Into the sky’s upper resemblance: clouds;
Feeling them pass through that small moment--
    Floating through a high, small window …
 
Of things that come and go,
    Transiently, like birds that come and go …
 
And the sun’s light we feel as if feeling it for the first time.
We don’t question the sun’s light.
    What’s there to question … ?
 
____


Because our selves,
Which are children,
    Are children …
 
That’s why the hills are hills
And the grass is grass;
And seeing hills and grass
    For what it is--
 
Veiled there,
In the wind and hot sun--
With the children of our whole lives,
We become unaware … gradually, more gradually.
 

Author Bio:
SE2OND is a poet, lawyer and founder of a game design and development company called SE2OND, based out of New York. His first chapbook, which will be published later this year by AuthorHouse Publishing, is a collection of musings and reflections on a quest for an almost conscious unconsciousness—to see without having sight, to touch without grasping, and in the end, to think without thoughts, and to exist without self. To have or to be? This is the central question of his work. 

I’m in position on soil, it finds its way between my toes 
and into the wrinkles of my elbows

Stubbly toads orbit me.
A blooming is hanging over them
Shifting into names that I whisper in my sleep
They possess a magical sensitivity

Naked and yawning I lend my hands out

They say hello with the palm of their eye
Then turn their faces up to the sky with such probity 
“Do you remember when I called out to you?”

The shouts settle into the hollow bones of birds

Petrichor emanates from the grass, 
grass full like the open flesh on the back of my ankles
Open from tiny fish flirting with the current I stand against

We thought very hard of going up, and going away
I follow by their side to the surface of the water

Through the wind through the quiet they cry

The air surrounding me and the toads has its breath tightly held, 
We are the inmost of the trees and kissing deer

My clay colored motherless friend
disinhibits the stillness in an amiable way
I forgot he’s the cause of the light, the warmth,
He reminds us that what goes up must always come down 
The toads feel neutral about him

I know I shouldn’t say but I’d like to tell them that what they are feeling 
is everything they should feel

I wait in an ambit of wood, with soot in my own cocoon

We dream of somewhere where this hold fills our ear lungs as far as this body of water expands
where what’s ours is what we desire

I swaddled the toads in seaweed and said goodnight
I can hardly stay afloat from their weight in the small of my elbow

Their shouts can still be heard all the way to the coldest muscles on the bottom of the ground


Author Bio:
Sophia's boyfriend passed away on March 21st, 2019. Writing was very important to her during that time of grief.

​A sliver of gray cloud slips across
the face of a Long Night Moon.
 
The first we've seen in decades,
on Christmas night.
 
I wonder what men saw
on the face of the moon,
before they first saw a man.
 
Perhaps it was a woman--
not a man--
who first saw this face?
 
A woman pregnant with child.
 
A woman who long, long ago,
looked up into the night sky
and saw her lover’s face smiling down on her?


Author Bio:
About Don Cauble, poet Tom Kryss once wrote: “He was born on the Left Bank, under the sign of the bomb, with a cricket in his ear.” He grew up on a small farm in Georgia. He has an MFA from the University of Oregon and he lives in Portland, Oregon. Besides Portland, Don has lived in Atlanta, Tampa, San Francisco, Greece, Denmark. He has published a number of poetry chapbooks through small presses and in 2006, through AuthorHouse, he published his first novel: “This Passing World / Journey From a Greek Prison”. Dancing Moon Press recently published the first full-length selection of his work:“ On the backs of seahorses’ eyes / Journey of a man through time: New and selected poems and other storybook tales 1962-2012”. ” His poems and other writings have been an archetypal and spiritual/soul journey through the passions and bold dramatics of youth to his later poems of self-restraint, openness, and equipoise. 

I am every sort of storm turning

half of every raindrop destroyed
on impact with the puddles
that reflect the forsaken clouds.

Piles of mud,
some are lost cities that children stopped playing with,
where the cars are still over turned
and the wind cements them in place.
Imprisoned.

Others are just mud, sinking and leaving,
just mounds of soil damned as imperfect patches
of grassless lawn that have, too, gone away.

Oh, how I wish I wasn't alone.


Author Bio:
Edward Byrd is an artist​.

An August evening is in the progress of transforming to night.
The color of the sky bounces off your hair.
I swear it fuels you.
You’re on your feet and running through the streets.
Letting strangers in on your knowledge.
Your head is the evening.
Freckles fly around your face as if they were birds heading East.
I mistake your hair for the summer sunset that is approaching.
Is this what he loves about you?
I understand.
Those things assist in the reasons I love you.
Maybe you’ll understand some day. 


Author Bio:
Morgan Cook is currently attending Front Range Community College in Longmont, Colorado, with hopes of pursuing a degree in English with a minor in Poetry.

I loved differently than I had been loved,
Differently than she had been loved,
Trying to break a generation curse.
Nothing's worse,
"I love you" was never meant to be silent.

I spoke a language I was never taught,
The love language of time.
Refusing to buy my way out of being absent,
I didn't want to leave another heart in fragments,
I needed them to know I was there.

I chose eleven years of celibacy,
Not just to honor God,
I didn't trust myself to decide,
Didn't want them to ever see my heart broken, or tears fall from my eyes,
I knew love wasn't that trustworthy. 

I thought I made all the right moves,
Had cracked the code,
Done better than my family had ever done before,
Only to stand toe to toe with my daughter as she calls me a whore,
Being a parent is hard.


Author Bio:
MoPoetry Phillips is a spoken word artist. She graduated from NKU in 2011 with a B.A. in English and a focus on Creative Writing. Presently, she is a student at Women Writing for (a) Change in her hometown, Cincinnati, Ohio. She represents a truly versatile poet and writer. During her early years, she was given the name Evangelist Poem for her “In His Presence” series of inspirational poetry. Her first published poems “I Don’t Want to Be Black” and “Eradication of Ventriloquy” will be released May 2019 as part of SOS Art “ For a Better World 2019” yearly collaborated work. Also, she received an AWP Journal Intro nomination for her creative, non-fiction piece, “Equals Greatness.” This mini autobiography along with 70 poems will be part of her first published book “Equals Greatness,” which will be published in 2019. In addition, she was one of thirty people invited to perform at the BPC Poetryfest in Myrtle Beach in May 2019. 

Entombed in white walls,
we are children sprung for recess.
We are wailing, soiled babies too.
 
Our behavioral health needs are met and managed
with antipsychotic shots, mood stabilizers, benzodiazepines, and more.
We are safe. We are monitored. We can allow our emotions to soar.
Or can we?
 
Poked and prodded, we submit our brains, become lab rats.
We line up for small, white cups filled with pills,
colorful, fruity, Skittles in various shapes and sizes.
Mindfully, dutifully we obey. Some even shuffle over.
For them it’s become Pavlovian.
 
Placed in seclusion, restrained,
made to participate in group when we just wish to be alone,
not permitted to sleep during the day, even when Ativan crushes us
into a warm, white haze.
 
Assessed, evaluated,
our vitals checked every morning.
Some, like me, are weighed like hogs priced for market.
 
Days become weeks. They tinker with our meds
until mouth and brain synchronize, and we say what is expected.
We learn to be good for tapioca, for popcorn treats,
  for chalky coffee served in a Styrofoam cup.
We learn not to cry, and we learn not to scream.
 
As time drones on, a few disappear. Seizures.
The images of them haunt us, thrashing on the cold white floor,
 stiff limbs contorting,
  exorcisms.
 
When the rest are made well,
most, though not all, will go home,
or to a half-way house.
One kid goes to jail. Handcuffs clamp wrists, replace white bandages with their bite.
 
I am finally freed,
   alive, unseized, I’m home!
 Unbroken, but with pieces missing.  

 



Author Bio:
Colleen Wells writes from Bloomington, Indiana, and is a past contributor to The Voices Project. She is a writer, activist, mother, and crafter. She works as a Life Enrichment Associate with the elderly population. Her work has appeared most recently in The Gyroscope Review, The Ryder Magazine, and Workzine. She values poetry because she finds freedom in it as well as structure. Wells believes writing has the power to heal both self, and to assist others in their own healing journeys through providing a platform to share traumatic events and subsequent growth with one another. Wells is a certified Community Health Worker / Peer Recovery Specialist in the state of Indiana.

She is the author of Dinner With Doppelgangers - A True Story of Madness and Recovery. Wells earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Spalding University. She frequently writes essays and enjoys journalism as well. To borrow a cliche, Wells believes writing about the truth is often stranger than writing fiction.

After plunging into the cold, cold sea
From his merciful mission across the sky,
The man called the Sun all tired and worn,
Laboring with each mile upon his journey,
Setting his sights upon the angry waters,
Smiling but not smiling down to the depths,
Down into the mystery of the deep,
The hell or heaven that lives down under,
The brotherhood of the Macabre
Or the fellowship of the Saints,
Each one awake when all else is asleep,
Each one with arms outstretched,
One with plastic tears and 
The other with loving eyes,
Each one with a baptismal font on hand,
Standing proud at the altar,
Baptizing him with holy or unholy waters,
Anointing him with scented oils,
Sending him upon his journey back home
To ascend to the surface just like yesterday,
To become a morning like it was before,
To peek through the veil of darkness,
To shed a light upon the mysterious night,
To reveal its deep dark secrets,
To unite the morn with the day,
To show his love or anger at the earth,
To lie still or become restless,
To summon the lofted currents
To reach out and grab the clouds,
To congregate them into a body,
To kiss them or rile them up,
To blend them into a witch’s brew
And wreak havoc upon the quiet earth,
Or to smile down at the sleeping meadows
And lift up the flowers with loving hands,
To become an angel or a beast,
To rule the skies with his scepter,
‘Tis the mission of the sun in transit. 


Author Bio:
Robert Martin's writings have been published in Mature Years, Alive Now, Terror House Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Literary Juice. Robert has won two Faith & Hope awards, and published two chapbooks. His main writing influence is Kahlil Gibran. 

Your wife is a knitter— 
And silently she counts her stitches.
But you, dear sir, had the misfortune
Of walking in on her 
To ask an innocent question.
Standing chastised at the door, 
You are quickly baptized 
In a hiss of her hushes
And a string of chanted numbers:
“Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four!”
She intones them at you in a voice 
Thick with exasperation. 
Her eyes are fixed on your form, 
But you might as well be 
An insignificant and lowly worm
Or beetle—as she glares at you, 
Her stare piercing as a pointed needle. 
Your wife, dear sir, is sitting on the couch, 
Covered in knitting material and cats. 
It’s like you’ve stumbled flat
Upon something hermetically spiritual
And profaned it by your very existence. 
Best to just slink back upstairs 
Without any resistance 
To your bread and circuses.
For your question will go unanswered 
In the cross-stitched air—caught
In the snare of cross-purposes. 



Author Bio:
Daniel has been an actor, a union organizer for mental health care workers, the lead singer/lyricist of the indie rock band Mining for Rain, an ordained minister and preacher, and a poetry book reviewer for NewPages.com. He is the author of four previous poetry collections and is the recipient of numerous awards, including: A Purple Dragonfly Book Award for excellence in Children’s Literature (for Put On Your Silly Pants, Daffydowndilly Press, 2016), and a Royal Dragonfly Book Award for Poetry (for Quiet Insurrections, White Violet Press, 2018). In addition, out of approximately 150 entries, his poem “Lunch at Corafaye’s” was one of only 11 poems chosen to be paired with a photographic interpretation by artist Sarah Jane Sanders and displayed on exhibit at the Norton Center for the Arts in Kentucky. You can read more about Daniel at: poetdanielklawitter.wordpress.com

And it is (here) in the quiet that I regret ever having known you. 

You with your reluctant eyes, tilted head and six ounce sleeping arms.

Swaddled up and silent, far off from any and all stars especially that old odd one somehow still dangling up someplace above a stable. You are leaving and moving in a way I can’t see. 

You will continue to move that way for a long while, until someone with the strongest, warmest, kindest and most terrifying hands plucks me out of here and into whatever place you are moving. In the music of heralds you will move and I’ll forget all I'm regretting (here and now) in the quiet. 

You are a stranger in the quiet. 

I know you best when there is music. 

I met you in the music, and I expect you to use it, even from up there, 

so you may still somehow move me too. 

Evey, please move. 


Author Bio:
Mora lives in and around Toronto, Ontario. Right now she is afraid of anything that feels permanent and tied down. Like names, and words and bios. Slowly, Mora is learning (with poetry) that these things are probably not at all what she thinks.