Find him in the city crusts, tossed like a roach;
each passive glance—a shy laughing rhythm.
Those who stare strive to understand

like a speck in their eyes.

Find him by the lane named after him that follows 
him like a sick tail
or in the widowed building that proposes to be his
grave palace.

Find him near the palms he fears climbing
for their veins stem the bed that begs him 
sunk. On a lake glittered by sunset

find him crossing,
waved in, weighed 
till he’s weightless

and time forgets.


Author Bio:
Pascale Louissaint, also known as Tia Paul-Louis, is a wife, mother and poet from Florida. Her writing experience began at age 11 but after a series of powerful events in her young adulthood, poetry became more of a home than a friend. Furthermore, pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from National University inspired her to not only continue to write but to learn more of what the Creative Writing World has to offer.

I gave you a verb
But you left me with an adverb
Three letters that forever changed what was
And what could have been
Three letters that showed no reciprocity
Just an obligation
Instead of exclamations or question marks
All hung in a single ellipsis
While we exchanged conjunctions
Without any periods
We were forced to divide our nouns
Carefully arranging pronouns
Remembering previous prepositions
Until finally
Not a single article remained
So before I closed the door for the last time
I offered you a final interjection


Author Bio:
Roberta Borger is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil, but she's currently pursuing her PhD at Binghamton University, in New York. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Lux, the Acentos Review, and On the Rusk.

A lost child looms in darkness, in a black cave.
The lost child, with a forbidding fear
Seeks help with a faint quivering voice
Resounding on the walls.
Holding the walls, to make way out of the dark
Time ticking by, breathing faster and faster.
Gasping for more air, she stumbles on rocks
That makes her whine with pain.
A child accompanying her tourist mother
Whom she missed amidst the rocks
She screams for her mother, banging the walls
That beat her back
​
***
The mother goes mad, with her child lost amidst
So many rocks, whose cries are no more resounding on the walls

*****
The drops of water splatter on her face
The green drops of water and algae
She opens her eyelids, and starts to cry.
Then she sees a streak of light, coming from a hole, on the other side
With trembling fingers, and pain in her thighs
Her slow movements brings frustration 
To her racing mind.

As she moves across the guiding light
Her voice echoing off the walls
Her inspiration meets with hope.
She hears her mother, calling her name
She shouts back into higher and higher waves
She sparks hope, ultimately finds her way out
And reaches the hope light.

She remembers her mother say, "courage wins the heart."
The heart makes her bolder
And then she shouts out her mother’s name
In all anticipation, with the only hope to save her life.

And she hears her mother’s voice, feeling the salt water oozing out of her eyes
Her eyes brims with happiness, after days of last

Ultimately, she emerges she from the cave, with a way out.
A challenge may come up in life that one must welcome in, open-wide
For courage wins the heart.


Author Bio:
Madhumitha Murali is from India and holds an MBA in finance.  She is an avid blogger and a published author. Some of her recent works are found in a UK-based publication, SeventhQuarryMagazine. 

I cannot do what I wish today-
Close my eyes, inhale and exhale,
And listen to the rustle of the leaves
Sway in the light breeze, in prelude to winter;
No, I cannot do what I wish today-
Meditate in the hills beyond mountain trails
And spot sunlight flickers on soft blue lakes;
I still cannot do what I wish today-
Retreat into a corner wicker chair, chai in hand, curl up my feet-

Hush now, the temple bells do not yet toll for me,
I wander on each day and wish I had-
Defined space to call my own.
​

Author Bio:
Jayshree Misra Tripathi is an 'arranger of words' and a nomadic teacher since 1983. She has a Master of Arts Degree in English Literature and a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Rights Law. She worked briefly in print media in the 1980s and has been an examiner in English for the International Baccalaureate Diploma. As the spouse of an officer in India's civil services, she has lived and sometimes taught, overseas - across three continents, in diverse cultures - wherever vacancies existed and were permissible. Her interests include human rights for all and world 'news and views.' She considers herself to be a constant learner. Her published works include: "The Sorrow of Unanswered Questions" (International Centre for Ethnic Studies), 
"Dilemmas and Scattered Weaves: Musings in Narrative Verse, Flash Vignettes of Travels through the Diaspora" (Quills Publishing), "Tales in Verse for Children Everywhere" Vols. 1 & 2.

What if
The siren songs
Fishermen were meant to fear
Didn’t come from the sea?

What if the powerful howls
Came from the raw throats of
Women on land,
Women at home in their farmhouses
Gripping the edge of the kitchen sink,
Or curled up on the edge of the bed?
From women wandering the shoreline in shawls,
All of them keening, 
Mourning
For the matted kelp long gone from 
Their carefully shorn heads?

It has never been the mermaids
Who salted the ocean with their tears.
That flavor, 
Little by little,
Washed downstream,
Out of the eyes of those who would have tails.


Author Bio:
Stacey Crawford Murphy lives with her family in Ithaca, NY. She has been playing with words her whole life and recently came into a poetry spurt, possibly out of the joy that short, complete thoughts can bring while life seems to contain so many longer, more complicated ones. In the past year several of her poems have appeared in online journals. When not writing, Stacey works as an independent grantwriting consultant. She enjoys raising a son with her husband, her friends, time in nature, and adventures big and small.

Instead of watching you, I watch your shadow. Your singing jars us listeners—innocence shouldn’t sound like that. On the auditorium wall behind you, the skirt we picked out together looks too short and the dark curves of your hips bloom out against the bleak industrial paint. After, I meet you with roses and we go out for cake to celebrate. I see a gash of lipstick on your front tooth as you chew--only coffee for me. At home, I kiss you goodnight and crawl into my cool and empty sheets.  It’s your future that finally crushes me to sleep.    

​
Author Bio:
Sarah K. Stephens earned her doctorate in Developmental Psychology in 2007 and teaches a variety of courses on human development as a university lecturer. Although Fall and Spring find her in the classroom, she remains a writer year round. 

On your first Christmas in this world, all things being
Equalized, I, your mother, lacking a tree star,
String white lights on your crib, spurred by unbidden need
To show my fiercely loved firstborn a shine of truth,
Of bright welcome, in a winter stark with solstice.
Your infant eyes imprint. On. Off. Too soon I will

Live to rue that night, when I sit wondering "Will
He be back soon?" - the man I’ve married, he being
Father of the child conceived at summer solstice,
Cause of our shotgun wedding. You are born. My star
Alters course, shines on you. I am dazzled, in truth,
Astonished to feel such love. Wake urgent with need

To give it. Love bares my nipples. Burst-milk. Burp-need.
Shorthand-brain, gone to child. Happy? “Where there's a will
There's a way.” Damn cliche. Better avoid the truth
That one fuck does not a marriage make. “I'm being
So unfair,” I think, straightening the paper star
I've added to a plant brought indoors at solstice, 

Substitute for a tree. Pagans worship solstice.
No more good Catholic girl. Husband doesn’t need
Any God but golf. My nights long as days. His star
On the rise. Oh so many rounds played. Nothing will
Interfere now. Infant? “Great, though, all things being
Equal, my dream's what matters most.” He told the truth.

I string lights, dispelling the dawn of that told truth.
Blinded still, by blaze of love gained since solstice.
“Blink and I'll miss a life I never knew. Being
Maudlin now,” I scold myself. And feel the need
To watch crib lights blink. Off. On. “Oh daughter, I will
Find some way, to steer you to safe harbor. Lodestar

I must seek.” And did, and failed to blast your dark star
From your sky. Alcohol, legal, took all your truth. 
Circuits shorted. Life departed. You left no will.
Left me angry. Anguished. Eclipse swallowed solstice.
Battle lost, at forty years, to such lethal need
Fiercest loving could not breathe you back to being.

Christmas is no more. Will you remember your Star-
Turn in this world? Your death obscures the saddest truth,
Bleak as winter solstice: booze buries life in need. 


Author Bio:
Books and writing have helped shaped my life. Early, voracious reader: cut to the nun slamming my 2nd-grade desktop down on opened copy of Thomas Costain’s "The Robe."  National Magazine Award nominee: cut to early 80s, listening without writing tools to the triple-murderer lifer who inspired the article. Founded WordWorth, ghostwriting service: cut to Philadelphia’s South Street, and the line for “Rocky Horror Picture Show” outside my storefront window. Published author, historical fiction, as "Blood Sisters" e-published as "Antoinette":  cut to character driven inside story of the doomed Queen and the Princess who stayed her friend to the end. Nearly two decades with Borders and Barnes & Noble. Kept a journal all my life, which serves as therapy. Poetry writes me, more than the other way around; things elemental emerge best in metric structure. 

“I am a man more sinned against than sinning.” –King Lear

Antlers growing out my head
Weeping over factories
Looking out beyond
Junkyard car gravestones
Skull splitting
Shrieking out the moans
Working class boys     Working class girls
Servant toys broken on the wheel
Padlock on the gate
Nomads of rags in the doorways
Motor oil in the veins
Dripping into sockets
Smashed visions make sense
In the dreams of ivory towers


Author Bio:
Michael Zone is a working class writer, screenwriter and poet. The author of Fellow Passengers:Public Transit Poetry, Musings & Meditations and Better than the Movies: 4 Screenplays. He lives in Grand Rapids and refuses to buy a car.

truth of language scowls in velveteen
wisps, grey and tethered to bare
light that casts my empty umbra

reflections parse these worlds
apart, as you fare thee well amid
the poem that is the body

rivulets of textured roses seep
raw and sparingly- known to drown
what is my soul, to rain were
language seldom speaks.


Author Bio:
Stephanie is a writer from Delaware who has a strong passion for the human condition, philosophy, knowledge, and spirituality. Her writing aims to intersect the schisms between light and dark, and to reconcile the dichotomy between transcendent and immanent realms of reality. In addition to publishing a poetry book with eLectio, she has also been published in a few poetry magazines such as Melted Wing,The Misty Review, Mystic Nebula, and Virtual Artists Collective. She hopes to one day fulfill her dream of being both an evangelist and wordsmith. Her favorite color is scarlet and her favorite word is “crepuscule.”

She would sit at her computer working until her red-rimmed, hazel eyes would remain open no longer every night. Daylight would slowly turn to darkness and the only light that remained was the glow of the laptop. When her eyelids felt like sandpaper sheets, she would close it and the room would be plunged into darkness. Every night she would walk to her bedroom, navigating the obstacles in the dark, not wanting the harshness of the overhead light to intrude in the cloak she’d wrapped herself in.

Every night she collapsed exhausted on the plush mattress of the king-sized bed. It was in the moments before sleep claimed her body, that her exhausted mind would inevitably drift to the empty space next to her. It was only in the darkness that she was forced to think of his abandon. In the harsh reality of day, she was able to forget his parting words. In the shadows of the room they once shared, it was impossible to escape the emptiness he had carved in her soul.


Author Bio:
Born and raised in Mexico City, Elizabeth Viernes believes in the power of the human spirit. After studying Political Science at Emmanuel College and International Relations at Boston University, she found her passion in education and is now a high school teacher. Her studies continued and is now an MA student at Southern New Hampshire University. Elizabeth presently lives with her husband and daughter in Mexico City. Two French Bulldogs and a cat round out her household.