It’s somebody’s birthday, and a candled cake is being carried into the dining room. Or it’s Christmas morning, and stacks of piping-hot French toast teeter on a platter beside the kitchen sink. It might just be an ordinary Tuesday evening, with a meatloaf resting on the stovetop. Or perhaps it’s July, and two blueberry sour cream pies have been cooling in the fridge all afternoon. 

Regardless of the occasion, we all know what’s coming. At some point, over the chatter and the laughter; over the clatter of cutlery and plates being passed around; over the scraping of chairs and the running of water as the teakettle is filled, Mom will lift her voice above it all and issue a singular, regal command, sometimes with one arm raised above her head for emphasis:

“Bring me the sun, the moon and the stars.”

It sounds like a lot to ask, but really, it’s not. 

Whoever happens to be closest to the wide, shallow drawer beneath the stove—the one with stacks of mismatched serving spoons, gravy ladles, a turkey baster, assorted sets of steak knives, the sharp-toothed grapefruit spoons, the long-handled fondue forks and a collection of decades-old baby spoons—will pull on the knob and gingerly fish around inside the drawer until his or her hand locates everyone’s favorite utensil: a wedge-shaped, stainless steel cake server with punched-out holes representing the aforementioned heavenly bodies. 

Dessert (or breakfast, or dinner) is now served. 


Author Bio:
Eileen Cunniffe writes mostly nonfiction and often explores identity and experience through the lenses of travel, family and work. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals, including Superstition Review, Hofstra Windmill, Bluestem Magazine and The RavensPerch. Occasionally, her stories present themselves as prose poems. Three of Eileen’s essays have been recognized with Travelers’ Tales Solas Awards and another received the Emrys Journal 2013 Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction Award. Eileen also writes for The Nonprofit Quarterly. Read more at: www.eileencunniffe.com. 

Self preservation had become 
problematic in the polemic pool.
One couldn't help but notice tan lines
or the lack of them, surreptitiously.
An elbow in the face is very useful
if you are not on the receiving end,
and your initial reaction
to a broken eye socket
may preclude tit for tat,
that elegantly exposed concept
just a bobble head above water level.
Splashing, hairless, fatalists
I can't say I share the love.


Author Bio:
Colin James spent most of his youth in Massachusetts before moving back to England and working as a Postman for The Royal Mail then as a Trackman for British Rail. He met his American wife, Jane, in Chester and they currently reside in Western Massachusetts. He is a great admirer of the Scottish landscape painter, John Mackenzie.

Three weeks 
they journeyed,
I waited 
in my grandmother’s house
for my parents return.

The Swiss parcel,
a special gift carried home,
monumental pots
too many colours to name
clean smooth liquidated joy.

No fancy goods or worlds
were needed then,
poster paints 
more than enough.

Where is she?
That green girl now
the one who lived saturation
geometric shapes,
who wasn't afraid

of asymmetrical  forms
or daring red,
no fear of a thick solid line
or a delicate mark.

Scanning my mind the viewfinder
digs deep, searches out
the vanishing point,
my gradual gradation
from a disappearing world.

Now a child of golden years,
colour returns.
Organic, free
flowing lines, soft edged 
watercolours, oils swirling.
Marks seem different now, 
stronger, bolder, thicker.

Leading me from the negative space of life
a laughing canvas  
quietly whispers
transcend,
as I swim in luminous hues

And the shades of the lived me. 


Author Bio:
Sally McHugh lives in Galway, Ireland. She likes Art and all kinds of creative pursuits. She started attending a weekly poetry workshop in Galway in 2017 and had her first poetry publication, ‘Dunmore East’ published in ROPES Literary Magazine later that year. In her day job she is a PhD researcher at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is looking forward to coming to San Francisco in the U.S. in 2019 as a Fulbright Creative-Ireland Museum Fellow. 

The eternal song is making noise
like Homer with a humming jones
 
in Harlem.
It is a low sound
 
not everyone can hear it
an internal rhythm
 
lyrical beat
Jewish cantor song
 
listened to in the morning
reveals as it opens
 
a flower
that has known destruction
 
a music
that has vision
 
stacked bodies
piled as high as the sun
 
holocaust
middle passage
 
they are the same.
arguing over the
 
number of millions
is asinine
 
we were all in the water
we were all treated like
 
property
in the cantor’s voice
 
 
everything is recorded
rise and the fall
 
of the singer’s words.
we find pain there
 
memory of
tarnished bodies
 
there is the funeral dirge
showing our
 
ability to exist beyond
the European’s threat
 
to tear us apart
limb by anxious limb
 
holocaust and the middle passage
blood soaked brothers
 
in the vat of historical time
singed
 
by the shotgun of history
scorched and changed
 
witnessing and smelling genocide
centuries deep
 
‘’they died standing up,’’
  my guide from the ivory coast said
 
he looked at me as if I should know
I could hear waves
 
making noises
smashing skulls
 
I moved in and out
of historical time
 
like a man losing consciousness
at the wheel,
 
I did not know where I was going
my feet found
 
uneven stones
slave castle to slave castle
 
each time my shoulders
pointed downward
 
where my people
are buried
 
beneath pages and
pages of historical lies
 
I had no insides
when we went
 
to the fifth slave castle
I had given myself up
 
to the smell of death
it covered me,
 
Elminia, the Cape Coast
Castle.
 
My brain was mush
with confusion
 
my intelligence gone
rationales in pieces--
 
people behaving
like animals.
 
It is hard to explain this
to children or even adults
 
I now know the
meaning of crestfallen
 
I trudge the paths
more small rooms,
 
I wanted to see each one
I felt emotions coming
 
torrents shaking and breaking
at the same time.
 
My anger had blown off my head
there was no brain
 
only feeling as raw as
the intestines of killed deer
 
displayed for all to see
in the middle of the road
 
I felt like I was dying too,
hearing the incessant beat
 
of crest top white punishing,
blessing the shore
 
no religious saying
verse could prepare me
 
the next castle
of personal doom
 
historical knives
to throw myself on and learn from
 
But I was a black speck
on the face
 
of a never changing universe
dropped into the bowels
 
of a story I wanted to
turn away from,
 
a story I had to know.
My bent over body
 
compelled to see more,
recording with my eyes
 
and soul what I would
one day write about.
 
how do you write horror?
my stomach was giving way
 
my legs felt
like columns torn from
 
foundations
chest opens
 
there are
remnants of bodies
 
full of torn up flowers
humans like clumps of dirt
 
I was determined
to make it through the
 
last slave castle
my feelings
 
were miniscule compared
to the rocks near the ocean
 
rooms with
paint peeling like skin, flowers
 
of asphyxiation, no light
our shoulders
 
wilting like dark petals,
their dirty fingers
 
treating us
like livestock
 
in a land where
our faces
 
come from
the
 
earth.


Author Bio:
Dennis Reed is a native New Yorker and former member of the infamous poetry group BUD JONES. He was a member of the John Oliver Killens Writing workshop in the nineteen sixties and his early influences include the poet Mervyn Taylor and the artist and poet Fatisha. His work has appeared in Essence, Style, CLA, Black Scholar, Linden Ave. Lit Magazine and many other newspapers and journals. Mr. Reed has taught writing courses at VCU, William and Mary and Morehouse College.

Do I wait? 
The last call for boarding the plane has just been announced by a distant woman
Her voice seems familiar from distance
Like pictures of snow bring familiar warmth
Until the day we dig our feet into it without socks or boots

He promised to make a snowman for me
And take me to a faraway riverside where wild grass has an unfamiliar scent
The way he told his stories everything became tangible and real; I could tell you all about that scent and the colour of the houses around the park where he would build the snowman for me
The last time he called me was the day before yesterday
When he promised to come see me off at the airport
His voice seemed vaguely distant as if he was already in the faraway riverside looking for the wild grass to bring me the surprise of its unfamiliar scent
Last night I dreamt a dream where he lost himself amidst unknown faces and places
The confusion on his face made me laugh in my dream 
Unfair

And here I stand
With my boarding pass clenched in my fist as if it's the last straw 
It says that my seat number is 33F and the gate number is 9 and the boarding time is 18.50 
The handbag hangs from my shoulder like it has finally found its roots and claimed it too
Soon the distant woman with her familiar voice will probably call my name out and explain how it is the last chance for me to board this plane to oblivion

Do I wait?


Author Bio:
A creative director at her day job, a traveler at heart and a writer by passion - that's who Ankita is. Living and working in Vietnam currently, she is waiting for life to take her to the next destination. 

Experience the maximum with minimum effort 
On the physical, emotional and spiritual tract.
Heights arrived at, dreams flower, reach fruition, contract.

Elongated elastic endless day, the Solstice--
Night and its resultant brevity all forgotten.
I revel in this lasting zenith, its self stamped on time.


Author Bio:
Saloni Kaul, author and poet, was first published at the age of ten and has been in print since on four continents. As critic and columnist Saloni has enjoyed forty one years of being published. Saloni Kaul's first volume was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All.

Most recent Saloni Kaul has been published in Misty Mountain Review, Mad Swirl, Mantid Magazine, Haikuniverse, Blue Pepper, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Cabildo Quarterly, AJI Magazine, River Poets Journal, Belle Rêve Literary Journal ,Taj Mahal Review, Verbal Art, Poetry Pacific, Ink Sweat And Tears, Military Experience and The Arts (As You Were: The Military Review), Blueline, Indiana Voice Journal, OVI MAgazine, and The City Poetry. Upcoming publications include The Penwood Review, Scarlet Leaf Review and FIVE: 2: One Journal. 

She held my head when
neck muscles were too weak
to raise my eyes for life.

When my unfocused ears
were wordless, she lullabied
me with her own verses.

When my wanting lips cried
hunger and fever and sleep,
she cooled me with her hands.

Now that I hold her as she
becomes the weakness I
once had been, babbling

incoherency, I try to recall her 
with words written through 
the life she gave to me−

and fail as all the syllables
that made her crumble in 
the fractured cradle of my arms.
 

Author Bio:
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam is the proud grandson of peasant immigrants from Poland and Syria. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and in 2017 retired as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has four collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 80 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize. www.davidanthonysam.com

​There’s no poetry in rot
No rain in the nick of time
Life doesn’t happen like your theater icon
Infestation can take years to show

Love doesn’t blossom in a second
Death will be done in a week
The Lord doesn’t gift special blessings
And my demons have changed with me