Champagne bottle riddled with bullet holes
Phosphorescent green glass exploding into enigmas
Its purposeful celebratory elaboration scotched
Disheveled spectators glean fortuitous witness
Some deliciously licking up oozing diminished cava
Still others bathing aimlessly in the reveries awash
Shards air born, frozen, reflecting past envisages
Fragmented now, the dancing pieces declare victory
Almost, the empty glasses sing in staccato harmony
Elevated senses may have levitated it from destruction
Encyclopedic explanations abound in annoying multiplicity
Upon the shelf you sit, tauntingly revealing you still exist
Dusted with age and fingerprints, one last bottle of jade
Daring onlookers to reach again for its sweet nectar…Hope


Author Bio:
I am an author, design consultant and sketch artist. I am also a poetry contributor to Sacramento Free Press (Poems for All Chapbook) Pomona Valley Review #7, The Voices Project, The UK Poetry Library, Creations Magazine, Prose and Rhyme; and The Book Patch. Author of: Stalking Jack, The Night of the Twelfth Moon, Felicity’s Beaus, and Sweet Sins.

I mold myself to their forms,
hoping to fill crack and crevice, momentarily
melding with perceived masterpiece.
They are always hopelessly unfinished
and much more marble than buff
once night’s curtain has fallen. Dawn cracks
a smile, and it is every icon for itself.
It never ceases to amaze me how often
my body is the one left,
still standing, alone, but fully intact.


Author Bio:
A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her eighth solo chapbook, Drippings from a Painted Mind, won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Congratulations, oh, wow!
Aren’t you lucky to win?
Who did you seduce now?
Come on, big winner, show some skin.

Aren’t you grateful you’re so pretty?
Big breasts get the big paychecks, and
Tiny waists are popular with the committee.
Every bombshell gets an award stand.

Tell me about your dress, it can’t be ignored!
And your lipstick, it’s making me breathless!
Oh, what? Talk about the award?
Does its color clash with your necklace? 


Author Bio:
Samantha Friskey is a sophomore at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, an all-girls high school in Washington, D.C Her writing has been published in The Georgetowner, Euonia Review, The Dialouges, Sleet Magazine, and Black Heart Magazine. She became inspired to create this poem when she watched a female journalist win a prestigious award, only to be interviewed about her outfit, body, and hair. 

Mirror, mirror on my wall,
I just want to be thin, pretty and tall.
Mirror, mirror if I change my hair
Maybe someone will start to care?
Mirror, mirror, if I cut my wrist
Will I feel like I exist?
Mirror, mirror do you see?
What you show is ruining me.
For dark too long it had watched her cry
So the mirror decided to reply,
"What you THINK you see? It isn't true
This misery is found inside of you.
Don't lock yourself in a broken soul
Or I promise ONE DAY you'll lose all control.F


Author Bio:
I'm 14-years-old, a young writer. My hobbies are reading and writing. Smart friends and family encouraged me to keep writing. All I need is motivation ❤❤

It’s a deep, narrow well.
My heart sinks to the bottom
When your eyes peer,
Laced with sky,
Across the surface.
A glory to see them
From afar,
But near and I reflect them.
Dangerous
To let the subdued heart
Beat its way,
Hovering distorted just below
The place where your eyes
Might meet mine,
My lip will quiver,
Sending ripples over me,
And that’s when you’ll catch sight
Of my ill-concealed heart.
Too late to dart away,
My eyes wide say,
“Come” and “Welcome."
You’re leaning on the edge,
Inquisitive,
Admiring me-
Don’t fall in.




Author Bio:
Anne is a young Canadian writer.  Her poems are meant to be shared and understood based on the individual reader's experience of life. She gains her inspiration from the people and the small things about her and interweaves them with her everyday thoughts. Anne has a love for words and details and has been writing since ever she knew how to form letters and words.

In this part of the world men find it pleasurable to pass judgments on women. It is pleasant to men to expose offensively daguerreotyped nude pictures of their estranged lovers. It has become trendy to publicly strip naked women alleged to have committed a crime. Repeatedly, we see these on our televisions, and we read them on our local newspapers. It is surprising and nauseating that some women, in their choice of word, fuel this despicable practice. They are too blind to see the gender stereotype these acts portray?

I am worried about a society that is deeply rooted in patriarchalism. Why would a man share publicly pictures of his estranged lover in the nude? Why would a woman be stripped naked for committing a crime? Why does our societal disposition negate the principle of gender equality? Why does our masculine orientation scorn women so much?

It is because they are WOMEN. That is the premise upon which gender stereotype is formed. We live in a society where men think that women should have no privacy; where men believe that women’s role should only be matrimonial; and where patriarchal mentality has become recalcitrant. This thinking is worse than cancer; it kills women values at a lick.

I submit to equality of men and women. What is good for the goose is equally good for the gander. Before you judge a woman, think about the choices you have never had to make because you are a man.


Author Bio:
I am a Nigerian, a trained economist at the University of Sussex, and a development aficionado with keen interest in gender equality. As a prolific writer, my works on fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published online on various websites. My essays have won various online publication contests. I maintain a personal blog at www.brutusgarley.blogspot.com, where I write on spectrum of issues.

He is grateful
his parents left la isla
to return to Brooklyn.
No palm trees there.
How different his life would have been
if he stayed in that tiny casa,
in that tiny village,
surrounded by coconut trees,
and gallinas,
aunts that called him
“patas calientes.”
Maybe he would have married
una puertorriqueña,
their children raised to want
independence for that beautiful,
dreadful
island. At least it’s an island. 


Author Bio:
Claire Aviles is originally from Austin, TX. She is a current senior at Boston College, where she is earning a Bachelor of Arts in English, with minors in Economics and in Music. She is also a freelance writer and editor for NaturallyCurly.com, a website dedicated to curly hair. She hopes to pursue a career that, in some capacity, involves writing and editing.

Claire’s work has been published at Marco Polo Arts Mag, Dead Beats, and *82 Review.