Cry
till your heart bleeds out
into a thousand glass pieces
scattered upon the blood-stained floor,
stained with the roses and thorns
of your past sins
and another’s past offenses,
extending far back
to the first man,
Adam.

Adam wept
for his
sins,
sins that caused the roses 
to grow claws,
claws to snatch the clothes 
covering Adam’s and Eve’s sins
from the eyes of a God
who sees all
and knows all.

Certainly
He noticed not only
Adam’s and Eve’s sins,
but also
the growth
of the thorns
in the rosebush.


Author Bio:
Maribel C. Pagan is an aspiring writer who has appeared in the Argus Literary Magazine. She is also a singer and musician for The Angelic Family Choir, a family singing group that has appeared on EWTN Global Radio Network. You can find out more about Maribel at http://therollinghills.wordpress.com/.

where corn grew there’s sugar beets--
low growing, secretive nondescript.

There’s no tassel tossing, marching 
in rows, changing to crackling gold.
​

Author Bio:
Carol Smallwood, a multi-Pushcart nominee in RHINO, Drunken Boat, began writing after she retired and returned to college. In Hubble’s Shadow (Shanti Arts, 2017) is her most recent poetry collection. Carol’s founded, supports humane societies.

There’s something shaky in the way we move. 
I can’t tell if it’s shifting foundation or the malleable feel of your person. 

I can’t ever really tell when we meet if it’s in person.
The feel of your skin is a smooth as the flow of affected words read from long awaited
correspondence.

Dull still even if the words vibrate against my skin.
I feel as if I am waiting for your return even if I have your perfumed neck pressed against
my nose you are still a lingering scent.
I wonder and wander when it’s just me.
I know it must be. (c.103)


Author Bio:
Ken Wallace found her passion for writing at a young age and was encouraged by family and friends to pursue her talent. Her writing focuses on her experiences growing up in the urban areas of Baltimore City. She is currently attending university and majoring in Web Design and Development. She hopes to find some success in writing and is currently working on a novel project with a heavy focus on fantasy and horror. As well she is an avid knitter and trying to figure out how best to manage the ebb and flow of one creative muse to the other. 

Butterfly;
flittering all around without direction.
Hypnotizing all with your colorful beauty and
your constant search for the sweet.
 
No worries, no cares after your tumultuous journey,
that only you can appreciate.
 
Seeming to smile
after your forced metamorphosis.
Everyone looks in amazement and wonder,
aware of the pain and suffering of your life.
 
You were forced to trust the earth and unsavory bypassers.
Vulnerable, in the midst of chaotic change
yet, you seem to joyfully embrace the earth; giving beauty and life,
unaware of your significance.
 
Having given in to what is,
to Being;
Having changed under the command of another.
Having emerged, still unsure.
Yet strong, beautiful,
Delicate.
 
Listening to and being directed by the winds,
by the breath of the daisy that invites you in,
telling you the secrets of life.
 
You are stronger still,
knowing now,
the wings
that before were only a dream,
an ache.
 
Your wings,
where they take you
is 
Limitless.
 
 
Author Bio:
A member of the Occaneechi Saponi Tribe, Debbie Whitmore was born in a small town in North Carolina. She is a writer, blogger, poet, and aspiring author working to create a small patch of compassion and shed light on how we are more alike than different, connected than than separate and loved than not. She currently lives in San Jose, California.

I have emerged from a tangled cobweb,
thinking that the world is small.
Today I gaze at these mountains,
their snow-dusting lit in the sun.
My spirit swells; the world is immense!
Life, though but a moment, is eternity.


Author Bio:
Erica Olson holds an MA in English Literature from Washington State University, where she taught freshman writing. She has self-published a novella for young adults and is working on a middle grade fantasy novel.

in the beginning it’s 
like a joy ride you've never been on
a child's first trip to Disney
intriguing braided with insanity:
like a cup of chamomile tea spiked with Hennessy 

an undeniable desire that
compels you to act impulsively 
its like love was the only subject we were taught at school
my parents warned me to never open my heart to anyone expect the one
but aren’t they all the one until you find the one

highways before rush-hour
tides before wild waves
eventually behind the hidden glass doors 
arrives the unwanted pain

when you're hurting the most
the air becomes cooler 
sending infinite shivers through your internal soul
even when you walk on grass
your toes only feel hard wooden floors

an invisible weight holding me down
nobody can see
only I can feel
and that’s when you ask yourself,
when did he become the anchor to my heart? 


Author Bio:
Victoria Nilbrink is student journalist from Miami Beach, Florida. She currently interns with The Tab and Rise News. She enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. Victoria’s writings reflect how many of her struggles and personal experiences helped her evolve into the woman she is today. She believes that connecting with one’s mind from a poetic consciousness is a beautiful thing. She loves the ability to release her personal thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

The sun shining through your dark drapes, 
I wake to find you facing the wall- 
I used to sleep in your arms. 

You’re making those noises you do when you’re dreaming, 
that light soft breathing that used to help me sleep, 
tonight just seems loud and heavy and keeps me restless. 

The warmth of your skin that used to give me solace feels sweltering,
the three words that meant everything have lost all semantics, 
and I feel isolated in the embrace that once felt like home. 

Because my mouth tastes like stale cigarettes and black bourbon, 
but I don’t even smoke and I prefer light liquor, 
and my one bad habit came with a list of ten, 

because I tip toe in the middle of the night on cold tile floors,
I would rather wake up by my lonesome 
than begin my day with the view of someone’s bare back. 

Waking up in your bed for the last time, 
I lift the empty bottle, push the carton aside.
I left a letter on your nightstand. 


Author Bio:
Sidney Relyea is currently a senior at Union College in Schenectady, NY and an English major with a minor in Classical Civilizations. Sidney's writing experience begins with writing short stories about dogs in first grade, to winning the Writing and Rhetoric Award out of the high school graduating class, to being Editor in Chief of the Oydssey Online. 

He watches the world drift
by, wistful eyes wandering
the silence
of gracefulness within. There,
a grandfather clock lay
near him, the seconds

ticking

on. Yet even as evening grows
late, and suns carelessly fade
within the horizon, that tiny boy
still stays by

the quiet 
of 

the 

window.


Author Bio:
Robin Goodfellow is a student at the University of North Texas. She first became interested in writing when she was three, scribbling all over her parents' walls and imagining herself in old fairytales while walking in her father's garden. Since then, she has published poems in journals such as Faith, Hope, and Fiction, The Haiku Journal, and Nature Writing. 

Myrrh, ginger root, clove, caraway-----
Love, this taper grows
a flame itself from my grasp.
My own hands are scented
with the wax those other hands poured
in India & in China-----
The palms dreaming, baring
ladles of being…

Colours almost purr in each solidified
perfume wafting beyond the wick
I am the quickening of in this circle
drawn by time.

Melt, melt-----
Space, what a spiral, the energies
connecting between my fire & theirs…

Eyes follow the gold to the blue & I
should wear robes of turquoise, yield
with aromas, passage to passage, to be
nude where they disperse…

Flow in, last romantic, with lily petals,
pistils strewn about this bowl of glass.
Here, cup the universe, its everywhere hands,
all the candles of our world. 
 
​
Author Bio:
A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. His latest P.O.D. amazon release is an art-text hybrid, "According to the Order of Nature (We too are Cosmos Made)", a work that takes to task the words that have been used against LGBT folks from time immemorial. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place: Poetry on the Line.

Here is what light can do.
It travels the distance we agree
equals a sum we cannot conceive
without the aid of something far more abstract,
and in it, we see a rainbow or a god
or a sign or a predictor of mood;
we see plants drink in particles of rays
sometimes nurturing sometimes destroying
the delicate organ of the tree, the grasses
the fruits, the ornamentals

and it illuminates a temple of cut block
the gradual brilliance of time
the stone body of a feathered snake
tail to head its linear journey down
the pyramid stairs, jaws open
for the blood and smoke that fill the night.


Author Bio:
Caroline Malone is a poet and musician who lives in East Tennessee.