I kept staring;
She stared in return. 
When I blinked, she blinked right back --
delayed, but twice as hard;
the same, but different. 
Stood slouched — 
almost hunched over. 
She wore the same outfit as I, 
but it didn't seem to fit her the same. 
I tucked my shirt into my trousers, 
she did the same. It looked better on me 
than it did her. 
Her hair was tangled. 
I could tell because it looked just like 
mine used to. Hers was more voluptuous than 
mine ever was. I could almost hear her speaking, 
like telepathy. But her voice sounded different, 
deeper, more pronounced --
I couldn't put a finger on where I recognized it. 
She didn't say anything in particular;
it was as if she didn't say words at all. 
The way she mumbled sounded different --
almost foreign. 
It was soothing, almost refreshing to hear, 
because somehow I understood her.
Her face was pointed like a soft mountain top.
She looked almost... 
disappointed when I noticed. Nose fairly flat — 
Mine had a small bump. Her lips were uneven, 
showing gums when she faked a smile; 
I never opened my mouth to grin, it was unbecoming. 
Her forehead was long and wide, 
big enough for two brains --
I bet she's smarter than I am.
I noticed she was tired — I was tired, too. 
My eyes are blue. Hers were grey, 
similar to the sky when it rained — 
almost like it was waiting for a rainbow.
I lifted my hand to touch hers, 
she did the same right after. I could feel 
the warmth of her hand on mine. It felt as if 
she was a long-lost sister, someone 
I hadn't seen in a long time. 
An instant connection. 
I don't remember ever meeting her, but 
it was like I knew everything about her.
We let go at the same time.
She became a stranger again.


Author Bio:
Renie Simone is a student, writer, and teacher. Born in Los Angeles, raised north of London, England in a small village, Renie has traveled all over Europe and America. Residing statewide once again, she studies English with concentration in creative writing at San Jose State. In the future, Renie Simone hopes to see, teach, and learn as she travels the world. And always, adventures await her.

Against this great surge of water
Tears of sorrow plummet to the earth
Enveloping me in nature’s pain
I am nothing compared to this sight
This beautiful view
Nothing but an animal roaming the earth
Running,
Running.
Trying to find answers to questions no one hears but me
Trying to understand nature’s complex emotions
Breathless
One out of seven billion
A leaf in a forest
A droplet of water in an ocean
And still I run
So lost and confused
So insignificant
Soft with compassion
But hardened by pain
Awed by this surge of water
Connected but separated
Living yet dying
Swallowed up by this world I’ll never truly explore
Drowning in a life I will never truly live
And still I run.


Author Bio:
Liza has been a writer her whole life. While she mostly writes short stories and novels, she enjoys writing poetry when inspiration strikes. Liza currently attends Virginia Commonwealth University and is studying to be a social worker. 

Toilet brush in hand is a better time than most
to consider destiny, who sweats and who relaxes,
to mull whether character-building scutwork taxes
or feeds creativity.  Should I concede the boast:
I devote my waking hours to my muse, coast
from metaphor to metaphor?  Or is the better praxis:
By sweat of honest labor, I wrestle access
to imagery? Sponge and mop-slinger, I toast
the latter.  Melpomene, Calliope, Erato wait
while I earn a wage, inspiration stalls mid-birth,
not always delivered at day’s end, yet still
I’m glad to struggle, share the common fate,
to glean and pocket moments, know their worth,
poems sprung not from privilege, but through will.
 
 
Author Bio:
Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher from Portland, Oregon. She gauges her fortunes each morning by how well her dog catches the Frisbee. When he's fired up, she might find her work in places like Rattle, The Cincinatti Review, or dozens of other journals with names like poems. When she misses, she stacks up rejections. Either way, she writes poetry because she loves the process, finding inspiration in art, the natural world, the work of other poets, the news, her teaching, and her relationships. She plays with all styles of poetry, rhymed and free. She welcomes contact from her readers.

We are together in his parents’ kitchen in Atlanta soon to leave for dinner and a motel.
Earlier he had held our son in his arms for the first time. I was twenty when he was born.
 
I can’t find the father anywhere, I had heard the nurse say when I was waking up. My grandparents were in the waiting room. I lived with them the year he was away. Sundays were the loneliest. I’d sit in the den and embroider. Roses Five & Dime had stamped pillow cases, table scarves and skeins of thread.
 
Before our marriage, Officers Candidate School, and he swore no matter how bad it got he’d finish. His father fought in WWII and Korea.
 
He was Infantry, but placed in charge of convoys to and from the airport. Still, the compound was mortared and men were killed. One soldier was on drugs and waving his rifle around threatening to shoot someone, and my husband was sent to talk him into surrendering his weapon.
 
The Smothers Brothers were against the war in Vietnam. The T.V. news was censored, and also photographs. Men left for Canada—draft dodgers. Our flag went up in flames.
On Mondays I watched Laugh-In. Henry Gibson held a daisy and recited a poem.
 
Now, my husband is beside me, and we are going to dinner. I am wearing a white dress with a wide patent leather belt. We will check into a motel. Make love, sleep, make love again in the morning light when we are ravenous. 
 
​
Author Bio:
Gail Peck is the author of eight books of poetry. Her first full-length, Drop Zone, won the Texas Review Breakthrough Contest; The Braided Light won the Leana Shull Contest for 2015. Other collections are Thirst, Counting the Lost, From Terezin, Foreshadow, and New River, which won the Harperprints Award. Poems and essays have appeared in Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Connotation Press, Comstock, Stone Voices, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart, and her essay “Child Waiting” was cited as a Notable for Best American Essays, 2013. 

The cake was
all she had.
Tended
with hands that trembled.
A faulty version
of best-laid plans.


Author Bio:
Amanda was diagnosed with early onset bipolar disorder at the age of nineteen. She received her BS in Sociology in 1987. 

fter hiding her mental illness, for over twenty years, she has stepped out of the closet. It is Amanda's hope that through her writing she can help demystify an illness that manifests both mentally and physically.
You can follow Amanda on Twitter. AmandaK@MyKayos

The three-legged wooden table
bore a feast breathed in the fumes
of the world’s oven.
Eat up, eat up. Crack the wishbone.
More chicken cluck in the yards,
asking for our daily inattentions,
scooting off through the richness of the day.
Is there gold you want, little birdies?

We sigh to slow the heart
and watch the moon live up to its name.
Too much time spent waiting. Mothy touches
dreaming of our rough men
gone too soon.
Our tongues were once flame
that purged, soothed, invented
languages to keep them tame.

We now laminate loss,
skins like dropped rope.
All around, there is unremitting flesh,
ill from the pieces given away.
Inside the bones, grief calcified
decades ago.
So be merry, birdies, be bold.
Eat up, eat up.

At childhood’s end, you come panting beasts,
Sparing no dream, daggers for eyes.


Author Bio:
Clara Burghelea is Editor-at-Large for Village of Crickets blog, called Small Points of Light.
She is a Scott James and Jerry Cain Creative Writing and Social Media Fellow from Romania, working on a multi-genre MFA at Adelphi University. A poet and translator, she published in print and online, including in In-Flight Literary Magazine, Straylight Literary Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, The Galway Review, Peacock Journal and Ambit Magazine. 

It was the sunset
which caused me to rise
to begin my day 
as I always do
in anticipation of the dark

I grab the ballpoint pen
tonight I choose blue ink

Crossing out the square
on the calendar
I smile because
my day slumber
has whittled away 
another number of this month

I turn on the electric stove
fill the red tea kettle
and wait for the whistle

the only noise that will be
heard throughout the night
as I binge read and sip fragrant tea


Author Bio:
Kimberly Payne is a mother and dreamer living in Nevada. She writes poetry because it allows her to breathe. Kimberly has been published in Reno News & Review and the Sparks Tribune, as well as a few online sites. 

Some would spend designing stem by stem
with blossom peering oh just so in careful glass
or tissue to hold perfected shapes, while mine
 
fresh from wet fields all bunched and wild
in my hand and even still with sun’s glance,
we lift our faces upward yet and dare a smile.
​
 
Author Bio:
George Perreault’s most recent collection of poetry is Bodark County, featuring poems in the voices of characters living on the Llano Estacado. He has received a fellowship from the Nevada Arts Council and an award from the Washington Poets Association, was a finalist for the Backwaters Prize, and has served as a visiting writer in New Mexico, Montana, and Utah. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and selected for nine anthologies and dozens of magazines; recent work can be found in The American Journal of Poetry; High Desert Journal; Weber – The Contemporary West; San Pedro River Review; Gravel; and Sleet.

if we are depressed,
does that make us less human?
Our faces change with disgust toward ourselves
when our negativity is in the air,
when our crippling negativity cannot be harnessed,
we vilify and shame the human who lives in despair.
we act toward ourselves as if our faces are disfigured,
disfigured with too many excuses and far-ended complaints.
we act as if we need to change to be approachable
to feign our negative feelings with positive ones.
but if faking it until we make it is true,
how come many of us do not make it?
why should we compromise our pain
for a falsehood of optimism, with a self-imposing will to fake it?
if we do not fake it, we look at ourselves with disdain.
we are looked down upon with a shame,
That makes us feel worse, increases our pains.
why should we feel bad
for fighting what corrodes our beautiful minds?
why do we shame ourselves
for being so-called “negative”,
stigmatizing our intrinsic greatness,
we leave ourselves confined
why do we dismiss one another,
acting as if our mental illnesses are
inherent malformations of our design?
why, when it is in our human nature to
lament, wane, and repine?
 

Author Bio:
Patrick Jonathan Derilus is a writer. He writes poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction essays. He is a third-year student at SUNY New Paltz University majoring in English with a Creative Writing concentration and a minor in Black Studies. He writes poetry, narrative fiction, memoir, and essays, and is currently working toward earning a BA in Creative Writing.

Chests beat in a rhythm that sounds this war.
Family and friends batten down the hatches, 
Tell-tale signs, tensions plain on the wall.
How soon until we are left in crutches,
Wielding clubs and sticks, striking away grenades?
Just anything, escaping the fusillade.

Destroy! Destroy!! The poor man’s house,
With shelling on the roof.
The rich do also cry, and scamper like mice:
For what was built in years is destroyed in a poof.
In this fight, the green grasses suffer,
For big money may not buy them a buffer.

Watch! Watch!! Say a silent prayer;
Oh! That ye may evade the grip of the slayer.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, no time to sleep.
Shivers and squirms, cold of the nights;
No place to go, no place to keep.
Ah! The infamy. We dread the night.

Run! Run!! Don’t ask who is chasing.
For while children at death’s door teeter,
The enemies are maiming and raping. 
And as brave men are taken by the grim reaper,
All is fair,
As our flesh they tear.

Burdened with abounding uncertainty,
We may be rescued from behind this cabin.
In the face of fatal shots, limbs hanging in frailty, 
One thing is really certain;
You die or survive.
For the latter we strive.

When two Greeks meet, there is a tug of war,
And selfish battles they fight to win it all.
Conquest prostrates on either sides, this too is sure.
To tell this tale, this story of war,
I tasted it. So raw.
Now, let there be no rancour. Not anymore.
Let there be peace in all the world.


Author Bio:
Deleteh Bank is a no mere storyteller who writes from the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Nigeria. He combines attention to the grasping and perfection of clinical skills and his love for creative writing with a perfect blend of hard play and fun. He has received a prize for short story writing from The Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch and has been published on African Writer.