Entombed in white walls,
we are children sprung for recess.
We are wailing, soiled babies too.
 
Our behavioral health needs are met and managed
with antipsychotic shots, mood stabilizers, benzodiazepines, and more.
We are safe. We are monitored. We can allow our emotions to soar.
Or can we?
 
Poked and prodded, we submit our brains, become lab rats.
We line up for small, white cups filled with pills,
colorful, fruity, Skittles in various shapes and sizes.
Mindfully, dutifully we obey. Some even shuffle over.
For them it’s become Pavlovian.
 
Placed in seclusion, restrained,
made to participate in group when we just wish to be alone,
not permitted to sleep during the day, even when Ativan crushes us
into a warm, white haze.
 
Assessed, evaluated,
our vitals checked every morning.
Some, like me, are weighed like hogs priced for market.
 
Days become weeks. They tinker with our meds
until mouth and brain synchronize, and we say what is expected.
We learn to be good for tapioca, for popcorn treats,
  for chalky coffee served in a Styrofoam cup.
We learn not to cry, and we learn not to scream.
 
As time drones on, a few disappear. Seizures.
The images of them haunt us, thrashing on the cold white floor,
 stiff limbs contorting,
  exorcisms.
 
When the rest are made well,
most, though not all, will go home,
or to a half-way house.
One kid goes to jail. Handcuffs clamp wrists, replace white bandages with their bite.
 
I am finally freed,
   alive, unseized, I’m home!
 Unbroken, but with pieces missing.  

 



Author Bio:
Colleen Wells writes from Bloomington, Indiana, and is a past contributor to The Voices Project. She is a writer, activist, mother, and crafter. She works as a Life Enrichment Associate with the elderly population. Her work has appeared most recently in The Gyroscope Review, The Ryder Magazine, and Workzine. She values poetry because she finds freedom in it as well as structure. Wells believes writing has the power to heal both self, and to assist others in their own healing journeys through providing a platform to share traumatic events and subsequent growth with one another. Wells is a certified Community Health Worker / Peer Recovery Specialist in the state of Indiana.

She is the author of Dinner With Doppelgangers - A True Story of Madness and Recovery. Wells earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Spalding University. She frequently writes essays and enjoys journalism as well. To borrow a cliche, Wells believes writing about the truth is often stranger than writing fiction.

After plunging into the cold, cold sea
From his merciful mission across the sky,
The man called the Sun all tired and worn,
Laboring with each mile upon his journey,
Setting his sights upon the angry waters,
Smiling but not smiling down to the depths,
Down into the mystery of the deep,
The hell or heaven that lives down under,
The brotherhood of the Macabre
Or the fellowship of the Saints,
Each one awake when all else is asleep,
Each one with arms outstretched,
One with plastic tears and 
The other with loving eyes,
Each one with a baptismal font on hand,
Standing proud at the altar,
Baptizing him with holy or unholy waters,
Anointing him with scented oils,
Sending him upon his journey back home
To ascend to the surface just like yesterday,
To become a morning like it was before,
To peek through the veil of darkness,
To shed a light upon the mysterious night,
To reveal its deep dark secrets,
To unite the morn with the day,
To show his love or anger at the earth,
To lie still or become restless,
To summon the lofted currents
To reach out and grab the clouds,
To congregate them into a body,
To kiss them or rile them up,
To blend them into a witch’s brew
And wreak havoc upon the quiet earth,
Or to smile down at the sleeping meadows
And lift up the flowers with loving hands,
To become an angel or a beast,
To rule the skies with his scepter,
‘Tis the mission of the sun in transit. 


Author Bio:
Robert Martin's writings have been published in Mature Years, Alive Now, Terror House Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Literary Juice. Robert has won two Faith & Hope awards, and published two chapbooks. His main writing influence is Kahlil Gibran. 

Your wife is a knitter— 
And silently she counts her stitches.
But you, dear sir, had the misfortune
Of walking in on her 
To ask an innocent question.
Standing chastised at the door, 
You are quickly baptized 
In a hiss of her hushes
And a string of chanted numbers:
“Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four!”
She intones them at you in a voice 
Thick with exasperation. 
Her eyes are fixed on your form, 
But you might as well be 
An insignificant and lowly worm
Or beetle—as she glares at you, 
Her stare piercing as a pointed needle. 
Your wife, dear sir, is sitting on the couch, 
Covered in knitting material and cats. 
It’s like you’ve stumbled flat
Upon something hermetically spiritual
And profaned it by your very existence. 
Best to just slink back upstairs 
Without any resistance 
To your bread and circuses.
For your question will go unanswered 
In the cross-stitched air—caught
In the snare of cross-purposes. 



Author Bio:
Daniel has been an actor, a union organizer for mental health care workers, the lead singer/lyricist of the indie rock band Mining for Rain, an ordained minister and preacher, and a poetry book reviewer for NewPages.com. He is the author of four previous poetry collections and is the recipient of numerous awards, including: A Purple Dragonfly Book Award for excellence in Children’s Literature (for Put On Your Silly Pants, Daffydowndilly Press, 2016), and a Royal Dragonfly Book Award for Poetry (for Quiet Insurrections, White Violet Press, 2018). In addition, out of approximately 150 entries, his poem “Lunch at Corafaye’s” was one of only 11 poems chosen to be paired with a photographic interpretation by artist Sarah Jane Sanders and displayed on exhibit at the Norton Center for the Arts in Kentucky. You can read more about Daniel at: poetdanielklawitter.wordpress.com

And it is (here) in the quiet that I regret ever having known you. 

You with your reluctant eyes, tilted head and six ounce sleeping arms.

Swaddled up and silent, far off from any and all stars especially that old odd one somehow still dangling up someplace above a stable. You are leaving and moving in a way I can’t see. 

You will continue to move that way for a long while, until someone with the strongest, warmest, kindest and most terrifying hands plucks me out of here and into whatever place you are moving. In the music of heralds you will move and I’ll forget all I'm regretting (here and now) in the quiet. 

You are a stranger in the quiet. 

I know you best when there is music. 

I met you in the music, and I expect you to use it, even from up there, 

so you may still somehow move me too. 

Evey, please move. 


Author Bio:
Mora lives in and around Toronto, Ontario. Right now she is afraid of anything that feels permanent and tied down. Like names, and words and bios. Slowly, Mora is learning (with poetry) that these things are probably not at all what she thinks. 

I loathe the flow that flows and inevitably turns into a river that we know,
We know, oh.
It all turns back on ourselves, dear me,
And you.
You, too.

I’d like to get rid of this axis,
This self-reflexivity,
This eternally rotating rotation.
You turn back
I turn back
And so on, and so on, and on so.

We think that, by seeing, seeing each other,
We might somehow stop, not might, but do stop.
Impossibly raised above ourselves,
You know.

But, really, it is only I that knows.
Trees below the ground, clouds above the sky, nose between your thumb.
That putrid smell.

The clock strikes twelve, and down we come,
One foot below the other, 
Click clack clackity click.
Ground level, 
and now that horrible feeling where I can’t find the sky and the sky can’t find me.
That’s what roofs are for, my mother tells me.
And my father, at the other end of the dining table, with squinty concentration,
An unfocused focus,
Plopping each grape in his mouth like coins into a slot machine.

Bing bing bing
Winner winner winner,
Cashmere floods of falling snow,
A mountain of people crowding,
Collapsing,
Crumbling rocks and sharp edges,
Crushing and grinding.

And, me, painfully caught in this avalanche,
Trapped between the cold space and white air,
Desperately clamoring, grasping, for traction,
Relation.

And then,
I hear your whisper between the soft rumble of the train on the tracks,
Spit, you say.
Spit? 
I realize. I do. I finally understand.
To know up from down, down from up, it is the only way. 
I must spit.
Gravity decides, not me, not you, not I, 
But gravity.

The heaviness returns,
And down I go,
Sinking deep, deeper, deepest.
Me, a bliss-filled snowflake,
Light 
But not bright,
And only for a moment,
Until I find my place, myself,
And you.
You, too.


Author Bio:
Amy Kislyakov is an undergraduate college student who is interested in inquiring into the nature of language, into its possibilities as well as its limitations, and the spaces between.

Chipped cups and a hundred and one pups
True love’s kisses and three magic wishes
Glass heels and spinning wheels
Slippers of ruby red and a house made of gingerbread
A princess named after snow and a jar containing an enchanted rose
A hatter that’s mad and a wolf that’s big and bad
A prince that croaks and a beautiful red cloak
A boy crying out in defiance and another boy defeating a giant
Straw that turns into golden twine
It all began with “Once Upon A Time”.


Author Bio:
Ashley Virginia Matthew is a graduate of Cedarville University. She majored in Journalism and has two minors in Creative Writing and Bible. She currently lives in Fairfield, Ohio and enjoys writing fiction and poetry. Ashley has been writing as a hobby since childhood and enjoys writing on a variety of genres, from fantasy to romance. Her writing is influenced by a vast majority of topics, including sports, personal life events, historical figures and more. 

In her spare time, Ashley also enjoys traveling, exercising, watching professional wrestling, blogging and listening to music. Some of Ashley's previous writing experience includes being a staff writer for KayfabeKickout.com, an intern reporter for The Pulse-Journal, a reporter for two collegiate student newspapers and a reporter for her high school student newspaper. Ashley's writing goals include someday being a published novelist and to always strive to improve at her craft for writing. 

It was a rustic door. An antique one. When I first pulled it to enter the house, it creaked loudly. It sounded angry, upset. I wondered why? 
    I wanted to replace it with a brand-new wooden door. But each time, I failed. Other important things arose, other expenditures—new curtains, pillow covers, bed linen, medicines for mother-in-law, dowry money for sister-in-law, a visit to my parent’s house or his. At the end, the door stayed unrepaired, unchanged.
    Two years went by in this house. The house looked ancient, too shabby. Putting too many colours on the walls made it look like a painting that had gone horribly wrong. 
   Akram told me to stop ruining the house. He sounded a bit irritated. Work problems. He had plenty nowadays. He barely shared his troubles with me. I didn’t press him either. What would I do to listen to them? Though sometimes it felt unfair. Weren’t couples supposed to share everything? But at other times I thought it suited us best, each with our own preoccupations in our own space: he in his room with his files, me on the couch with a book or two, gazing outside.
    I changed the position of the couch a little, it faced the main door now. And I had two views to enjoy, one through the window; the other through the door. Since the latter was mostly kept shut, I stared at its greenish, rustic wood. It needed to be repaired or replaced.


Author Bio:
Marzia Rahman has an MA in English Literature from the University of Dhaka. She is a creative writer and translator. Her articles and book reviews have been published in The Daily Star. Her article Bringing Light into Darkness published in 2008 has won her Child Sight Foundation Journalist Fellowship Award for best report. Her stories and flash fictions have appeared in The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, Six Seasons Review, and online journals like Five of the Fifth, 101 Words. She has done a couple of distance learning courses under London School of Journalism and Oxford University. In 2017, she has participated in The International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School organized by BCLT in the University of East Anglia at Norwich. Currently she is working on her debut novel. She believes there is no end of learning. Writing is her greatest passion and she hopes to be recognized as a good writer in the future. 

​There is a tree within the dreams
I dream when night is coming on.
My friend is standing near, it seems.
I turn toward her but she is gone.
The pink blooms on this tree are high,
too high for me to reach alone.
I want to pick them and I try,
but cannot pick them on my own.
My friend is there to help me get
the blossoms there, and more beyond--
This is what I'd hoped, and yet
I turn to see that she is gone.
I think about her in the spring,
the blossoms high and birds on wing.


Author Bio:
Carol Louise Moon is a Northern California poet published in regional journals, as well as state poetry society journals in three states. She loves working with poetry forms, as well as free verse. She believes she inherited the gift of poetry from her Great Grandfather who was both a minister and a poet. She attends several poetry workshops and believes it is the best way to hone the craft. Carol Louise's son writes lyrics for music, as well.

I look for the apocalypse in your eyes
find comfort in its presence. You are always prepared
for the end, always have an exit plan
the perfect argument for leaving it all.

I am an eager apostolate at your knee
learning the paths one must take to break free
from damnation, from love. My own eyes
are a roadmap of buried condemnations, I
always keep them closed when we kiss.


Author Bio:
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press), In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), The Yellow Dot of a Daisy (Alien Buddha Press), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), and Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing). 

Thin, black, scrawny
Green eyes blazing
Bits of fur missing
Psychogenic alopecia
Been returned twice
I want her
A hiss and claws slash out
Yes I want her
Back home
Three days in hiding
Fourth day a purr
A body rubbing against me
Eyes closed, relaxed
Two souls
United in agony
Two souls
Mending together


Author Bio:
Swati Rawal is an animal lover and volunteers at the humane society. Her hobbies include, reading writing and bird watching.