I viewed the abled bodied youth
of my occupy generation
beaten in hope
drenching of sacrifice hidden

stomping through the gruesome city
belonging to the polluted
powers that lay invisible
we cool kid techies slaughtered
our minds for the right to
question our vetoed positions
bloodied by aggression
against our own protectors
we marauded to maim clean
the streets of dirty money.


Author Bio:
Silvia is Creative Writing MFA student and feminist who has also been published in Haggard & Halloo Literary Magazine. She currently resides in Queens, NY.  

Walk down here with me.
We’ve lost it again.
The long desert days
Where time stretched on.
Me, too antsy for the rain
To enjoy the sun.

Keep looking around
Our laughter is gone
Swept away by storm
Dried by the sun
We forgot to take it with -
When did we run out?

I think if we found it
We’d grab hold this time
Put it in a jar,
Drink its nectar,
Plant the seeds for more to grow.
So we’d never feel mortal again.


Author Bio:
Nicole Pyles is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She's a night owl with an early bird schedule and spends her nights writing stories and her mornings drinking too much coffee. She also blogs and loves reading books about things that go bump in the night.

              *After Ewer with Rattling Stopper and Basin by Seth Green

until she hawks it
to turn the lights back on,
mama keeps a silver tea service
on a block glass windowsill
that smells like cold iron

in between Saturday morning chores
and sips of her coke and whiskey
she squints her milky eyes
at my innocent form
I sit on my knees

devouring Alcott’s world pointedly
avoiding polishing the delicate
stem of the teapot, round belly
full of promise and pretense
the rattling stopper dry for years

in spring mornings she sways
wisps of brown hair escaping
loose top-knot bun
aiming her knobby finger at me
red polish chipped and faded,

“I like it tarnished,” she sighs.


Author Bio:
Jessica Evans is the student editor of The Louisville Review, social media intern for Evening Street Press, and an active member in her local writing community. In addition to being a current MFA student at Spalding University, in Louisville, Kentucky, she am also a member of Salon, a monthly poetry group founded by the editors of Pudding Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Commonline Jounal and The Glass Coin. 

She sees a sad, poor, brown, mentally ill woman.
She seeks to control her population.
“It’s a simple procedure these days. It’s on an out patient basis. Medicare and Medicaid cover it.”
A prescription, a piece of advice.
A compound noun like tube tying. A complex word like hysterectomy.
The learned doctor.
She does not know me. She does not know the mamacita in me. 
She does not know my words.
I, also, know terminating words like eugenics and letters of complaint.


Author Bio:
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh is an author, activist and good friend keeping busy saving the world and sipping sweet tea on her front porch in Charlottesville, Virginia. She holds a BA in English from the University of Virginia. There, she won a Jefferson Cup for her story telling. She is a certified storyteller for nami’s In Our Own Voices project. She founded Peer Review, a literary and art magazine for the Charlottesville recovery community. Her work has appeared in 3.7, Piker Press Magazine, Gadfly, Best New Poems, Blognostics, and the women’s initiative’s Challenge into Change 2013 anthology. She blogs regularly at cvillewinter.wordpress.com, a page featured in wordpress’ freshly pressed, and also guest blogs at other sites.

His eyes matched his choppy midnight black hair.
They were as dark as the night sky, lacking the stars.
His hand forced the front part of his hair up, 
As he concentrated on the task at hand.

His nose, with one perfectly round freckle, looked as if
Someone had crafted a potato on his face.
Contrastingly, his lips were round and full.

The V-neck t-shirt he wore was as dark as his hair,
It framed his body perfectly.

Broad shoulders and lean stomach,
Body of a young swimmer.

His long arms flowed into his long, thin fingers
Which looked as if they had played a hundred pianos
In his obviously young life.

His skin was a sun kissed ivory,
Which was well complemented by his dark clothing.

Above his round lips was the tiniest of mustaches,
Only noticeable if one looked closely enough.

His cheek and jaw bones protruded giving finesse to his face, 
Seen in no other.


Author Bio:
Jessika is a high school senior, and plans on attending Washington State University next August. Although writing is a creative hobby for Jessika she will be going to school for Biomedical Engineering. Along with writing and the sciences Jessika is also an avid musician, and will also attend Washington State for a Minor in Music. This is Jessika’s first publication.

All his long life he has been an assassin.
His most devoted weapon is a blade.
He has faced many royal guards
and has spilled much of their blood.
Kings see him but don’t hear him jump,
but before long they hear screams.

Treacherous, corrupted, filthy men’s screams
are heard as a sign of the wrath of the assassin.
Kings prefer to run and jump
over the balcony before facing his blade.
He has seen more traitor’s blood
than honest, trustworthy guards.

Muslims, Romans, Greeks, and many others have been guards
but not too many have heard the eagle’s scream.
The only way to have faith is to be an assassin
who is willing to spill the blood
of others with their sacred weapon, a hidden blade.
To be a killer is a step; to be an assassin is a jump.

To take a jump;
Is to take the life of a guard
with the bloody blade
that will be used to make others scream
the nightmares of the assassin.
The only rule is not to spill innocent’s blood.

To take an innocent’s blood
is to take a dangerous jump
without seeing the consequences. An assassin
is a protector of the sacred and a guard
for the people. Innocent’s screams
are what they don’t take with their blade.

Once the hidden blade
spills a king’s blood
people’s fear or happiness is heard upon their screams.
To take a life, they jump
from building to building, staying unknown to the guards
but royal to the brotherhood of assassins.

The blade is out; they make the jump.
To spill the blood of a treacherous guard.
An eagle’s scream is the symbol for the kill.


Author Bio:
Antonio creative writing student at Prospect High School.

I am not as small as she was nor as strong,                                     
you can  see if you look at the picture,                                            
the hint of a smile even as she works,
the dreamy glow about her,
living in air, birthing babies, getting on,
planting corn season after season, the giant green stalks
between the meadows and the river,
the Hackensack river ran through the area then.
I was born in the hospital in the city
of Hackensack years later,
but for me, always she was on the farm
planting and making pillows with chicken feathers,
watching wrestling on TV when TV finally came,
she was aghast at it and loved it at the same time.
She worked until she was tired
and slept until she had to wake, she raised chickens and pigs,
said goodbye to Prague and the Charles River years before,
pushed off right across Europe to America
where there were seven Czech farms,
Little Ferry, New Jersey, USA,
this was the way, she followed the others,
joined the Sokol Hall, sent her children
to pick strawberries and blackberries for 5 cents an hour,
sent my Uncle Joe to WWI,
he was gassed in the trenches and never the same after it,
drinking hard  liquor at the bar on Indian Lake to forget,
she loved all of it, planted beans, tomato, marigold,
it never got old, of course my father forgot
none of it, he was the youngest, told me how the meadows
were filled with garbage, the reeds blowing in the wind
like angels on a summer night paved over,
companies moving there from all over the world
but all he could think of was the farm, the mornings
when the sun rose over the city, the Hudson so close,
and then the meadows with outlets to come, a football stadium,
soon, Good Lord yes, the Super Bowl,
there where the birds in the meadows rested on the tall reeds,
a place so wild and wily, with eddies under the black water
in deep pools. She knew what to do.
I know, she lived strong, well, keen,
Mary Havel worked, lived as a farmer,
on the rich black soil of Northern New Jersey
in the greenest of meadows.


Author Bio:
I am an organic gardener, a teacher, a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Program fellowship holder and my writing has appeared in THE ADIRONDACK REVIEW, LITERAL LATTE, POETRY EAST, most recently in THE STONE CANOE, NINEPATCH, THE HAMPDEN SYDENEY POETRY REVIEW, PINYON, CITRN, this month in EVENING STREET REVIEW.

Take me to a place 
Where love and creativity take place
They unfold like fate
Yet pure and filled with grace
A place where we can create a better place
Together as one,
Our minds can take us much farther
Farther than we have ever believed
Like a world inside a world 
The one on your head
Does that not catch your curiosity?
The things that once sparked your mind
Your thought attention and captivated your senses
They were the joy and happiness that fill our vast lonely hearts
Not the material the selfish or the plain to see
Its in the unknown hidden the endless possibilities
Some believe its insanity
And other feel the slight reason to believe
You close yourself in a world of lies and doubts
I choose to see the Real and Love in life
Money and Greed is all hollow happiness
That you will learn with experience
Life was to explore and discover
Our body and souls our ultimate tool
Radiant and Vibrant The picture so vivid
You can feel it as you skin glows
The sounds we hear surrounds and engulfs us
To the other realm
Yourself and Reality soon come clear
The way everything feels
So lively and pure 
Maybe you should leave the city
And all that toxic air you endure
#The Realms


Author Bio:
I am young 20-year-old, but wise. My soul, a Buddha in form.