We leave our canes beside the pool,
Pick up noodles and Styrofoam weights,
And walk gingerly down the steps
Into Friday aqua power.

Early morning bodies follow the instructor.
Our feeble jumping jacks struggle
Against the warming water
While office buildings regard our labor.

The instructor demonstrates the bent-over row.
A classmate giggles, imagines bending roses.
Another in a shower cap sings, “Row, row, 
Row your boat, gently down the stream.”

The tune interrupts our private banters.
In the resonant space, our babble disperses.
Confusion lifts. New voices catch on. 
We look at ourselves grinning in pooled song.

Our rounds echo in the YMCA natatorium.
Hilarity takes over; splashing slows to a halt. 
Singers look at each other, 
Caught in shimmering music.

Before there was light, there was water.
Li Po’s spirit hovers over these waters. 
“If life is but a dream,” he asked,
“Why toil and struggle?”


Author Bio:
Born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Gaby is a professor at Eastern Kentucky University. When she is not assisting students write, produce plays, or edit their literary and arts journal, she enjoys singing. Along with poems and reviews in such magazines as Off the Coast and Poet Lore, her essays, translations, and interview appear in Diacritics, Critical Inquiry, and New Literary History.

Soft, lay the outlands of sweet birth,
by whose ancient bosom,
flew the jackdaw in dawn’s half-light, of gentle  suppleness,
who lay hand of foreign hand within each morn’s awakening:
blood of blood , flesh of flesh of which pale cheeks partook,
and still which rest amongst the skulls of the fallen,
whose cry sails upon each secret mist,
which raps itself around,
 the streets and highways , and all the folk therein ...
what majesty is this which on a childish sport resides
eternal the yoke of gleeful humanhood,
what poison drank she that her womb lies desolate amidst the glories of
her eyes , dulled by silent inessence;
what leaves are turned to ashes by electric lighting,
which illumines the mausoleum of the rotting,
and sets the soul in rigor mortis?


Author Bio:
Harry Blanchard was born near Liverpool, England in 1996. Having written from an early age, he is now a student of theology whose interests include bell-ringing and canoeing.

Last month’s flowers are blooming again. What’s cut back and
thriving like crazy. The off white roses, the Mexican heather,
the yellow trumpet flowers. It is never easy to take to what’s
gone. Cut back, overrun earth. To look beyond the polluted and
the drawn. Earth beyond chemicals and junk. Beyond cities
full of loss as if it is within us to reclaim it all. To rise up over what’s
downed. More than simply refinancing or collecting GNP info.
More than talk of math. Or talk of doom. Or talk of high powered rifles.
I walk over the back field where I live. Looking for a way forward.
Past the old sycamores full of crows. The palm trees in the wind
overloaded with date seeds. Past the pink poppies in the grass
growing along the edge of the driveway. Land taking itself back.
The dirt pushes up against my feet as I walk. I can feel the gravity.
Walking back over the same land as if I can claim it again and again.
Walking past the green pods hanging off the mesquite, past
the white wildflowers covering the back hills, past the barrel cactus
and the new moon. Step by step. Life on earth. Taking it back.
 

Author Bio:
Charlene Langfur is an organic gardener, a southern Californian, a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Fellow. Her most current publications include poems and essays featured in Poetry East, Weber, Sugar Mule, Earth's Daughters, The MacGuffin, The Manhattanville Review, Evening Street Review, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. 

She is a lavish perfume
That blows me all out of gloom

She’s like a chronic figment 
Coming in a skin pigment

She is like a morning mist,
Like a goddess to be kissed. 

She’s like a trophy rebab,
With whizzy strings hard to grab 

She’s wholly beyond reproach,
Shielded with the brightest brooch.

She’s beyond any single torment,
Without her, I shall lament.

She’s well like wispy cirrus, 
Whence a drop of words cheer us.

She’s like a literary book;
Some wits are there when I look. 

She’s all the air I long breathe,
With her I shall never seethe.

She’s my real joy on this earth,
From whence so she let me worth.

She’s like a kind of brandy,
Luscious, tasty and handy.

She’s somehow a bit wayward
When pursuing a reward.

She’s cute like a coral reef;
Her scent’s a comfy relief.

She’s like the vault of heaven,
On me from Allah given.


Author Bio:
Walid Boureghda is an Algerian poet, working as an Administrative Executive at Sonatrach-Agip Group. He holds a a B.A degree in the English Language and Literature from the University of BATNA in Algeria.

In a moment
Real soon
When the swallows return
When the eclipse
Darkens the moon
When the dust settles
When traffic dies down
When the snow flies
When the sun shines, Nellie
When the drawbridge lifts
And the brawlers and quarrelers
Put down their gloves
And patch up their rifts
I’ll stand by your side
We’ll deny fate its last chance
To pry us apart
We’ll stick like glue
Waiting for our rainbow
At the end of this assembly line
And when it doesn’t come
That will be alright, too
Let us be swallowed up together
In the abyss
In the abode
Of a love that outlasted
Bad weather and fate
Bankruptcy
Foreclosure
Substance abuse
Counselling
Everything except
Cheating and hate
I picked you
Because right now
As the equinox is getting its kicks
And light refracts above our shack
You’re my rainbow
You’re my glue
You are the prism
I see everything through


Author Bio:
Paul Smith writes fiction and poetry. A lot of new poetry troubles him because it is very oblique. 'Oblique' is a word he learned studying trigonometry or something that prepared him for a BS in Civil Engineering. Maybe that's what's wrong with him.

This is not my heart: pink polish
gently wrapped around southern hills. 
 
Heart of pink opals, orange juice and champagne
is not mine.  Ribbon-wrapped carnations, flags whipped
 
in wind—that is not mine.  I did not wash their hands.
That soap is not mine.  That water is not mine.
 
My hands were Persephone’s; my mother’s withering
crops, curse of barren land,
 
forbidden seeds of the red pomegranate, my split 
​

Author Bio:
Lindsey Wayland wrote her first poem when she was six. That first volume of poetry covered the pages inside a locked diary, whose key was the size of her six-year-old pinky knuckle. Poetry has always been about process for Lindsey--a way to access her inner council with a vernacular of whichever stage of life she is experiencing. Her love language is poetry, her wisdom exhales in poetry, her mind thinks in oft-fragmented enjambment, and the final pivotal gasping couplet is what she lives for. Lindsey's poetry has been published in Red River Review, Cordella Magazine, and Porter Gulch Literary Review. She lives in a cedar shake house in a meadow in the forest by the Salish Sea in Port Townsend with her husband and their three young children.

When they ask me … how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.
--William Carlos Williams
 
 
it feels presumptuous
mentioning doctors
 
maybe it’s that we’re
both poets or healers
walking wounded
 
my brain thinks Kildare
and William Carlos Williams
 
one fiction     one my
touchstone      brief like
Dickinson      Creeley
you your      glints of
subtext     water drops
a river      currents’ depth
the Marianas trench
 
so doctor      which heart
did you really diagnose
 
was it combined twinges
an accrual of scars
stretched loop whorl and line
over “physician heal thyself”
 
whose irregular heartbeat
in a mis-     pronounced word
a stam-     mer into a stethoscope
did you hear     quieter than
a foot trip     or was it that
faint flinch in your eye
which revealed it


Author Bio:
Jonathan Yungkans is a Los-Angeles-based poet, writer and photographer. Growing up in Gardena, California, not far from the Pacific Ocean and at the time still predominantly Japanese-American, left him with three things—an intense love for the sea, a deep appreciation for cultures other than his own and the outlook (and resulting questions) of an outsider aware that he didn’t quite fit into his surroundings. Subsequent years as an ESL teacher and a publications editor for a multi-cultural Christian ministry only added to the latter two of these. His works have appeared in Lime Hawk, Poetry/LA, Twisted Vine Literary Journal and other publications.

Winds picked at the onion skin earth over a town nobody knew about, as a yellow bus began its daily drive, almost thirty miles to the nearest schoolhouse over in the Killdeer Mountains, trying to reach its way over the canyons of the South Dakota skies. They blew along the Red River Valley, and over Red River, a place that had lost its serpent soul ten years ago. Two freckled-faced little boys missed the bus, and their parents would find out about them later, as they bounced their red ball in front of the Blue Dog watering and piss hole bar.


Author Bio:
G. Franklin Prue attended Jenny McKean Moore Writers Workshop at George Washington University and University of Georgia Writers Conference. His latest short story Man of Salt appears in Four Tie Lit Review. He is also widely published on Scriggler.com, LinkedIn Pulse, Wattpad, and Bloglovin. His indie novels include: A Year of Madness, Mammie Doll, The Man from Sweet Loaf, Golden Arms, Blu. His blog site is: georgeprue57.wixsite.com.

this is America the Beautiful
this is bombs still bursting in air
this is land of the conqueror
home of the slaughtered
oh, say, can you see?
how the blood still pours
steady as the Missouri river itself
this is nothing new
what they really meant in those songs was
this land is not your land
this land is my land
this land was made by you for me
this is my standing rock
this is gas guzzler dream, capitalist fantasy
the masters.
their hearts, like gizzards, dead and packaged in plastic
this is pocket-lined prophecy
bulldozers in the hands of children
name it the War on Water
everybody likes a good fight
it’s always been about water, hasn’t it?
about life source?
about life?
and who can buy it
and who deserves it
this is Flint water being swallowed
this is Trayvon’s blood spilling
this is Dreamers’ tears welling
this is refugee arms treading
this is Marsha P Johnson’s body floating
this is profit vs. body count
this is nothing new
to a people who know imperialism like sunrise — always coming.
this is butcher’s technique passed father to son
this is getting the job done, atta boy! and a slap on the back
when the bodies of the oppressed are simply collateral this is business as usual, Uncle Sam salutes you, this is in God we trust
this is Columbus resurrected
manifest destiny at your doorstep
everything you can see is yours
there are no borders — in this case alone
this is anything you can do I can do better
this is entire communities for the taking
history for the rewriting
how a whole nation can fit in a single fist
this is the long reaching arm of democracy
conquistadors called liberators, genocide called progress
white supremacy called patriotism
this is the stomping out of culture, English only schools
and name changing
they’d buy back the memories, too, if they could
this is weeding the bad ones out because they know too much this is riot gear meets peaceful protest
this is nothing new
this is tax money spent on bullets instead of books
jailing protesters because, shit, they can make money off that, too this is incarceration nation
this is buying media outlets and gagging the truth’s mouth
this is politicians looking the other way, windows rolled up drones flying and no faces shown
only blood
there is so much blood
this is just God’s work, dear
this is SUV driving, cruise-taking, mouth-stuffing,
I want more, mommy
mommy, I want more
this is a matter of money, only money matters
this is what buying a life looks like
this is what buying life looks like
this is nothing new
this is Standing Rock
this is like everything else that’s been taken.
​

​Author Bio:
Marissa is a world-traveling, Beyonce-worshipping, wine-loving, gay woman living in Brooklyn, New York. She recently took a Buzzfeed quiz to determine her style based on her favorite color and horoscope and it told her she is a "Salty Grandma" and that was probably the most accurate thing that’s ever been said about her. She is a poet, researcher, and activist on issues including mass incarceration, violence against women, and LGBTQ rights.