My hands take stock of the contours of an older me-
a body of looser skin. Stonier blood. A body of work
carved from moss and mud. Planted with the seeds
of memory and history.

While tracing my fingers along the outline of my hips,
a robin smashes against the window with a blind thump.
A clump of feathers mixed with pink smear across glass.

The rain dilutes the past, too fast, neutralizing evidence
before there’s time for reverence or for prayer.
Redbreast. Red feathers. No longer there.

I dread what I will later have to do-
scoop up the lifeless form. Bury it in the earth
with roots and worms.

young bird and I-
we never saw it coming.


Author Bio:
Loretta Oleck is a poet and psychotherapist. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in High Coupe, Black Lawrence Press, Word Riot, The Westchester Review, Feminist Studies, The Mom Egg, Laughing Earth, Poetica Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, among numerous others. More recently her work has been read at The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from New York University.

I'm sorry that all I talk about is the way
my people were treated.

Sorry the only thing that sparks
my interests is Black literature.

Sorry that I'm more scared of whips
than guns.

Sorry that I relate more to darkness
than the sun.

Sorry for the way my hair gets nappy
after it has been wet.

Sorry for the way I glare at you when
you raise your head.

Sorry about those times I rolled my
eyes at you.

Sorry about those times I forgot to indulge you.

Sorry I only care about my people's
rights.

Sorry you only care about your people's
rights.

Sorry that my skin is just a little
browner than yours.

Sorry my patience wears much
thinner than yours.

Sorry the word, "nigga," bothers me
so much.

Sorry I continue to bring up
what was.

I'm sorry for being so sorry, you see,
I'm only this sorry cause that's how you taught
us to be.


Author Bio:
LJ Hughes is a young, Black poet, from Seattle, Washington, striving to inspire and change the world through his passion for poetry, the arts, and social change. LJ’s work has been published in The Espial.

There is a puff of powder blue fog on the hills today,
where grey green meets a mass of cool grey sky,
black yard brushes of woods
entrenched in purple shady hues
rise to claw at the heavens.

This set is before me.
We have on part to play,
I am even masked in make up.

I walk and push and push and walk
two baby girls, twins-
day-lit faces, blue
eyes scanning the scape before them-
a first in colours and chilling light.

Stop. The birds are in on it too.
We three halt our walk and stand still…
for some telling moments:

Life pumps through the heart, through blood vessels and
I pick up on the bare bones of the memory of the racing dee
dum dee dum dee dum of their heart beats tripping and doubling
out drum beats on the Ultra Sound Doppler,
the screen snatches shots of luminous limbs,
of fluttering hearts-
tiny skeletal fleshless features - flash before me…

Here now in colour you, identical two, are kicking
up contented feet,
feeling for and clutching hands.

Layers and layers of life around, above, within, beneath-
for miles underfoot spins the globe that never stops.

It is unreal, all of this, waiting for us to know our place.

The light is tangibly touching
lifting me out of the blue,
I suck in a slow refrigerated breath,
out blows a plume of foggy air.
We push on for time is
tick tick ticking away from us,
the purple woods are now behind me,
my eyes douced with a living film
that rolls and
rolls.


Author Bio:
Ita O'Donnell is a published poet , mother to four and a singer/songwriter. She is ever tinkering with her words, images and alleged finished poems!

On each sunny Saturday afternoon
The elderly woman would be seen
All dressed up
From head to toe
Sitting all by herself
In her very best
On that park bench

Both her face and clothing shinier
Than the daylight
She would gaze long
Beyond the bay
At the tall trees
On a distant mountain
Like a proud queen
Reviewing her guards or honor

Until at a cloudy moment, her head fell down
On her shrunk shoulder, once and forever 

Author Bio:
Changming Yuan, 5-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English, tutors, and edits Poetry Pacific in Vancouver (Poetry submissions welcome at yuans@shaw.ca). Yuan's poetry appears in 709 literary publications across 26 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline,Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine and Threepenny Review.  

Her face is caressed by a sculptured braid
while you stand beside the Dying Gaul
cut down by chisel and stone.

She holds tight a dove to her breast --
a grey head peers from a chalky fold,
a left hand rises in dismay.

At her side is an open goose’s bill
ready to attack the feathered frame
hidden within her fluted drape.

Once wolves lived in cages below these Renaissance steps,
once I walked amongst busts of Nero, Cicero, and Caesar,
once my Roman lover grasped my hand and we gazed at her.

Angel-winged dust fills the air no filter suspends our fall.
No sculpture endures to confirm us engraved in stone.
You stayed to watch the girl with a dove to leave me to my flight.



Author Bio
I live in Garland, Texas and love gardening in my rose garden, raising a Scottish Terrier and taking piano lessons to play Chopin. I have been writing all my life

Clocks ticking, street lights changing, factories churning, jack hammers pounding, engines rumbling
Circling highways on the way somewhere
Always demanding more
More electricity, more gasoline, more batteries
To keep it going
Everyday
Everywhere

And we keep hauling oil across oceans
Boring into the earth to find more fuel
To feed the machine we have built

It seems as though we have become the machine
Driving our cars
To air-conditioned office buildings
Computers and phones constantly connected to our brains
Each person a cog in the wheel

I struggle to see beyond this machine
To imagine
How burning a corn field in Iowa is different
Than clearing rainforests thousands of miles away
To remember what I once learned about the biodiversity of species
How losing bees threatens cross-pollination
And the survival of food

I try to understand how my actions affect the big picture
How my garbage does not end in my trash can
but sometimes as far away as Ethiopia
My children’s plastic toys filling the bellies of humpback whales along the way
Discarded electronics falling into the hands of children in a junkyard in China
Seeking out nuggets of mercury for resale.

But the truth is close to home
I’m not a machine
I can do things the ipad cannot
I can turn it off
And develop my non-machineness

I can read
Old yellowed pages
That sit still in a vast sinking library
A sleeping dinosaur nearly abandoned, on the campus nearby

With more time on my hands, I can notice things
Hummingbirds buzzing around flowers
The morning star and fading moon
And I can comprehend
What I was too busy to see

So lace up your boots
Stake your shovel into the earth
And watch the seeds grow


Author Bio:
Angel Sands Gunn is a writer and mother living in Charlottesville, VA. She recently published a story called UNDERWATER on Literary Mama and writes for EDIBLE BLUE RIDGE MAGAZINE. She has been accepted to the Appalachian Writers Workshop this summer where she will workshop her new novel about a West Virginia family during the Great Depression.

To be a woman
means being invaded, O mum!

they took of my everything

a woman took my childhood
a man, my womanhood...

God should not create woman
God does not know how to give birth

here, the ribs of all men
are broken

our neck is thinner than hair
men are carrying us

like a funeral on their shoulders
we have been under their feet

light like a feather
we flew from a world to an Adam

and my words are, oh mum!
their footprints....


Author Bio:
MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has won several awards in Turkey including the Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007) and the Ali Riza Ertan (2009) prize. Her first book Dibine Düşüyor Karanlık da was published in 2009 and her second book Evimi Dağlara Kurdum is a collection of translation from world poetry. Her latest book Yeniden Çizdim Göğü was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia under the name of Lalelere Requiem. She has translated Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Her poems have been translated into English, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew and Italian. She participated in the poetry festivals in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Israel, Serbia and United States.

Müesser is the editor of the literature magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey.

Slashing bites
rabid gnashing
armed to the teeth

tongues stuck
on frozen seesaws
we are armed to the teeth

fleeing children falling
sobbing mothers, fathers
we are armed to the teeth

blood on lockers
splattered brains at the door
we are armed to the teeth

lips curled in
holding the next burst
we are armed to the teeth

armed to the teeth
expect rending, ripping
explode the soft rain

extend mourning
beyond clashing teeth, moaning mouths
crash sites

and those that savor the need to bite.


Author Bio:
Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. Retired from many years of communications work for the City of Portland, she is doing the writing she loves best -- poetry. She has been published in many regional and national journals as well as anthologies by Red Claw Press and Western Press Books. She has been a feminist for a long, long time.

Wasn’t it a shame that she wasn’t born perfect?
Tolerance of any kind such an irritating task
Something even the mother could not accept
She pretended she did if someone should ask

Tolerance of any kind such an irritating task
Dealing with disabilities can test our humanity
Something even the mother could not accept
Why then should we be party to this entity?

Dealing with disabilities can test our humanity
Perhaps if we ridicule and parody, that will do
Why then should we be party to this entity?
If cruel mimicry and scorn will unsettle few

Perhaps if we ridicule and parody, that will do
No one will challenge, they will be sure to laugh
If cruel mimicry and scorn will unsettle few
Why is it for us to take any other kind of path?

No one will challenge, they will be sure to laugh
Something even the mother could not accept
Why is it for us to take any other kind of path?
Wasn’t it a shame that she wasn’t born perfect?


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.

When you color me, color me black
Bold, beautiful, bountiful and benevolent

When you color me, color me black
Learned, lifted, limitless and loving

When you color me, color me black
Accomplished, anointed, appointed and authorized

When you color me, color me black
Commanding, cultivated compassionate, a champion

When you color me, color me black
A kind kindred spirit knowledgeable, known and knowing who He created me to be

So go ahead color me!
To color me is to see the marvelous, intricate, passionate and purposed way He formed me.

To be in His image, to reflect Him living in me
So color me in shades of the dust of thee earth from which he formed me.
When you color me, color me black, beautiful!


Author Bio:
Dolores Johnson has been writing poetry over 30 years, no formal training. She is a child/servant of God, serving in ministry for over 20 years out of love for God and His people. She was licensed to preach on October 1, 2006 under the leadership of Pastor James Holcomb Jr. of the UBC Ministry of the Oranges:
as Associate Minister, continuing Kingdom Building as a member of the UBC Music Ministry, Teaching Staff, Logistics & Outreach Ministry. Johnson holds a BA in Organizational Leadership from Pillar (College 2012) and published one book of poetry entitled“Release” (2008). She is a songwriter and President of JUJAME Music. She is also the mother of two wonderful children, Justin & Melanie, and has three grandchildren.
"My parents Bennett and Leola Johnson along with my pastor have encouraged me to use my voice."