Basking underwater,
holding
each other
like twins,
flourishing
inside a mother’s womb,
two souls moulded
into one,
contemplating that inner world
with refreshed eyes,
tenderness seeping
into each cell of their flesh.
This is how I dream of us
where we don’t exist
and never will.


Author Bio:
Julia Hones is an Argentine expat residing in the United States. Her literary work has been published or is forthcoming in the Greensilk Journal, Epiphany Magazine, Skive, Freedom Forge Press Anthology, Coffee Shop Poems and others. For more information, feel free to visit her literary blog:
http://juliahoneswritinglife.blogspot.com

My vacuum cleaner bit the dust
Now I break my back cleaning carpets with just the hose
The fatigue is weighing me down
And in my eyes it shows

That’s a problem
That’s a problem
That’s a poor person problem

My credit’s bad
And I can’t buy a house
I have to live in a rent house
That comes with a mouse

That’s a problem
That’s a problem
That’s a poor person problem

My landlord’s an alkie
And he knocks on the door
He don’t care whether its noon or three or four
He yells out we can’t live here no more

That’s a problem
That’s a problem
That’s a poor person problem

This morning I broke my coffee pot
Head full of groggy and cussing a lot
Got up too late
The glass exploded all over the place
When things get broke they can’t be replaced
A morning with no coffee is a terrible fate
So I put my cup directly on the maker,
And held my finger to release the flow
Wondering what will be the next to go

Thinking of problems
Thinking of problems
Thinking of poor people problems

Of diapers and gas
And how the prices are escalating
Of jobs and bank accounts
And how the losses are devastating

In my head I make a plan,
A great escape to get away
But reality finds me sitting here
And it is here I’ll stay

Alone with my problems
Trapped with my problems
Like a cancer these poor people problems

Author Bio:
Christa is a writer in Texas.

A boy and girl share a thin bench overlooking the Vltava. Water the color of tea. I’m surprised they’re not smoking. Czech couples love smoking cigarettes when contemplating nature. He hugs her and whispers something in her ear. She giggles. They take turns pinching each other. He rests his head on her shoulder. She strokes his hair. The river swirls and swoons through late afternoon. Moths flit along the banks. It’s turning dark. The orange nasturtiums spilling over the river wall refuse to close.


Author Bio:
Kirby Wright was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii and lectured in China with Pulitzer winner Gary Snyder. He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic. He is the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in the islands. His futuristic novel will be released in 2013 in Dublin, Ireland.

When you know the time to be strong
and when to give way to your feelings;
when you will stand up for yourself
as others blame you unfairly, yet
still be tolerant of different views;
when you can meet triumph and disaster
and know to celebrate one and mourn the other,
because otherwise you’d be a ridiculous
unfeeling rock and your life pointless;
when you know better than to risk all
your life’s winnings on a single bet;
when you know that your will is one
of many, all deserving equal respect;
when you can listen in and to crowds, and not
lose the common touch when with royalty;
when you allow people close enough to hurt
you and know your vulnerability, know you;
when you truly love the planet and those in it,
despite the hatred and mocking laughter,
then you will have truly grown up –
and then, you’ll be a Woman, my daughter.


Author Bio:
Cathy Bryant won the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize for the worst opening line of a novel, and is a former blogger for the Huffington Post. Her stories and poems have been published all over the world in such publications as Prole, Women Writers and Melusine. As well as winning the Bulwer-Lytton, in 2012 Cathy won the Sampad 'Inspired by Tagore' Contest, the Malahat Review Monostich Contest and the Swanezine Poetry Contest. In 2013 Cathy won the M.R. Jordan short fiction contest. She co-edits the annual community anthology 'Best of Manchester Poets' and her collection, 'Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature' was published recently. Contact Cathy at cathy@cathybryant.co.uk

Robbery was an option, applauded,
even festively adorned, for clever
by half has nothing to do with bandages.
The rude socialite glitters, false or true;
it’s interpretation which won’t be done easily
or without grammatical mistakes.
What’s in the packed bags?
Is it shiny? Can you trade it for bread?
Anything on the curb is yours
if you’ve got the muscle, the time,
the blind eye. Don’t try and lecture
the moneymen, the bravo boys,
the former soldiers holding their heads.
Don’t make laws and break them
with malice. Don’t you love that word?


Author Bio:
Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, The Saint Ann’s Review, and others.  She’s also published fiction and humor as well as stories and poems for children.  Among the honors she’s received are awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Hugo House, and Artist Trust.  She’s been a Jack Straw Writer, a Pushcart Prize nominee twice, and held a residency at Hedgebrook.  Her chapbook, “There are Crows in My Blood”, was published in 2007 and another chapbook, “Happy Darkness,” was released in 2011.  She lives in Seattle.

Girl number twenty,
industrious and no longer
a victim of hard times,

is a model of  progress--
fancy that!  She fits
into a dimly lit classroom

of double her number,
rigid, little backs,
heads nodding forward

into square screens,
some blue, some green,
some multi-colored

with pictures, parts of a horse,
of a tree, of a human being.
The sea of their silhouettes

before me, I dream
behind my students
of red, brick schoolhouses

and of land beyond
untouched by technology,
not even a wheel,

where people can wander
with both body and mind,
but I know virtually

we need never wonder
anymore; our computers
can do that now. 

They are our future resource--
we used to say that
about our children.

      (This poem was inspired by the Charles Dickens classic Hard Times.)


Author Bio:
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Spectrum, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, Spillway Magazine, The Broken Plate, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Pedestal Magazine, Science Poetry (a Canadian anthology edited by Neil McAlister), The Fine Line, Poydras Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Jelly Bucket, Concho River Review, The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), Midwest Quarterly, So to Speak, Red River Review, and other journals, with work forthcoming in the anthology 200 New Mexico Poems (scheduled for publication by University of New Mexico Press). Her poem, “Molts,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press--a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.

In our mothers’ closets, way in the corners, behind stacks of old vinyl and worn out shoes, we keep a box. Ticket stubs from movies we don’t remember seeing, dried flowers from boys whose images are only traces settled in the attics of our minds.

In our mothers’ closets live our first kisses, pictures from the prom. Dusty photo albums, pages yellowed and worn, Love’s Baby Soft scented letters bound by the same red ribbons we wore to our first day of kindergarten.

We are women. As girls we watched our mothers cut crusts from our fathers’ toast, chiding us for leaving ours uneaten.

We are women. We still see our mothers’ shadows as they wiped the last dinner dishes dry and slid behind bathroom doors latched against us.

We are women. As teenagers we talked the night away, planning our lives through phone lines, naming unborn children, doodling our names in combinations with boys who still pulled our hair in math classes.

We are women. In our childhood bedrooms we began the collections that would someday be relegated to our mothers’ closets. We went to sleep wearing football jerseys breathing in the sweat and cologne of the boys who chased us down the hallways and as we drifted dreamily away, we wondered fleetingly why hours later we never heard the bathroom doors unlatch, especially when we knew there were piles of wrinkled clothes waiting to be ironed.


Author Bio:
I write because I had a grandmother who once lived and told me I can.

“Open Sesame.
A  teaspoon of stars falls far from grace”— Cathy Young

An accident of words
Spilling over my lips
:  “A spoonful of moon”
When attempting to say the moon can’t be
Spooned, after daughter said,
“The spoon dipped into the moon,” instead
Of  “The spoon jumped over the moon,”
When she just finished an ice cream dipped, singing
:  Hey Diddle Diddle with a hesitation            : “I want
Another cone dipped.”  I went to correct her on the line
:  “The cow jumped over the moon;"
And instead I said, “A spoonful of moon.”
Or was it that we talked about
Spooning over a love, and the moon didn’t
Romance, when my daughter asked
About spooning the moon?
The subject that night
Was the moon, all the way home
From a girls’ night out.  There was that discussion
Of the big dipper that fell
Somewhere between the dipped
Cone and the spooned lover, of which
In the sky, the dipper appeared
To be dumping the moon.

Author Bio:
First and foremost, I’m a woman. I was a wife, and will be again in time (hoping by the end of this year—marrying my best friend). I have three living children out of five—Dunstan was lost three months before birth, Vincent recently passed after 2 ½ years battling the rare cancer PNET. He was 24. I have a BGS and an MA. The credentials did not make me a writer. I’ve been writing since I could take pen or pencil to a paper, even if the lines weren’t letters at the time. Gran’ma Ginny (an oral storyteller, keeping up with her Indian heritage) and I shared stories all the time. She was my inspiration. Today, I try to put her stories onto the paper. It is a difficult task.

I’ve had work appear online in Diagram and EWR, and in printed form in Confluence. A piece of my work has been performed by the Dance Collective of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I have done several readings on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne and at the Three Rivers Coop of Fort Wayne in a series called First Fridays.

The professor’s, “If we don’t know the names
of things, we can’t get anywhere,” triggered
the old terror of nearing cliffs: the racing heart,
blood from clenched teeth, fighting to not shatter.

It Never Happened

One reads 1984 in the middle of the night,
“Two plus two made five,” and, “If the party
could thrust its hand into the past and say
of this or that event, it never happened--
that, surely, was more terrifying than
torture and death.”

Abracadabra

It’s becoming clear why what’s called the
last taboo is so, silence a powerful confirmation,
showing affection the popular explanation.

Overt/Covert
Written law (then and now) makes no connection
between innuendo, cuddling, dirty stories,
stares, the variations of child abuse.

Netheworld

The mind blocks what’s too much but ghosts
who will not still, surface in dreams—Hansel
and Gretel crumbs from an underground forest.


Author Bio:
Carol Smallwood co-edited Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching (McFarland, 2012) on the list of Best Books for Writers by Poets & Writers Magazine; Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing (Key Publishing House, 2012); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity, and Other Realms received a Pushcart nomination. Carol has founded, supports humane societies.

Listen to the radio
as you lay in the grass.
Neon colors are seen behind closed eyelids
as you face the sun,
as the dahlias tickle your feet.
You weave through consciousness.
Hush, as it tells you stories
of being and to be
and you dream
as if you yourself went from
germ
to plant
and it is an intaglio into your brain
and converted you into a believer
of her
Its reckoning.
And perhaps you’ll begin to understand more about the gospel truth
until the honk of a car pulls you from her
and it disappears.


Author Bio:
I started writing when I was in fifth grade. My teacher, Mr. Robinson, decided to not teach anything that year but writing. Some of my classmates wrote stories but I decided to write poems. I suppose I got pretty good at it because all the teachers started to pay attention to me. I hated it so I decided to keep it under wraps until seventh grade. I wrote about pain even though I was young. I hated life and my work reflected it. My teachers worried but I kept that under wraps too. My mother didn’t find out about my writing until eighth grade. This was long after the majority of my grade school knew about it. This was even long after my class decided to use one of my poems for the Black History Month performance. She had received a call from my teacher at the time, Mr. Jones, that I had decided I would not write anything for him to see or write for our eighth grade graduation. After grade school, I continued my writing. Since I was a new person at a new school, I did not want to be known for it. Yet, during my sophomore year, Mrs. Teague announced there would be a poetry contest in Saint Louis. I entered, although I didn’t get much more than an Honorable Mention. I tried again the next year and received the same.