I'm walking
through the blasted
world
trying to be who
I know I should be

avoiding the teeth
and tongues of the
gossips

standing tall
as the woman I 
was taught to become.


Author Bio:
Logan Gilley's poems appear at Poetry Soup.

I have a name
deeper than a well
a voice
like a river trickling
from a mountain,
small and winding,
some ignore it.
When I am low
I am very low,
but I make my steady 
climb back up.


Author Bio:
Valley McGrath is trying out poetry. She lives in a small town, nestled in the mountains (ironically), and enjoys crafts but isn't good at them.

we gather
each one of us a name
each one of us a lineage

where we are one
we are suddenly many
the voices of humanity

that join one cause.


Author Bio:
HR Creel is getting too old not to write and hopes to share her work with the world.

Looking for love, a pain

Staying in love, a pain
Being loved, a pain

I run. 



Loving what’s discarded, a shame

Helping who’s discarded, a shame

Being discarded, a shame

I hide.



Working hard to better myself, selfishness

Trying to help myself, selfishness

Speaking up for myself, selfishness

I stay quiet.


Author Bio:
Shabnam Ahmed is from Bowie, MD and attends the University of Maryland, College Park. She serves as the Vice President of Academic Affairs for the University of Maryland Student Government Association. She is a junior Global Public Health & Development major with a minor in Spanish. She is very involved with the Maryland LEAD Program and Alternative Breaks. She is also a Trip Leader for the Adventure Program, and is the President and Co-Founder of the organization Moneythink. She is also a part of the Beyond the Classroom Program, Jimenez-Porters Writers House, and is a College Park International Studies Scholars student.

You are standing where an earthen vessel shattered and became
the land          once dissolved in hungry tongues of basalt
grown still          red-black boils roil and burst and freeze
holding form          the trajectory of long ago volcanic force.
 
But not so long ago if you listen.
 
So, listen           still          in the searing sunlight down from the bajada where the titan glowing
mass of lava once bulldozed inexorably, slugged and slowed and stopped, left a steep headwall
along the basin’s southern border—wall of plastic pockets, craters, nesting grounds—and had
its fill, over centuries, of          sand, cryptobiotic crust          of love grass, heat, summer rains.
 
Grown over now. An ocotillo shouts arms up in fuchsia-tasseled bloom.
 
Crouch in the shade of the gnarled ironwood. Smell
the old and spicy damp of morning creosote burning
off its oily fumes          a hundred degrees and climbing.
Heft the bit of broken clay, thumb the pimpled lip:
utilitarian.
 
When did it last hold water?
 
On a morning much like this, she would’ve already beaten in
twenty miles maybe, or more, as of these few hours dripping
past dawn. Would’ve roused when the great hunter had only just stretched
his bow above the horizon in the east. Smell of bodies
on the ancient road          yipping          coyote? or tamed dog?
Lepus californicus shoots across the overgrown basalt wall, bounding ears and blur of fur.
A growl          bark! breaks the glassy air          tear     tear          over the surly hills.
For her, the way ahead is not so many hundreds of miles that she can’t
afford to watch the merry chase.          Bead of sweat slips between breasts.
Another ration round of water and then—no use for empty vessels—puts her burden by
for the basket of dried abalone.
 
You stand from your crouch          leave the sherd
in its divot where it’s lain
for some idle time.


Author Bio:
Post-MFA, Lora Rivera worked for several years as a literary agent's assistant and a biographer for foster children. Her stories and poems appear in a number of journals, most recently The Eastern Iowa Review. She likes: prickly and soft things, rocks and climbing on them, people and connecting to them, green olives (and eating them), and tiny ferns because they are old and slow to evolve and so must be very wise. Extracurricularly, she juggles: Vice Presidency of a nonprofit climbing organization, novelling, and penning a collection of desert-themed vignettes. Find her online at lorariverainsidewriting.blogspot.com or at twitter.com/lroseriver. 

I can hear them
I can sense them
trying to tear you down
calling you less than
you were born to be

But, rise queen,
take this crown of verbs
ascend your throne
of prepositions.


Author Bio:
Alan Inman is from the South. He has been called unconventional from a distance.

She's a building one,
a founder,
a breaker of what
was, unconventional,

she sees the vision,
saw the shape
of something worthwhile
inside me,

then set my bones
to make a healed
walking being.


Author Bio:
Nate Maye is a rising poet. Nate enjoys studying literature, and watches too much television.

Loss rings the bell, lilies in hand.
The nomad you greet at the door,
cloaked in nostalgia and 
smelling of the sea, the desert,
the deep and distant wood.
Ah, let us sit for just awhile and 
sip on sweet memories,
line them up like seashells 
and sepia photographs while we
steep in the ceremony of letting go.
We cry and we cling, promise
to never be strangers.

Grief creeps in three hours late,
wearing yesterday’s sweatpants.
A lumpish, heavy-breathing oaf,
laden with boxes of guilt and regret, 
who sneaks up behind you at the sink
while you scrub with a vengeance
the same pan over again.
You stumble and bump, steam-faced,
until your bones topple like teacups.
All the bitter spills out, pooling
among the shards of earthenware
and unread tea leaves.


Author Bio:
Laura lives on an island. She has been writing poetry since she was 7-years-old. "I am compelled to write. It's how I make sense of the world and my place in it." Nature is a favorite theme, but also moments of struggle or pain we face as we go through life. Her first book of poems, Hatchling, is available through Amazon.com 

I found you
with the speed
I could afford
but by the time
I saw you
it was too late,
the world was
no longer new,
we were no
longer young,
and our chains
had grown
far too heavy.


Author Bio:
Angelica Fuse is a voice that no longer remains quiet.

we arrange each
other in dervish
across the table

uncomplicated clean
organized finery

we set out appetizer
conversation with courses
the napkin notes

attempts at intimacy.


Author Bio:
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.