I sat naked in my tiny naked bathtub.
The water wasn’t running;
the tub was empty.
I stood up
turned the lights on
sat down
stood up and turned the 
lights back off.
This cycle continued.
until sunlight broke through a tiny window.
After night ended and the day had begun
I was still naked in the empty tiny naked bathtub.
I decided to get up, get your pictures
and gathered your pictures from frames, wallets
and a scrapbook you made
entitled "An Adventure Book."
I brought them with me, into my tiny naked bathtub.
I burnt them all there
in my tiny naked bathtub.
My soul returned to me and I finally slept,
on the ashes of your pictures,
I slept
alone in my tiny naked bathtub.


Author Bio:
Cameron Auldridge is a young 18-year-old poet from Colorado who's excited to share his work.

I took that step 
right over that ledge--
I fell quicker than I'd expect. 
Then we rolled up
and they was rollin’ up 
so I took a puff
it was just enough; 
sent me to the clouds 
some hours later 
my senses returned
and my lungs burned 
the rep I earned
I fed into all the hype; 
labels and names 
that's my only shame. 
Since that day
shit’s never been the same. 
Walked into the same party
the year after next 
white replaced the green 
silence replaced with screams 
prom queens turned to feigns 
front row in the destruction of dreams 
we sold our potential and creativity 
for that rush, that buzz, that feeling.
Baby, I got just what you need
escape reality for a night 
just to be up all next week
can't sleep, can't eat
the poison is now the antidote 
daddy been coked up since 
Bon Jovi "Livin’ on Prayer."
Hate to say it baby, you came along way... 
but you went the wrong way.


Author Bio:
Kyra Anderson writes poetry, music, fiction, and non-fiction. She is 17-years-old and has been writing for about 4 years. It is something she deeply enjoys and she has a lot to share with the world.

I’m weary of your anger
I’m tired of your lament
Offended by everyone
No one escapes your judgment

You’ve grown into a cynic
With a dark depressing soul
Once you were a baby
Whose mother loved you so

Your heart has become so hard
Your mind is so shallow 
I must move away
From the darkness of your shadow


Author Bio:
Kim Solem aka Kimmy Alan is a wannabe poet from the land of Lake Woebegone. A retired steel worker who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Kimmy Alan pursed his love of poetry as a distraction while undergoing chemo and radiation. For him, poetry has proven to be a powerful catharsis as he is currently in remission. When he isn’t writing he spends time with his four wonderful nieces, whom he says “are driving him to pieces.”

The long drawn out sighs
Masquerade as silence and

Vanish in a stolen exchange
They’re gone leaving

Slivers that sound like half-finished expletives
drowned out by the hate. the subject

fossilizes emotion
wrung. Squeezed out till it drips

in denial.

Cars run past
In haste

Where there never was room
To put even a foot;

Forget about a stare or a glimpse
From the moral police.

Sequestering in idleness
In enforcing

Unique brands of moral science
Between alcoholic hazes.

Habitats are the creation of habit
Of there being no other choice

Of being corralled
In mental encampments;

Where you’re never found.

Between one footstool and the next
Your legs plied under.

Naked breasts.


Author Bio:
Rony Nair’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. Rony was a published columnist with the Indian Express. He is also a professional photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and has previously been featured by Chiron Review, Sonic Boom, Quail Bell Magazine, YGDRASIL journal, Mindless Muse, Yellow Chair Review, Two Words For, Alephi, New Asian Writing (NAW), Semaphore, The Economic Times, 1947, The Foliate Oak Magazine, Open Road Magazine, Tipton Review, Antarctica Journal, North East Review, Muse India, and YES magazine, among others. Rony has also featured in the Economic Times of India. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts!

She lurks. Her pale neck gleams.
She laughs. Her pale neck gleams.
She howls. Her pale neck gleams.

She waltzes behind Lucifer,
Bearer of palls, harbinger of gloom,
Rabble rouser banished to his own hell.
He cries. He laughs. He sings:
“I love you, you poor, fallen sods. I will open my hell for you.
Tartarus is waiting for you.”

The din grows outside. The queues grow long.
Frowns crowd his forehead. Can they not stay quiet?
Her pale neck gleams.
Oh Marie Antoinette! How right you were!
The poor are such an inconvenience
Their demands endless.
But I, Lucifer, know how to keep them quiet.

The ghost of Marie Antoinette lurks
In a trail of flames. The violin crescendos.  
The curtains rise. Lucifer blinks.
He revels in pandemonium.
“I have left everything for you, my fallen angels
I live and die for you.” The fallen angels roar back.
“We love you Lucifer. We live and die for you.”

The ghost of Marie Antoinette waltzes among them
Absorbed in her own invisible tune
We are nothing. We are nobodies
We are the fallen angels
we will suffer so Pandemonium can prosper! 

The ghost of Marie Antoinette claps and cheers
The echoes reach far and wide
To the hospital where Morta waits -- to separate the soul
Of a newborn from the body,
To queues where the old faint, die. Collateral damage.
To funeral houses where 150 corpses, and counting, await cremation​

The ghost of Marie Antoinette waltzes among them
She lurks. Her pale neck gleams.
She laughs. Her pale neck gleams.
She howls. Her pale neck gleams.


####This poem is in response to the current situation in the world where demagogues rule and the poor man suffers. What are we doing about it?


Author Bio:
Nilanjana Bhowmick is a poet based in New Delhi, India. Her poems traverses gender justice, social change, politics and certain nebulous regions of the mind. Follow her poetry on instagram @dreams_and_duststorms

you said you no longer needed
the words     empty bottles that
washed in     broke or simply
clunked their plastic falseness
as they piled between boulders
in the Playa Del Rey breakwater
their smell of stagnant water
labels peeled to inconsequence
 
still I can’t help myself with all
the Wild Horse cabernet bottles
lined up near a pocket window
green against white kitchen tiles
muscled white steeds on labels
like those in Neptune’s Horses
and corks in my desk drawer
to seal the day’s lack of clarity
surrounded by waves’ lap
 
as I walk another breakwater
under San Pedro’s clay sky
its ocean-rounded paragraphs
shaped like years as the deep
pushed concrete out to sea
along streets fallen and words
sprayed on walls that eat lies
bunkers built to trip mines
which detonate hopes locked
to wait the tide     the glitter
of sun and illusions on water
salt to wash all but wounds
and dreams lured into breakers
 
all the chunks and fragments
of lives under glare and salt
that plastic would seem to defy
glass try to glisten crystalline
a final attempt to show magic
that it’s at least worthwhile
in surf’s intermittent whisper
before tide and desire settle
ensconced in sand or on rock
 
clear glass brown or green    
in the glory and the power
to shatter     in cursive or
keyboard     into shards
or stars to sweep fragments
yet shimmer in reflection
to be carried and held
​

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.

1.
Unlike my moms, I was obvious and all-knowing about my sexuality as a child,
could not perform girlhood in the way the world expected me to.
I tore apart my barbie dolls, likened to sports and my brother’s
hand me downs instead.
I did not learn how to highlight my face,
still don’t know how to braid hair,
tell me a popular fashion line and I will not know what it is.
I was not feminine because it was a thing I did not understand.
But I did understand blood.
How elusive it was. How important and not important in family conversations.
​How proud I was when it splintered from my hands,
gushed from my knees and not once made me cry.
How, like everything I wanted, it seemed both out of reach
and everywhere. And in this way suffering became my bloodline,
inherited by me from my mothers, and their mothers,
gay and otherwise,
related and otherwise. Blood
was easy to know. And I wore it well.

2.
Before my baptism, my mama asked her mother,
“you do know I’ll be standing there as her mother, right?”
My grandmother, the devout Catholic, mother of eight, said nothing.
And so I was, head dipped in holy water,
washed clean of bloodlink.
I think she was proud, but I am not sure of what.
I have never really spoken to my grandmother.
She still signs my birthday and christmas cards - ‘Elaine’
never ‘grandma.’
And yet I do not blame her. I am no child of God.
I am no thing she knows how to understand.

3.
When my moms were splitting, my uncle told my mama
he was on her side, to not worry about that woman
and her kids, said, “blood is thicker than water, sis.”
I am thin as water to them, bastard child slipping between fingers,
something spilled on the kitchen floor,
best be wiped up quick,
there isn’t even an insult for the wrong kind of baby I was
that does not include and prioritize a man.
Which I was not made from or by or for.
Twenty years later that same uncle
scoffed at the Orlando shooting,
said he could understand where the guy was coming from
the way we gay people flaunt our flamboyancy in the faces
of good, regular people.
And I think, well, blood is just blood, then. Spilled or unspilled.
That is all.


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. 

I used a loose leaf love note paper airplane as an invitation,
and followed it with a faded map of Maryland
using a day-old coffee ring to circle our Saturday night rendezvous spot,
then twisted them into a dusty RC bottle and floated it in your backyard bird bath.
 
With Mellencamp on Maxell tape moving through open car windows
I set out for the coffee-circled spot with a Buick trunk beach blanket
that I throw down in a moonlit shadow on
the outskirts of civilization and life, as we know them, and await your arrival.
 
As soon as you appear from the south under someone’s painted promises
sprayed on the side of a rusty railroad overpass, we sit and attempt to
solve the world’s problems over a couple of twist-top bottles of Boone’s Farm
poured properly into two leftover summer picnic paper cups.
 
Lying on our sides with a harvest moon above we use peach wine and
Levi’s corduroy friction heat to fend off the late fall evening chill.
As clouds cover the moon we send up our own silent prayers and
watch them form their own temporary constellations.
 
And as you re-tell, and fixate on, what’s been done to you
by the others who took advantage before I was lucky enough to find you
I use stroke-of-midnight sleight-of-hand to palm a behind-the-ear bobby pin
in an attempt to pick the lock on your barely beating broken heart.
 

Author Bio:
Steven Harz is the 2013 Winner of the People’s Poetry Contest and at 3-time winner of The Iron Writer Challenge. A graduate of Towson (MD) University’s College of Fine Arts and Communications, Steven writes short fiction and poetry designed to invoke images of loves discovered, lost, and sometimes found again. Steven’s work has appeared in The Germ, Tracks, Indigo Rising, Voices 2, Words+Pictures, Donut Factory, Pocket Thoughts, and Ink Monkey Magazine.

‘Stoves kill 4 wives a day’ – Daily Telegraph
 
Laid out on a small cot,
                        supple as a seedling,
New Wife waits for New Husband.
Entranced, she believes
                                    herself superior. 
She is nothing
                        but novelty. 
Soon she’ll wear thin.
 
She’s a pouty girl with pointed breasts
                                                 and pear-shaped hips,
scarcely younger than their own daughter. 
 
Old Wife listens
                        for his step on the stair.
She avoids mirrors now,
                        her features lost
                                    in fissures of thickened skin. 
Charred fingers, sausage slabs,
                                    twisted, monstrous.
 
The surgeons saved her; a miracle
                        she survived. 
The authorities know.
                     They close one eye.
‘A row perhaps? A female indiscretion?’
‘Economic woes,’ her husband replies.
‘I couldn’t afford two wives.’  
 
He hurries home, blames Agni the fire god,
savior of limp cocks,
                        for failure. 
Old Wife lives.
                        No relief in sight. 
She chops chilies, prepares
                                    curried rice.
Her dark eye flails him.
             Fists pound dough,
                        resentments rolled thin.
 
Desire salts his tastes.
                  His mind stuck on the mango jelly
the girl dabs between her thighs,
            his tongue circling
                                    her nipples,
hard as peach stones, plump fruit,
                                                 sweet to suck.
 
Paper-thin walls, bed creaks.
            Kitchen shrinks in the swell of heat.
Sausage fingers rub mangled chin,
                             half nubs of singed flesh,
slivers of skin slough off,
            bacon-crisp, pain a cipher,
                                                undecipherable. 
New Wife laughs at the old man’s need.
 
Outside the sun sinks behind sky of pinks and reds.
Gloom descends into shadows. 
Old Wife edges towards the door,
                          good eye pressed against the crack. 
She spies the old man’s wrinkled buttocks,
                        pasty, doughy, rising and falling
as ducks feed from the sludge of a pond,
         tail up,
            head under,
                                    beaks burble and quack.
 
Perhaps one day when the girl’s body sags
from childbirth,
            the wives might
                                    become allies. 
Perhaps over multiple cups of Chai,
                        she’ll tell her a tale of old wives.
A dupatta dipped in paraffin,
            a shove from behind.
An eye blinded,
                        blinking in flames.
                       
 
Author Bio:
Annette LeBox is an award-winning Canadian poet, novelist and children’s writer with seven published books. Her poetry has been widely published in literary journals such as Event, Poetry Canada, Prairie Fire, Matrix and the Southern Review. Two of her children’s books have won the British Columbia Book Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. 
LeBox is an environmental activist, feminist, and wife of a former politician. 

You’ve heard of me from Classics 101.
A sea god of turbulent shape-shifting
you learned.  What they didn’t tell you
is that you, composed of mostly brine,
are me.  That ego of yours, which seeks
the stolidity of an anchor, steers
you wrong, makes you think you’re
carved in stone, a regular Doric column.
Who were you yesterday?  I was Ajax,
slaughtering imaginary sheep as I slept.
Sweet Sally over there, she found snakes
in her hair and turned Joey to granite
until she got sweet again and jellied
him down—oh, like a sheep he bleated,
pecked her sneakers.  And you, Father,
your metamorphosis the grandest
along with everyone else now dust-
grained, granulated, scattered, strewn.
How we blend and ooze, osmosify,
one day Chuck the clunk, the next
Balthazar the wise.  And as I sit
on a stool in this diner waiting for
a plate a scrambled eggs I watch
the waitress, beautiful Nausicaä,
alchemize into Sweet Sally with snakes
for hair when she burns her finger
on a hot skillet.  She sucks out the heat,
feels better, is Nausicaä  again
and I am sea-weeded, crusty Ulysses
washed up by the ocean once again
onto her dainty shore
like a chunk of driftwood.
 
 
​Author Bio:
Louis Gallo’s work has appeared or will shortly appear in Southern Literary Review, Fiction Fix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic,, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth, Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review, and many others. Chapbooks include The Truth Change, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books: A New Orleans Review. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.