I've been running from crazy,
Hell, I've been running for so long,
I almost thought it had caught me. 

One day I stopped,
Took a look behind me,
And there was nothing,
Or no one,
To be seen!
(Besides a frightened-looking pedestrian)

In running from crazy,
I had become crazy.
Imagine that! 

Now I let crazy pass me by,
Thinking to myself,
"If it wins, it wins,
I'm powerless one way or another."

My breathing is heavy as I stop running,
That was practically a marathon...


Author Bio:
Kali Rynearson is a college student studying finance and French with hopes of earning a masters degree in Advertising. In her free time, she writes poetry, short stories, plays, and memoirs; she takes photographs and manipulates them using editing software; she draws graphic art; she keeps up with fashion trends and experiments with her sense of style. Ms. Rynearson lives in downtown Chicago, IL with her father, two younger sisters, and her cat named Daisy Muffin. 

     I have been mourning the death of a practice, of a way of living and being known, for so long that it is difficult to know when the process began, other than to say it has been a long season, spanning years instead of months, full of Indian summers and snow-filled solstices, of tasting the last red berry still warm from August sun, and of losing to despair under the heaviness of an interminable inversion.

     Where is it written this is the way a practice ends?  Who writes the guidelines or gives the seminars that address my questions?  Where does one go for protocols and form letters and the usual “time line” for descent? Who specializes in this form of grief counseling?  When was the last time a news-magazine TV show did a spot on the end of a therapist’s career?  Where are the support groups?  

     There is a choice here:  to focus on what has or is dying or to look at what is emerging; see only bitter flaking wood with skins of drab brown and pale disjointed flesh, or marvel at new and fragile membranes of intense color and aroma.  I must ask myself:  Are all the stalks of last year’s reeds more valuable than the emerging leaves of a single forsythia bush? 


Author Bio:
ML Roberts is a retired psychologist living in Milwaukee, WI. For the better part of two decades, she practiced psychotherapy in Boise, ID. Uprooting herself from both a career and a place she loved resulted in a great deal of soul searching, followed by a feeling of loss far greater than what she anticipated. 

In preparation for a change in careers, Roberts studied creative writing at Boise State University and Boise’s Log Cabin Literary Center. After making the break, she moved several times and, with each move, sought out other writers through workshops and critique groups. She is currently an active member of the All Writers’ Workshop and Workplace, in Waukesha, WI.

In addition to publishing as a professional psychologist and as a communications specialist, she has placed fiction and poetry in Cabin Fever; Boise University Radio INPRINT; Boise Weekly; Standing: Poetry by Idaho Women; and two anthologies: What Mattered Once, What Matters Now (Live Poets Society, Boise, ID) and Women with Wings (Women Writing for a Change, Bloomington, IN). Roberts holds degrees from Marshall University (B.A.), Virginia Tech (M.S.), and Penn State (Ph.D.) 

I am from hymns, choirs, and pews
from pulpit hellfire and community news.
I am from a hard history built on hard stories to hear
where we keep tryin’, believin’ the Dream is near.

Searching my soul to find some identity,
Lost in the world, who am I is the mystery,
Playing games causing too many females misery,
Never can tell you what they ever did to me,
Just causing pain as part of a self-centered game,
Swearing to each one that I'm searching for change,
As I'm calling the one I love by the wrong name,
Passion is the fire inside, but lies sparked the flame.


Author Bio:
Morris is a 19-year-old college student who devolved a passion for writing in the 7th grade when he would battle rap against students at lunch. In the 9th grade, he started to slowly get more into writing as he discovered it was his true passion to capture the raw emotions he was feeling on paper. Now he writes on average 2 poems a night.

Inseparable thoughts.
T stays for trampoline
and Y stays for young.
The first one stays for guard
and the last one stays for poetry. 

In the memory, nothing changed.
Frozen time with icy look.
He’s more blue and more blond than he’s ever been.
Like Richard Branson in a YouTube commercial.

Exposed to a romantic narrative,
he becomes a character
with mutant genes. My X-man flying around a hot bed.
Exposed to a psychiatric check-up,
he becomes all possible Mr. Darcy(s)
with a long history of instability issues.
In fact, the banned memory
resurfaced; now, I have to deal with a bunch of tragic flash points.

H stays for hell and humor
S stays for Serge and suicide
M stays for me and memory.
Love poems for critically injured century.

In the most hidden corner of the eye,
the shadow, erected like CN Tower,
covers its face and begins to speak.
In Hebrew.
With the voice of my mom.
And with long pauses. 

Then, when it stops, the shape steps out of the dark.
The library invades me
And I feel distorted by reality.


Author Bio:
Diana Andrasi completed her studies in philology at the University of Bucharest, followed by a master’s degree and a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Montreal. While researching for her doctoral thesis on the subject of thought-image as a poetry device (at the beginning of the 20th century), she became interested in research projects linking contemporary poetry to urban legends, political ideologies and global cultural development. She wrote articles, poems, and essays in both English and French. She lives in the far west of the Montreal Island.

          Purple ink crosses raven-shadowed blue fields crisp with frost, Monet’s haystacks mildewing quietly beneath the midnight harvest moon. In the distance silhouettes murmur, slide, and vanish through the open doors of lit cottages, the blank page, and into the tenuous space occupied by no one but Memory, darning quietly in the corner of consciousness.           

                    Onze Lieve Vrouw Kathedraal Antwerpen

She walks above the slender candle flames,
her Child, divine, cradled in her arms
like the roses Earth offers to the eye each Spring
which look up now, blushing, to her prayerful hands.

She walks above the slim white tapered flames,
over white marble altar, silver and gilded.
Her robe of regal purple edged in gold
cannot conceal her white gown and sandaled feet.

Over white marble altar, gilded and gleaming,
She turns an eye up to the clouds
and Heaven’s rays descend to bless her child,
her prayer, and the tapered flames flickering below.

                   La linguiste revient du travail et essaye de cuisiner 

« Bonjour la maison! Ou se trouve la famille?
Je reviens du travail et je ne vois personne ici !
J’ai un peu de faim, mais je ne peux pas cuisiner,
Alors, qu’est-ce qu’on va venir ce soir manger ?
Je ne peux pas offrir de poisson ou des fruits,
Mais je vous offre des mots, si vous voudrais m’en partager,
Des phrases fortes comme des fromages
Des adjectifs doux comme des éclairs ! »

           
Author Bio:
Emily K. Iekel is a recent graduate of the European Master's in Specialized Translation from the Catholic University of Louvain in Antwerp, Belgium. She earned a B.A. in Modern Foreign Languages from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she also studied music and creative writing. Her poems and prose have been published in Salome Magazine, Troubadour21, The Boiler Journal, Gardy Loo, and English Teaching Daily, and in other print and online publications. She lives in Virginia.

A cold and crowded place
That I remember till today
Without the joy and happiness
That we are used to see everyday
Someone came to take it all away
Nothing I knew
Nothing to do
Scared I yelled
I ran and screamed for help
People I saw
Nothing to do
Just wait and maybe pray
A thankful smile
That brightened my eyes
As just a little boy
I brought back the joy
That many tried to reach
So many years back
I still look back
To those dark days
That they had covered up so well
I'm thankful now for I know now
That we all can help


Author Bio:
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. I came to The USA when I was a sophomore to finish my high school. I am a person who likes to go outside and enjoy the weather and meeting new people. Since my family likes to travel I got used to it. Every time I have the chance, I like to travel to Germany to learn the language or go back home to visit friends and family. I like sports and I have been playing tennis since I was seven years old. I recently started taking my first poetry class as a senior in high school and I actually enjoy poetry and how it lets you express whatever is in your mind. I find writing to be a beautiful way for someone to let other people know how someone actually is from the inside without being ashamed.

All summer, I’ve been strangling
to listen
            to attend
to risk 

meaning as a means toward
invention, which means the fanciful
intuitive is always just
            out of  reach.

Poolside, memory swims
through the mirage of
heat
above water,
I know I have made you stop

             and tread for me. That image, the father
draping us with a unity
lasso, twenty-two years back.
Its invisibility holds
    The pearls less polished,
but the chain untarnished. I’ve also begun
Listing—about everything. Things done. Things
Not yet. Gratitudes. Groceries. Things remembered.
Those I don’t want to.  

I am never alone now, but in the pale light
of a new afternoon which has ebbed to a
emotion of dull calm, I inquire of myself
            a warmth for soulness
            a chance to be present
which means I am grateful for you
            always offering me the time
                        I need to make sense. 



Author Bio:
Jenn Gutiérrez considers herself a child of the woods—her forts still hold. She has spent the last six years pursing her doctoral degree in Curriculum Studies & Teaching from the University of Denver, but she also holds a MFA in creative writing from Southampton College, LIU. She has two collections of poetry: Weightless (2005, out of print) and Silence Imbibed (2011, Anaphora Literary Press) and has had work published in various journals including The Texas Review, The Acentos Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and others. Her latest passion is the combining of her scholarly interests as a qualitative researcher and her experience as a poet, aspiring to join the ranks of arts-based researchers such as Eliot Eisner, Tom Barone, and P. Bruce Uhrmacher.   

In the nest of sorrow and misery,
Resting in the palms of a sacred tree safely,
Feeling the warmth of affection motherly,
Stretched it's wings featherly,
The gorgeous lady bird "Naveili."

In every quantum of air she breathed,
In every drop of water she gulpped,
In every detail her visionary eyes seeked,
In every tone her chirping reverberated,
Lay hidden the purpose of her true being,
To paint the vast blue with her colorful wing,
To explore the height of limitless sky-ring.

Dreaming a dream virtual though,
Affirming the belief made her grow,
Outcasted from the family of flightless siblings,
The wounded soul embraced earthly sufferings,
Chopping off the wings of aerial voyage,
Waiting for the mercy of an angelic sage,
To get freed from the dreadful bondage.....


Author Bio:
I am housewife and mother. I was on a personal journey to seek the truth in order to help myself come out of depression. During the process I wrote down whatever thoughts came to my mind in the form a poem. After having my child, my emotions began overflowing and I made sure to collect them on a piece of paper with my mighty pen. So here it is...I place my efforts in front of you.