I've decided against the bus tonight;
anyway I missed it staying later than
anticipated the dancing still continuing.
It's night now but there the crowds were
more and here they're sparse; I hear that
crash of glass behind me which makes me
start but when I look (not behind me) it's
at the arched corridor next to me. I'm a
city girl you know: I grew up being told
to keep my pace, my eyes straight, and if
I see a crime to wait until it's safe to call
9-1-1 or take the risk of being shot.
I must be thinking this since, here, at this
four-street intersection I see what I perceive
to be a gun in some guy's hand. As I'm coming
up the street they're crossing straight. Counting
four men in their group I turn along the curve,
waiting for the sound of being hit which doesn't
come; my stomach's tight but I keep on walking.
I ignore the man who makes a snide remark
about me being on my own, and another group
of men who talk so loud I fear they'll follow me
and then, when I get to the gate I forget I have
the key and climb instead, desperate is my
need to be inside where I can close the door.


Author Bio:
Vanessa Raney is an American living in Croatia, and working on a book. Her creative works (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.) have previously appeared in mostly online publications, more recently in *Foliate Oak Literary Magazine*, *Dead Flowers: A Poetry Rag*, and *Every Day, A Century*. A complete list can be found at http://vanessa-raney.blogspot.com.

I. Realizations

I tried to be what
they told me to be,
but when I came
upon an image of myself
in a poem,

I changed my skin.

Pushed too deep
under bone and nail,
my hairs itched,
I struck
too hard
on stone.

There was a perfection
they expected,
but in myself
there was a contortion,
cells pulled apart,
a research of a self.

II. The Dream

You pull out a cigarette,
whistle
as I’m making my way through,
tell me that
“some people care too much.”

Words directed to a society
twisted in hypocrisy.

I bury my skin,

come up fresh,
still waiting
for people to stop
talking,
making noise.

There is a frustration,
pulls and gropes in my head
when I can’t find quiet.
Block my ears,
tape the cracks of the door,
create fiction in my memory,

I bury my skin.


Author Bio:
Natalie Ricker was born in a small town in Tennessee. Growing up surrounded by seemingly endless fields and woods, she spent most of her childhood exploring and creating stories. When she got older, she discovered poetry was the best way she could communicate her feelings and interpretations of life. She has had support from her family and from her friends, and in spite of health issues, financial issues, and other hindrances, she has continued to follow her lifelong passion of writing. 

Sunshine on my island comes with a money-back guarantee. It’s a package-holiday wager, and a good one. It is tradition for sale, Soultanina vineyards, grapes crushed the old way, goats herded on mountain sides, miled the old way, parks of acacia, eucalyptis, stands of pine, cypress trees, huddles of fig, rows of lowland rose-bay, Larnaca palms ringed in deliberate rock, garden roses, hibiscus, pomegranate. And especially olive groves, press after renovated press, olives crusthed the old way, the better way, slate roofs on crumbling houses, rotting wood doorframes, grey houses of stone and especially the bright white and cobalt trinkets in the shape of palm trees, flip flops, sailboats, churches, and gulls. Shopkeepers drag racks of these things (refrigerator magnets, salt shakers, paperweights) into the sun along with misspelled sandwich boards announcing lunches whose making can be watched. In Thasos and in Cyprus, a tourist can see the traditional fire-lance wet under a cement-and-local-stone fountain and used to stoke coals for lunch, traditional women hunched over needlework pillows on chairs a foot high, shoemakers cranking leather, fishermen setting their nets, and young men tearing pinna nobilis from its crevice fifty feet under turning byssus to shreds—even our houses are on display, and their insides, the tiny coffee cups and gas burners and the way women tell fortunes by spilling the grinds. If I could read coffee cups, I’d see white and blue churches for sale, and colors of the Cyclads donned like a chef’s white costume, a nurse’s scrubs, the blue foam skin of a diver reaching into the deep.


Author Bio:
Joanna Eleftheriou grew up in New York and Cyprus, and studied at Cornell, the Center for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, and Old Dominion before beginning doctoral work in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. She has worked as a teacher of ESL, literature and creative writing, and her essays, poems, and translations have appeared in journals including The Crab Orchard Review, Chautauqua, and The Common.

Perhaps it is December’s depletion of color
that draws us to luster, to golden plates
and fine glasses, mother’s irreplaceables––
something you won’t remember me by.

The candles’ shadows recede in time, 
rendering us small again, but older...  
Gripped by impatience, I untethered
mother’s flocks of gold-paper angels,

paced myself for ten-stop shopping walks. 
I regret my puny complaints
in the evening blue, when I tramp
through festive streets to the park.

Behind a window, a man I used to know
sits bent over his desk––no curtains––
can silhouettes be desolate? Moss-green,
the oaks are reaching. The river still is the river.

At night, my teeth well up, shift position––
waking, I feel for the ridges and mountains
that have lifted from my bones...
Plasticity––the least of my worries?

Perhaps the man at his desk has it right,
and we’ll all be sound again come January.
The good China used to be grandmother’s, yes. 
And what you will remember me by.


Author Bio:
Leonore Hildebrandt has published poems in the Cafe Review, the Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, the Spoon River Poetry Review, and the Quercus Review, among other journals. Her translations of Rilke's Elegies have appeared in Cerise Press. Her letterpress chapbook, The Work at Hand, is available from Flat Bay Press. A first book of poems is forthcoming with Pecan Grove Press. Winner of the 2013 Gemini Poetry Contest, she received fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Maine Community Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. She teaches writing at the University of Maine and serves as an editor for the Beloit Poetry Journal.

It was decided over tea
imported by way of Prague,
you would become the sole proprietor of my body--
for open arrangements of past
had left me deprived of the
umbilical charge
that runs soul to soul,
knocking on stark windows
to be let in
with hopes of settling into
a life together.

It wasn’t meant to sound
callow,
but it felt somewhat related
to this concern I’ve carried--
that we hide away the ugliness,
the degenerative parts--
not getting close to death
in the embarrassing act,
the marshlands of matchstick crosses,
the feeble fabric and grey matter,
and bloated reality
propped up like a carnival game,
only to be shot down again.

In one night,
I heard two stories.
And I’m still unsure who
to believe:
The Afghani who has witnessed
murderers in his streets
and speaks of a
levitating rock over Mecca.
Or the white doctor
of rhapsody,
who tells tales of Russians
stitching up mouths and nailing
their testicles to cement
as a statement—of their
endurance for pain.

I want to commit my faith
to both,
just like I want to commit
my body to you,
as a show and conviction
that I understand
the difference between
giving all freely,
and the covered bride
who rides in on the skinned horse.


*This work was recently published with DEAD FLOWERS: A Poetry Rag @ Bohemian Pupil Press


Author Bio:
Sarah E. Caouette is a New England-based writer of fiction/non-fiction, personal essay, and poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, and her work as of late has appeared with The Good Men Project, The Citron Review, and Cigale Literary. Currently residing in Portland, ME, her writing has recently been selected for the literary event, Word! Portland. She blogs at: www.sarahecaouette.com

She rocks black girl scabs
like a badge of sorrow and regret
deep, bloodied, layered 

suckles on hurt and disappointment
can only gift you
keloid love and collateral scars

heart welded closed
unfed it suffocates
return blows don’t reach it

She thinks this is safety
this refugee passion
this battle, this war

But this is death
A stunted delusion
vacant vampire life

You, carried the same marks
prefer to leave your lesions
outside for sun-healing

Blood, time, new skin
flesh restored so deeply
no longer nourishment for wounded bloodsuckers 


Author Bio:
Nichelle Johnson is a writer who rediscovered her passion for poetry after taking part in the Tongues of Fire writing workshops at the Audre Lorde Project. She was a part of that workshop for three years. After a blocked period, she began to be a regular participant of the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS). She recently featured at the 2 1/2 year celebration of WWBPS at Bluestockings Bookstore and the Glitter Pomegranate reading series in Brooklyn.

She makes a living consulting as a Database Manger.

She never wore pants because she despised her thighs. Her thighs that brushed together and sounded like comfort cooing. Her thighs that blossomed from her smooth, soft hips and pillowed my head when I slept. She hated the puckers and divets that sprang from her thighs when she stood rigid and straight. She covered these dimples with tights that tore and burst around her sensuous weight. She hid her thighs with billowing skirts that ruffled and swayed like canopies hiding her shame. She never wore pants because she hated the curves that flowed down her body like water. I loved her thighs that pooled around her mommy-hips; that swayed and moved like a caressing breeze. She never wore pants because "Pants are for squares," and she was a glass that swirled, twirled and teased.


Author Bio:
Emalee Russell began writing in Kindergarten when she authored and illustrated her first novella, "Why Justin Sucks" about an annoying boy in class. Since then, her writing has evolved, and she has attended numerous writing programs around the country including The University of Iowa's Young Writer's Workshop. This poem is about her dear friend who underestimates the power of her curves.

The experience of trying to locate Altglashütten
Having a stop at the wrong bus stop in the black forest
Walking a thousand meters to a wrong direction
A place of nowhere in a German Black forest 

Treading along the high way for bicycles and cars
Experiencing the drowning noise of power cycles in the black forest
Boozing the serene-tranquil environment till the visit of an angel in blue skirt
Pictures of the Schluchsee rebounding and abounding in the black forest

Revision in my memory the picture of tourists in pleasure ship 
Relishing the beauty of the environment in the black forest
The atmospheric dismantling of the harmonious silence of nature
An orchestra of cheeping and chirruping birds in the black forest

Breezy flow of wind twisting the squeaky sound of doors
Braying sound of sheep in the meadow in the black forest
Clanging and jingling raucous sound of cow bells producing cacophony plus
The humming sound of flies trying to assert their space in the black forest

Flipping of book pages, breathing of unpolluted gas
Gulping the essence of nature with loud rings of laughter in the black forest
The brushing of dog Ryan's teeth and
Sports dog lapping milk from white china under the dining table in the black forest

Fluttering clouds, clasping of finger, twinkling of wine glass
Rhythms of sipping coffee, quivering hands of Justis on the piano in the black forest 
Chatting sound of cutleries, the chewing munching sounds
Swinging and clanging noise of bracelets and rings in the black forest

Places a nostalgia of the distant closeness of nature that abhors vacuum,
There can be no absolute silence, this is quite revealing in the black forest
Marveling over nature and poetry
Opening the pores of pantoum-ic writing by Adrianne in the black forest

Reveals that there is no better place in the world
To have a visit from the muse but in the black forest
Where reality and fantasy becomes a passionate couple
You have no experience of nature till you get to the German black forest.



Author Bio:
Molly Chiluwa started writing at a very tender age. she comes from a patriarchal society where the voice of women are sparingly heard. Her writings are greatly influenced by her African cultural background and christianity. She holds a masters degree in English Literature and is currently doing her PHD on African Women and the HIV PANDEMIC at the Albert Ludwig University Freiburg, Germany. She loves writing, reading and making friends.