ginger Ale Escaping without our consent
The Wildflower
The Awakening of her soul didn’t happen in the resounding of fireworks illuminating the ebony sea – as she had so often dreamed. Instead, it came in the watering of a wildflower growing by the roadside Wilting in the heat of a hot summer sun Often overlooked by many passers-by Told to let it be- for it will either flourish or it will die… But where they saw a weed, she saw hope and beauty Alive And so she watered the hope Growing by the roadside Wilting in the heat of a hot summer sun And she watched it flourish. And she watched it bloom. And its blossom became a tree And the many passers- by Who could only see a weed Marvelled at the beauty Alive Where once overlooked Left to flourish … or to die
Seeking the Sustainable Dream
Caught up in the nine to five Still seeking the sustainable dream Entwining the two… A spider’s web of deceit For time ever moving A vortex in the abyss of one’s soul Alas, mere perception Pauses in the creative flow Like a lasso to the moon The kraken’s tentacle pulls Gravity beckons And for just a moment I’ve lost the muse Yet, the artist within still resides Dancing the wanton path Waltzing high In homage to reverie A symphony at play Time ever present Hear the Koto sing Hidden hues still sought Amid a barren plain Splashes of color Upon the black canvas of dreams.
International Dylan Thomas Day is celebrated every year on 14 May. As a representative of Immagine and Poesia (founded by the patronage of Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan Thomas) and upon the approval of the Dylan Thomas Trust , I am conducting International Dylan Thomas Day 2023 online.
I invite all writers/ poets interested to submit one poem or micro-story (flash fiction) in English about the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas or appreciation of his works to: vatsfrankness@gmail.com
Only poems or stories with proper imagery and theme in context and having a refined language will be accepted.
If your work is accepted, you will receive an acceptance e-mail within 1 week of your submission.
Deadline: 2 May 2023
All accepted works will be published on my blog: vatsalaradwritingworld.home.blog
Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran and prize-winning poet from New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma.
He has six poetry collections to date: The Cellaring, A Taint of Pity, Zephyr’s Whisper, The Cellaring – Second Edition, Sonnets and Scribbles, and his latest collaborative book, Inamorata at Twilight.
Ken has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize and seven times for Best of the Net. He was First Prize Winner for the 2018 and2019, Realistic Poetry International Nature Poetry Contests. He has recently begun producing Creative Content on his YouTube channel and has had wonderful success sharing his poetry with the social media community. Ken loves writing, thunderstorms,coin collecting and spending time with his rescue cats Willa,Yumpy, and Melly.
Here are two poems by Ken Allan Dronsfield:
Fragility
Cloistered comments;
a difference of conscience.
Experience the ego;
a soulless insensitive.
Baseless or faithless;
a compassionate reason.
Impurity gathers surety;
rings and things of love.
Dreamy raucous visions;
dancing upon a whirlwind.
Full moon’s last breath;
work on the rejection.
Cherish the treasured bridal vow;
melted, brittle and broken.
Faking all the pleasures left;
for we’re all quite fragile.
Sepia at Sunset
Behind you are all your memories; Before you lay all of your dreams; Around you are those who love you; Deep within lies the passion for life.
Once again, it’s autumn my friend and leaves and temperatures do fall. I’ve been here in the squally scends; weeping willows and waves withal.
Been too long in tempestuous rains fingers wrinkled like dried prunes. Coldness felt deep within my brain hair wet and dripping by the dunes.
Tranquillity whispers upon my skin; With a crescendo of a chilled sensation. Anticipate a warmth watching puffins; basking serenely in the sepia elation.
Deeya Bhattacharya is a PUSHCART PRIZE Nominee (2022) and a published poet based out of Kolkata. Her works span the internet in various poetry sites, journals and e-zines. She has to her credit nine anthologies. She is a poetry critic and co-edited an Anthology on Autism under the banner of “Different Truths” publication 2018, India. Some of her works have appeared in Scarlet Leaf Review (USA), Shot Glass Journal, Oddball Magazine (USA), Piker Press, OVS Mag, The Green Silk Journal (USA) and many more. Her debut collection of poems Ashes of a Collage has currently been published by Penprints Publication India.2022
Apart from writing poetry, she teaches in a GOVT-SPONSORED Higher-Secondary School in West-Bengal, India.
Here are some poems by Deeya Bhattacharya:
Scars
You have a home near the sea ticking in an hourglass – The fragrance of the sand here is a memory You long for a real home.
Here dragons breathe fire In fierce Orient tales of finest silken weave. A garden of ephemeral sadness houses nymphs handing over legacies to generations of mankind.
You have handed me a paper full of scribbles and lost hopes. In one of them, I see an old man dancing to a tambourine, his hat full of coins, jingling from one end to the other. His toothless smile serpents like births an effortless Twilight of dreams being sorted- the good ones from the bad and each a chapter in discomforting darkness where your body searches for mine, and we swim past stars making love, their bodies full of scars.
Urban Love
You smile
I cook inherent necessity in it
an ugly dish of overcooked veggies
stale meat, burnt pie
served in a chaotic manner,
You smile.
I calculate the oddity of it against
an unsanctioned appetite and as I
watch the sky, I unlearn the mysteries
of Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez.
I often complain of the musty air
that accompanies a hungry night,
my survival instinct turning gibberish
lacklustre, and downpour of longing
rain smashing against the window pane
seeping in.
I inhabit-
the by lanes of an intimate city, its gullies
the flavour of its pickles, unsavoury ghettoes.
Far somewhere
the strumming of a guitar accompanies the
expedite in war, immigration, industry and agriculture.
The art of losing
isn’t hard to master
so many things seem filled with the
intent to be lost.
The loss is no death.
A galaxy dies like a snowflake
falling on water, and I figure out
the lost syllables of urban love
Megata’s Dream.
The sky was starlike in Megata’s dream, thousand fireflies giving birth to a luminous sea in her eyes-
Suddenly, the falling star, the sky spreads out its talons in an open embrace and threw up
What emerged on Megata’s palm was the slushy embrace of colonial bruises stored in silicone jars buried underneath the ailing earth.
The dribbling juice on her vicious palm the bed of primeval loam, where centuries of civilizations lay secrete.
Her predator eyes, emerald blood sienna lips all drank from the visceral earth.
This and everything at once, wrapped up dissipated carrying in its wake the curse of Medusa, an evanescent dream Megata’s Dream.
If you wish to have your poetry chapbooks, poetry books, children books (prose and poetry) translated from English to French French to English Mauritian Kreol to English English to Mauritian Kreol please feel free to send them to :
vatsfrankness@gmail.com
Translation Fee: $0.08 (Rs 3.52 Mauritian currency) per word
Translation of Individual poems may also be considered. Please send a minimum of 5 poems if you wish to have a small number of your poems translated. Those poems will be published on my blog.
Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press, USA. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, and several other publications. He was placed in the top 100 out of 12,500 entries for the Erbacce prize in 2021, and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s first short fiction contest. He was longlisted for the Rahim Karim World Prize in 2022 and given the honor of Knight of World Peace by the World Peace Institute that same year. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on YouTube.
Here are some poems and a short story by Dustin Pickering:
I want now
i want now to want more, something under me is demanding. the hours watch as light descends, hours passing. tilting my head from one height to another, i recognize her autumn loves.
the soul does not cry for the red wraith. she is distant from this island of time. opaque are beaches of broken eyes— o, but they will never want me. trees guard the sanctity of life.
think again of the bridge you burnt in the stillness of one a.m. the iambic of your spirit kills the frivolous. much divinity is compunction to this discerning eye.
i want now to want you, to engage your sleepy touches and think only of the medicine of your powers, my doctor, my favorite, my eyes…
The scent of musk, the scent of mink
I wander within the closed error— Time knows nothing of me My womb winnows through the silence. Charred remains are rivers and chasms.
I come close to the night as the stars glisten on my face. An error, an error, Nothing knows me as the same universe When I am in love with the imagination.
Glow with me, sense the starving animal Within me— A dying dream of flaxen earth, fallen and afraid. The mind ignores crimson derelicts Hypnotized on the streets of bliss. Blacker than the sounds of harmonies free, The mannequin silenced on the bridge Where suicides never happened, We listen to each other As the fuckery ends.
New Birth
sleep the shallows, sleep the currents, drown the majestic, eat the righteous plum.
shadow your eyes, shadow the stars, do not look for grace, there is nothing beyond!
sleep as a child, do not bite your hands, keep the pencil rolling on the desk of your heart.
we hear your voice, we know the singing of time, all is a fabrication of the beastly nature, animals are the soul.
do not demand demons, uncloistered harmonies; instead think of the molecules dancing, science is a new birth.
Christmas Wishes
At the end of the evening we walked together until we reached her porch. She gave me a peck on the cheek as if to tell me she was fond. I felt that I was in love but did not have the ability to mouth it.
She turned, her golden locks of hair bounced against her back. I felt her back was most savory and gentle part of her. When she turned to walk askance, I felt the hinges of love turn in my heart. Somehow I knew she was to be my future wife and I, her husband.
She smiled toward me one last time before entering her house. Then she waved each individual finger at me in goodbye. We planned to see each other, spontaneously, because our relationship had reached that point. As I shifted my attention to the left of me, I noticed a small mulberry bush. Some of its leaves were tinged bright red like holly. Christmastime was nearing and I felt warm in an attentive golden glow from the shining sun above.
I smiled and walked back to my shabby apartment three streets down. I swung my gloves around happily as a schoolboy.
*
Midnight neared as I listened carefully to the bells outside. They struck delirious chords in the aftermath of my sleep. I woke several hours before and could not return to my dream state. In my dream, she was with me and we were children again. Clouds mistily hung above us, developing heaviness like a tired eye.
As they neared we were happily engaging with one another, laughing and talking as children do when there is else to occupy them. Finally I looked up and saw what appeared to be a shaft of light, sword-like, emerging from the dismal thickness of clouds. The sky appeared filled with strange moods and images. I was frightened but heroic in protecting my love.
When I awoke, it was early in the darker hours. I sighed heavily in relief.
She would be near me again and my passion would be foresworn momentarily.
*
I arrived at her house at the usual hour. The maid told me she was not home.
“Can I wait?” I asked.
“No, she won’t return for some time now,” the maid replied. Her nose turned up to the sky briefly in an arrogant manner.
I held my umbrella. When the door shut before me, I felt tears on my cheeks. Anger overrode my ability to think. Do they think just because I am a poor scholar, I cannot love a gentle woman such as she?
My teeth bit into my lip a little before I became aware. I looked at the same tree as I had seen before. A young boy dressed all in white sat at the bush now.
“Hello sir,” he said to me. “Would you care for a newspaper?” I reluctantly responded. My initial impulse was to turn quickly away.
“You have to answer me before you leave.”
“Who are you?” I asked in sudden shame. I stuttered slightly in speech.
“Well, sir. I am the Ghost of Beastliness.”
“OK, so this is some Dickens’s, novel I walked into?” I chuckled.
“I have a question for you sir.”
“Other than the one you already asked?” I responded with impatience.
“No, or I actually I mean yes,” the boy said.
“Make up your mind,” I snapped.
“Well that is what I was going to ask you.”
“OK, going forward…”
“If I offered you 100 million dollars to kill your girlfriend, and I would protect you from repercussions, would you do it?”
“What kind of lousy question is that?” I snarled. “Of course not.”
“What if I also said you would die yourself if you refused?” The boy smiled with a passive charm.
“What is at stake here?”
“Nothing but your life, or her life.” I was suddenly aware the boy was dressed in a boy sailor outfit and had a devilish grin.
“What other choices would I have?” He intrigued me although I could not figure him out.
“None, her or you. 100 million dollars or your life.” There was small glint in his eye when he asked.
“Who are you, really?”
“The Ghost of Beastliness, sir. Nothing more.”
Again I started to leave but a strong wind gripped me like a man carrying a sidearm. “What, what was that?”
“You cannot leave. You see how they treat you, Make a choice.”
“Well, would the death be painless?” As my selfish impulses took root, the red on the mulberry appeared to be droplets of blood, thickening and oozing on the leaves. The sun appeared more like gold to my greedy impulse.
“Painless, yes,” the boy said. “Of course.”
“What is at stake? I don’t understand why you suggest I must choose one or the other.”
“This is to test you.”
“And if I pass?” I felt relieved.
“You can’t pass. This determines what direction your life will take from here.”
“On whose authority do you stand before me?”
“God.”
“And God seeks my answer?” I shouted.
“No, he seeks your resolve.” The boy grinned slightly, cocking his head to the side.
“In that case I can no longer bear this question! I choose to kill her!”
“Good. Moving forward you will encounter me again, but I will be in a blue suit instead of white and I will be somewhat older.” The boy then disappeared.
I stood still, in shock. My teeth were clenched tight and tears welled in my eyes.
*
The next morning I woke as usual. I walked to her place as I was accustomed. She was there. She dressed casually in green.
I smiled shyly after my meeting with the boy.
“Hello, my love…”
“Hello, Gregory.”
“Good afternoon, isn’t it?” I said.
“I think so,” she smiled. I was relieved she was alive.
“What do we do today?”
“We can go to the library and observe the children,” she spoke with high-minded candor.
“Yes, can we talk on the way?” I wasn’t sure what we would talk about,
“Oh, of course, We always do, do we not?” She chuckled. Suddenly I observed that her smile was patronizing somehow.
“I feel something has changed between us. I don’t know what.”
“Well, do go on then,” she said.
“How do I tell you what happened to me yesterday? I met a young boy.”
“OK, so was he kind?”
“Yes. No. I honestly don’t know.” I stood still a moment. How could I tell her?
“Well do tell me what this boy said, or did.”
“I can’t…I…this has really changed my conscience… my vision of myself…I don’t know how to tell you.”
“This sounds serious for a young boy.”
“Believe me, it was devastatingly serious.”
We stood at the library doors. I suddenly took a deep breath.
“Well, tell me then.”
“Listen, I can’t. It’s just too much. I cannot even believe what I experienced. This boy, he asked me something.”
“What did he ask?” Her genial mannerisms were bright to me in the moment.
“I really can’t say. Look, it is very bad that we are here together.” I blinked as I spoke.
“What could you possibly mean?” Her tone was doubtful and frustrated.
*
After the last imbroglio between us, I did not return to visit for a long time.
When I did, there was a young man standing at the door holding a hoop. He spoke in irrational and disturbed phrases but he spoke clearly.
“Got ya on the pantomime, don’t I?”
“What? Oh, god….this isn’t real.”
“What’s not real but the very thing itself?” He laughed like a bully.
“Don’t demand anything from me.”
“Well, look at you, murderer…charmer.”
“What? I’ve killed no one.”
“Oh, no one…as in no one close to you, ever?”
“Look, who are you and why are you haunting me?”
“I am he Ghost of Self-Realization. You sought me, and found me.”
“What?”
“She will be dead in less than two hours. You poisoned her. How is that?” He threw the hoop over me and laughed aggressively as he passed. “No loopholes.”
*
I knocked at her door. No one answered. Finally she called up to me from the window.
“Hello, Gregory!”
I felt relieved again knowing she was alive and well.
“Don’t come in yet, but wait a few minutes. I’ll be down,” she cooed.
“Great!” I felt a shiver of what could have been excitement or fear.
After some time, the door opened and she was before me. She was dressed in a golden dress. Her face seemed to have developed some wrinkles.
“Hello Gregory,” she said in deep tones. She was calmer than before.
“Hi Cynthia,” I said surprised.
“We are just starting Christmas dinner. You can join us. It is a special occasion after all. Togetherness!”
“Yes, togetherness.” I stepped over the hoop and tripped. I heard a rattle in my jacket pocket.
“Um, hang on. Let me gather my composure,” I said.
“Sure, take your time sweetie.”
I felt a stronger bond between us then than ever before.
*
I walked in her house casually. Her folks stood around the Christmas tree. I felt welcome in the home for the first time.
“Oh, my dear Gregory!” Her father chimed and reached his hand out. I shook it gently.
“Oh, it is nice to see you after so long,” her mother said. “We anticipate a big dinner.”
“Great,” I responded. “I am looking forward to the evening.” I heard the rattle in my pocket again. I reached carefully to see what it was, It was a small vial of powder beating against my keys like birds’ wings.
I looked at the vial and I saw the first little boy again.
Born and raised in Romania, Mihaela Melnic later moved to Italy. Her first attempt to writing poetry occurred in 2011 and her prose and poetry are in constant evolution, taking different shapes with every new life experience.
Her first poetry collection, Change of Seasons was published in 2018.
In 2021, Mihaela wrote and published in co-authorship with Scott Thomas Outlar, the book entitled Evermore. She is currently working on her third poetry book, Layers of rust and life. Links to her published works in various literary venues and anthologies can be found on her website : https://telluricverse.wordpress.com/poems
Here are some poems and a short story by Mihaela Melnic:
In the Wheat Field
Alone in the room where the dark walls shrink, where the ceiling sinks underneath the ground and the mirrors turn into shards that watch, I figure myself in a wheat field with crows under violent brush strokes| of a painter’s madness in times that are gone.
Each shard, a memento. The crows in flight, a sweet lento. The blows of wind, an impression. Each breath, soul’s departure.
(From the book, Change of Seasons)
Two Coins
I consecrate this page to you for your black wings gleaming in the cars’ headlights.
Once, you must have flown higher than my imagination.
Erected now on the sidewalk, you guard a newspaper kiosk gone ablaze during a blink of your eye.
You greet me with the smile of a raven imbued in lores and history that is soaring in its own sky embodied in a nomad.
I bet you have green eyes and a soul that is white that melts and seeps through the cracks of my shaken spirit, becoming a splinter that I’d rather not pull out.
I think of those who once were alive as I twist two coins in my pocket.
They sound like rust being scraped off from the key that opens the door to the afterlife.
If Time is ours, ours are the pleasures ours are the struggles| ours are the heartbeats for us, from the others.
Ours are the glances those glances we capture in the eyes’ golden flecks, in the grains of sand of us, human hourglasses.
In electric nights let us not pine away before the liquid crystals beneath the moon in fever that knows all our secrets.
If Time is ours, then let us release the stars from our grasp and take instead the bull by its horns or the reins in hand and a deep breath let’s take!
(From the book, Evermore)
Constant Changes
Impervious, brackish realities made of roots torn from the origins, mentality transplants, inhuman efforts, dangling shreds of goals reachable or not.
My spirit seems to be changing in the eyes of life itself that peers my every move in amused amazement
waiting for me to become aware of the nothingness beyond it, | an abyss that will undoubtedly be my boundless home
or maybe it already is while my ear is endlessly strained towards that last, fatal toll.
( An unpublished excerpt from the manuscript, Layers Of Rust And Life scheduled to come out soon.)
And in closure, the short story “The Greatest Conquest” published by Mad Swirl
The Greatest Conquest
For years Milton stood there on my shelf with the sword of St. Michael stuck between ivory pages that are dripping with demonic blood. Yesterday, I picked up the black book of Good and Evil and was resolute to read it thoroughly to better understand the military strategies described in there. I bet Milton displayed great wit. Besides, I always loved English humour.
But then, I don’t know how, I opened it at random and my eyes set on a few lines of Book Second, page 63, and who did I find there? Mammon yearning to dethrone the King of Heaven!
Unbelievable stuff. Hot as hell. I closed the book because I needed to ponder a bit. Too much information in one line.
A flashback of myself reading a cluster of books fulminated me at some point. The SS books, written by A, B, C, etc, some of which by the hand of X, credited though to Z, but only because there is not enough evidence to believe the opposite, in which a people, led by Mr. Y, one gritty, strong in his own way but damn jealous guy, desired to possess other people’s things and territories.
Not even once did Mr. Y bother to say: “Guys, listen to me, I may be a man of war but only up to a certain point. I no longer feel like razing the peaceful peoples we keep coming across during our constant march to find the land that I promised you. We should not scorch these florid hills, rather we should sip with our glances the wild swaying of the desert’s dunes that seem to dance like a woman crazed in her hips in the clutches of the blowing wind. We should go camping elsewhere and set up a luxuriant village up there, look, over there up North or down South. We’ll create it out of nothing, like father did. Come, let’s do it, we’ll have some fun!”
No, Mr. Y never said that.
It never occurred in those bloody pages that Mr. Y ever drew back from the possibility of pulling out his arsenal and settling his tent and his people into countless lands that didn’t belong to them by right. He used the criteria of a chess player caught between tough decisions on his monstrous chessboard. But these are details of little importance.
Thus, I’m afraid I’m done with Milton for now, and with Mr. Y. I’ll probably continue to ignore many things because I didn’t give Milton many chances to make me laugh and expose his war theories, and the cluster of SS horrified me before I even got to read the Apocalypse.
Once I settled Milton back on its shelf, I glanced at my cat thinking at this bitch called Life.
Life nowadays is not easy. We are guests of honor in the Covid-19 Global Pandemonium.
Some provident people have already had the epitaph “Vissi” engraved on their tombs, wisely rented a long time ago for the next one hundred years. Not without reason, but because they’ve heard that it’s good to invest in something if you had a bit of common sense and a little money left. And if you’ve been good in this life, they say, you slip straight into that peaceful dimension where seraphs have been humming their chants ever since they were invented. If you’ve been bad, you end up elsewhere and once there… The more you invested here, the more you’ll have there, they say. For better or for worse.
Maybe I should not linger among those soft clouds and tremendous circles that are fruit of recent fantasy. Mr. Y. never said anything like that.
We have a Bio Beast to deal with.
No more time for digging graves to ensure ourselves a piece of land. The pandemic worked its fulminant way throughout the globe and swept away every shovel that ever dug a hole. Mr. Y. has no idea of what’s going on here and now or he’d take the scales in his own hands, perhaps. But discerning fables from reality is our duty alone, thus, let’s stick to what we know. And we know the beauty and the purity that spring out from the ones we love. Each gesture for a good purpose makes us conquer life anew every single day when we move forward like St. Michael’s sword that tears into shreds every evil, every virus ever created by an entity higher or lower than us .
Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She is the winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year, her bio is featured in the “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021,” published by Sweetycat Press. She is the author of 15 poetry books, and 1 short story book. She lives in Delaware, USA. She loves gardening and cooking. Christine lives with her husband and four cats. Her most recent credits are: Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sparks of Calliope; The Closed Eye Open, North Dakota Quarterly, Tangled Locks Journal, Wild Roof Journal, The American Writers Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Silver Blade, Pomona Valley Review, West Texas Literary Review, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila-Na-Gig, Fourth & Sycamore.
Here are some poems and a micro- story by Ann Christine Tabaka:
Eternal Bond
What else can be so beautiful as love shared between friends?
Warm summer days stretched out horizon to horizon.
Remembering sunshine rainbow laughter
Shared secrets & bottles of wine, as winter painted a snowy landscape beyond our windowsill.
Embracing across a universe that knows no time nor space.
Footsteps into an uncertain future, handholds upon an unforgotten past.
Forevers that lasted forever, tomorrows that may not come.
Yesterdays that glued us, in an eternal bond.
* Published by Qutub Minar Review, April 2022
Learning to Climb the Mountain
I read a book once: The Fear of Flying. It was not about flying at all. I climbed a mountain, spread my wings and tried to soar. The cat thought I was crazy as I tumbled to the ground. I was twenty then. I did not know my power yet.
Life lingered on the cusp, the old man shed his beard. Tides ran their rhythms with the moon. I idled away my life in snips and dreads, always going the wrong way, then doubling back. I was forty then, still turning pages to discover who I was.
I visited a Greek Garden once. It was not in Greece. I rushed home to plant my seeds among the thorns. The sparrows were dismayed that Doric columns did not grow. I was too old then. Too many years had crumbled beneath my feet.
* Published by The Squawk Back Magazine, November 2021
He Flies His Cage
I have no idea how birds fly. I cannot see their wings beat past my own gaze. Nor do I feel the air flow of soft feathers on the wind. I have no idea how a child becomes what it is not. He left my womb too long ago. I cannot see his future / grappling with false faith. He flew away beyond my reach. I am torn in two / feathers scattered far & wide. A gale escapes my withered lungs. Wings clipped / I am grounded. I have not gotten there yet, to that place between life and death. I tried so many times, in so many ways. I am not as strong as I used to be. I used to be strong. Life has a way of snatching our dreams before we are done playing with them. I do not exist anymore. I am just a shadow left behind in the wilderness.
* Published by ThePacific Review, June 2022
I Hear the Water
I hear the water. It calls to me from lakes, and streams, and rivers.
My mother was the ocean. She carried me on her shoulders above raging storms.
Her strength washed away islands, eroding sin. Dolphins swam in her dreams and gulls sang of her glory.
I walk on water. I am her child, the one she bore in sorrow.
Man raped her bounty, polluted her shores, but still, she did not cry.
I am rain. I will cry for her.
* Published by Valiant Scribe, May 2022
Stepping Stones
Sally always loved to play outside in the little stream that ran behind her house. You could find her there on most warm sunny days. She particularly loved it right after the rain, when the water was running fast and high. She would splash in the rushing water as she turned over each stone looking for crayfish and other fascinating creatures, especially the creepy-crawly ones. Sally liked to pretend that she was a great explorer, and the stream was a mighty river. She would make a game of carefully stepping from stone to stone, trying not to fall off into the treacherous current that she imagined. As long as she could remember, Sally wondered how all the large rocks got into the stream. There were so many, and they almost seemed to have personalities, as if they were more than just stone. Some had features that Sally found curious. They had expressions on them, as if they had faces. She was fascinated by them and felt as if they were her friends.
One late summer day, Sally decided to go out to play in her stream after dinner. Her parents did not like her being outside alone when it was getting close to dark, so she snuck out without telling them that she was going. She was full of excitement and wonder at the thought of her new adventure. She felt free and all grown up being out in her stream at dusk. She could not wait to wade in and play among her rocks.
She was just getting ready to step on a silvery flat-surfaced stone when suddenly one of the largest rocks vibrated, rolled over and stood up straight and very tall. It became a foreboding creature right before her frightened eyes. Sally screamed and tried to run, but it was too late. The rock monster looked at her with an evil glare, then extended an algae covered hand and grabbed her. Before she knew what was happening, she began to curl up tight and become rigid. Then, within moments, she became just another rock, among so many other rocks in the little stream, forever keeping their secret hidden from the outside world.
* Published by World of Myth Magazine, 2019
* Published in Journeys Anthology / The Writer’s Journey Blog, 2021
Heath Brougher is the Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press, USA and co-poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He received Taj Mahal Review’s 2018 Poet of the Year Award and is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. In 2020, he was awarded the Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published 11 books and, after spending over three years editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat for a bit. He has four books forthcoming in 2022 and 2023.
Here are some poems by Heath Brougher:
Peeling Philosophies
Your crow wears hats and bursts out of your chest whenever the barometer dips
scrapings, remnants rule the world the always knocked off-kilter world while feathers drip with blood in a sudden Universal guttural
after all the Universe began with a sudden explosion a “burst’ if you will but you won’t admit to it because you don’t exist.
Metallic Forest
Steel trees bloom above my head, their tinny foliage gleaming from certain vantage points
along the path in the night, shimmering, as I trek onward noticing a copper bird’s next built on the silver branches
without a smidgeon of Verdigris. I can’t help but wonder what happens when the chill of Autumn arrives
with its light aluminium breeze and the iron leaves fall clanking to the ground beneath the turquoise sun.
But for now it is warm and I pick you a metal rose, so heavy and shiny and lifeless
Imitation of Life
The Spirit of pigeons from 1800 pastorals emanates from a yonder hollow; flies with thick, paint-heavy wings.
A morning of aerial scissors snips kites from the bone colored polka-dot air. A fallen plastic goldfish no longer swims through the sky.
In a rare dream, I bought an umbrella that rained acorns. But that never really happened. It was only a subconscious projection experienced within a spurious limelight.
Gonna Lose
A boy floats down Glendale Rd in York, PA— his girlfriend [I imagine her name is Cricket] proceeded in her 1999 Jane-like summer shorts or 2002 Shannon-like tight winter jeans. Two pieces of twine adorned with an anklet to prevent her shoestrings from falling apart. She walked into the gloaming downstreet. She reminded me of love and vitality. She resembled the perfect mixture of Jane and Shannon.
I assume Jane and Shannon have disappeared forever into the legendary landscapes of my sacrosanct youth.
Lidia Chiarelli is one of the Charter Members of Immagine & Poesia, the art literary Movement founded in Torino (Italy) in 2007 with Aeronwy Thomas.
Installation artist and collagist. Coordinator of the Dylan Day in Italy.
She has become an award-winning poet since 2011 and she was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from The First International Poetry Festival of Swansea (U.K.) for her broadside poetry and art contribution. Awarded with the Literary Arts Medal – New York 2020.
Six Pushcart Prize (USA) nominations. Grand Jury Prize at Sahitto International Award 2021.
In 2014 she started an inter-cultural project with Canadian writer and editor Huguette Bertrand publishing E Books of Poetry and Art online.
Her writing has been translated into 30 languages and published in more than 150 Poetry magazines, and on web-sites in many countries.
Here are some poems and an essay from Lidia Chiarelli:
My liquid world
(amid winds of war)
to Dylan Thomas
This ashen day in March opens with dancing shadows – images carved in the air of the Spring still too far. An insidious mist enshrouds me in crescendo.
Among echoes in subtle vibration teach me, Dylan, to take shelter in my liquid world
teach me to feel the pulse of the tides that ceaselessly ebb and flow
And while time and space dissolve in the primordial roar of the ocean
teach me to fly away, with you, from the void … of this bewilderment of that insanity*
* from: Although through my bewildered way
February Mist
Tribute to “I genitori perduti” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(March 24 1919-February 22 2021)
In Washington Square where the first light gets lost and the seagulls are the lords of the wind you have found your family today. Bewilderment and silence in your every breath. Your mother’s faded smile greets you in the morning mist and your father turns to you as you are listening to your brothers’ muffled call. Then through a blanket of vapor all together you slide towards the gray horizon – extreme, borderless spaces – towards that vacuum swirl further and further away
Ocean Greyness to Jackson Pollock
There is a solitude of space A solitude of sea A solitude of death…
Emily Dickinson Solitude
in the unreal grey of these liquefied lines in the vortex of a sea of steel where shadows stretch darker and darker.
I listen to the breath of the October wind-
echoes in subtle vibrations like a slow crescendo like a gloomy, confused whisper.
The sky has a pearl glow.
The horizon no longer shines through in the distance.
(Tribute to Ocean Greyness painting by Jackson Pollock, 1953)
Poppy Red
I put my hands among the flames
Sylvia Plath
Of that summer you had no memories only red poppies small flames that burned your soul a thousand poppies open wounds bleeding inside you. Your journey in search of oblivion started in the soundless hours of the day now lost in the barren paths of the mind. Then long sunset strips sad omens stained the sky red slowly surrounding you in deep muffled silence
Rhapsody in Gray
to Tamara de Lempicka
… I mark On the horizon walking like the trees The wordy shapes of women
Dylan Thomas
Beverly Hills, California, 1939
Lightly the paintbrush slips on the canvas caressing elongated bodies women behind steering wheels an enigma inside melancholy and distracted eyes.
Soaring skyscrapers take form in bold vertical lines.
Reflections of alabaster flood a road in the night interlocking games and new geometries.
The modulated sounds of a saxophone come from afar while in the light of street lamps shadows descend in long variegated spirals of iridescent gray.
EKPHRASTIC POETRY THEN AND NOW
One of the most interesting aspects of today’s poetry is Ekphrastic Poetry.
The term “ekphrastic” originates from a Greek expression for description. According to the Oxford Classic Dictionary ekphrasis is an extended and detailed literary description of any object, real or imaginary.
In antiquity one of the earliest forms of ekphrasis can be found in “The Iliad,” when Homer provides a long account of the detailed scenes engraved on the shield of Achilles. In Greek literature, the relationship between art and poetry was examined by Simonides of Keos (c. 556 – 468 BC) who stated: “Η ζωγραφική είναι ποίηση που σιωπά” “ Painting is a silent poetry.” In Latin literature, Horace (65 – 8 BC), in his “Ars Poetica” said: “Ut pictura poesis” meaning “As is painting, so is poetry.” And Leonardo da Vinci in “A Treatise on Painting” states, “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
Ekphrastic poetry flourished particularly in the Romantic era; a notable example is “Ode on a Greek Urn” by John Keats. This poem is the description of a piece of pottery that the poet considers very evocative. He formulates a hypothesis about the identity of the lovers who appear to play music and dance, frozen in perpetual motion. Other examples of the genre were common in the nineteenth century and twentieth century. Let’s remember two particularly significant: Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem “Before the Mirror” which ekphrasises James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s “Symphony in White, No. 2” and Claude Esteban’s prize-winning volume “Soleil dans une pièce vide,” inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper.
But it was only in 2007 that a true literary art movement called Immagine & Poesia was founded by the poetess Aeronwy Thomas, (daughter of poet Dylan Thomas) with four other Charter Members (Gianpiero Actis, Lidia Chiarelli, Silvana Gatti e Sandrina Piras) who believed that the power of the written word and the power of visual image, when joined, would create a new work not only greater than the parts, but altered, enhanced, changed and magnified by the union. On the stage of Alfa Theatre in Torino, Italy, the Manifesto of Immagine & Poesia was read in front of the audience on November 9th 2007, at the conclusion of the celebrations of the Dylan Thomas Festival of that year.
Within a few years Immagine & Poesia rapidly spread via the web where collaborations between artists and poets are published, as well as through international exhibitions. Today, the Immagine & Poesia’s Manifesto is translated in thirty languages and the movement includes hundreds of artists and poets from all over the world.
Since 2014, the annual e-book of Immagine & Poesia has been published by the Canadian publisher Huguette Bertrand and the President of the Movement Lidia Chiarelli. Every year the e-book includes many ekphrastic contributions from different countries. The works of Beat Generation poet-editor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the American artist Agneta Falk Hirschman are part of the latest five editions. An on-line journal devoted entirely to writing inspired by visual art is The Ekphrastic Review, founded by Canadian artist and writer Lorette C. Luzajic.
The Movement Immagine & Poesia has particularly evolved in recent years by carrying out a message of peace, brotherhood, mutual respect and cooperation between writers and artists belonging to different countries and cultures.
On the other hand – on a purely aesthetic level – ekphrastic poetry has conveyed an incentive to the development of “beauty”: beautiful poems combined with beautiful images, almost adopting as a motto the words that Fyodor Dostoevsky attributes to Prince Myškin : Beauty will save the world.
Vatsala Radhakeesoon Poetry, Prose, Translated Works 