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A Silent Prayer~ By Inayat Thakur

10/27/2020

I sit here
There's silence all around
I hear an occasional snicker
But that's the only sound
I wonder and wonder
In this obscurity unfound

I relive my nightmare
My thoughts start spiraling
Making my lungs gasp for air
The pain sends tremors down my spine
As I utter a silent prayer

There are voices that I can hear
Talking in the distance
Lips moving, hearts racing
Stop with this futile insistence

They turn towards me
I can no longer see their backs
But I glare at their distorted faces
As they begin their attacks

First he whispers
Hush don't make a sound
Then he sneers
Causing me to squirm as am bound

He takes off my shirt
And then reaches for my pants
I was dressed ‘appropriately’
Yet before me a rapist stands

He looks at me
With apologetic eyes
After a moment’s hesitation
His hands run up my thighs

I hear a thump and turn my head to look
Another one has fallen to the floor
While she retches in trepidation
He slaps her face and yells whore

As I waver between
Day dream and daylight
A twinge of pain brings me
Back to the circle of people I sat amidst
All of us unstable and queasy

One raised an arm
The other let out a plea
I won't tell anyone
You can count on me

And so after months of solitary struggling
there was light in this monochrome life of mine
As I knew they'd help me paint over my scars
With the color of courage this time

Author Bio:
InaYat Thakur is a 16-year-old assiduous teenager who considers herself to be a poet and an environmentalist. She loves romantic dramas, pop music, and ballet. She plays the piano and loves to paint. Her life goal is to someday stain the hearts of many with the ink of her pen.

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Fire~ By Wendy Gist

10/27/2020

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(An Acrostic)

Flames thunder a whirlwind of smoke, fumes
Ignite streaks in the night sky, thinning,
Ruby-ing red-winged blackbirds’ fiery hearts
Etched across the evening burn.

Author Bio:
Wendy Gist was raised in the forest of the Southwest on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Burningword, For Women Who Roar, Fourth River, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Rio Grande Review, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review, The Chaffey Review, Tulane Review and other fine journals. Gist has worked as a professional contributing writer for many leading publications including Better Nutrition, Caribbean Travel and Life, eDiets, New Mexico Magazine, Pilates Style, Today’s Diet and Nutrition, and numerous others (national and international). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the chapbook Moods of the Dream Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She was named semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions, 2017.

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Love Stays~ By Frank Diamond

10/27/2020

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The surgeon admits that he can do only so much.
“I’ll always be this?” Jeffrey asks.
“Swelling will go down.”
“This?”
The left side of Jeffrey’s face looks like ground beef.
Allison calmly cuts in: “I will always be here for you, Jeffrey.”
They both live at home, but had begun searching for an efficiency in Fishtown.
They painted at the studio or in their families’ garages.
They took no chances. Being careful about how to use turpentine and
dispose of the soaked rags in a responsible way. Turpentined rags sometimes spontaneously combust.
The fire that got Jeffrey, however, got him at the gas station where he worked.
He’d been leaning under the hood when flames suddenly whooshed up onto him
like a giant grabbing hand.
Jeffrey screamed and the manager chased and tackled him with the fire blanket,
but too late. Third degree burns to half his face, his upper right arm, and down his side.
Now they sit in his hospital room.
“Alison….”
“Look at the falling snow out there, Jeffrey. You need to paint this.”
“I don’t want to be some sort of penance for the rest of your life.”
And the shock of just everything that’s happened suddenly bursts through.
“I love you!” Alison cries, immediately wishing she hadn’t said it quite that way. Damn!
She’d been so stoic.
“I can’t love anybody,” Jeffrey says evenly, the right way. “Takes too much out of me.”
Alison stands. Four steps to his bed. She hovers over his face. Takes it full in.
“May I kiss you?” she asks.
His ironic smile gets halfway there.
“This is what I believe,” Alison says.
She bends, takes both his hands. Kisses each one.
“You still have these, Jeffrey.”
Then she lays her head on his stomach. In a few seconds, he pulls one of his hands
out from under her weeping and places it on her head, begins smoothing her hair. The monitor beeps.
“Don’t leave me,” Alison manages to say. “Please don’t leave me, Jeffrey!”
“I am not going anywhere,” Jeffrey says. “You are my girl.”
“Forever?”
“Sure.”

Author Bio:
Frank Diamond's poem “Labor Day,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize Award. His short stories have appeared in RavensPerch, Insider, Kola: A Black Literary Magazine, Dialogual, Madras Mag, Reverential Magazine, the Examined Life Journal, Into the Void, Empty Sink Publishing, Zodiac Review and the Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review, among many other publications. His poetry has been published in Philadelphia Stories, Fox Chase Review, Deltona Howl, Artifact Nouveau, Black Bottom Review, and Feile-Festa. Frank lives in Langhorne, PA.

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Walking Contradiction~ By Rosie Greaves

10/21/2020

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I am one of the few
who don’t care yet always try
Who push every one away yet crave their attention
Who love freely yet can’t commit

I am one of the few
Who read always but never like the book
Who plan to go then phone up
Who cry in their sleep to avoid bringing others they “don’t care“
About down

I am one of the few
I am one of the few
I am one of the few
I am one of the few

Yet we are not the few
We are everywhere
We are the majority
We are the majority who feel like the few

Author Bio:
Rosie Graves is a young writer. This is one of her new poems, which is completely raw.

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Smell the Roses~ By Dhruv

10/20/2020

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The enticing scent of filth in our city
As we crawl from street to street
Scented sewers, spicy refuse, fragrant emissions, inviting feces
Nose dripping, clothes torn, happy faces
Adorning the roads, garlands of orange blooms

Pungent coffee, polished cars, cheese wafting, cigarettes
Caked faces, fixed eyes, frustrated
Floral notes, citric notes, ginger notes, lavender
Bottled and sheltered, my intrepid whore’s laughter

Protecting our smell,
Floating under our many canopies
The base notes, middle notes and the top notes
The filthy smell of perfume in my city.

Author Bio:
Dhruv is an aspiring filmmaker from India.

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On Fallen Comrades~ By Mike Aleman

10/20/2020

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They don’t always fall on the battlefield.
Mostly they’re struck down suddenly while crossing the street,
meeting their fate completely unaware,
with no time to register surprise, or even anger;
or they fall from a ladder while cleaning out the gutters
during the most beautiful day of Autumn, they’re favorite season.
Instantly there’s a hole in the sky through which they’ve ascended,
and an incredible hole in our hearts which never quite closes.
We walk around stunned, or sit and stare far too long
at a traffic light until the blast from the irritated driver behind
awakens us, a blast from the one who would be sympathetic
if only he knew.
Or our comrades slip away after traveling
that long road of Alzheimer’s Dementia, Cancer or any other
of the diseases encountered along roads on the roads we travel.
Regardless, it leaves us breathless, bereft, left behind,
and we wonder if it’s best to be struck by lightning,
leaving only a puff of smoke and light ash,
or to have time to mend fences, or reflect on the joys of our lives;
the rush of first love, second love, and all the loves that followed.
But we miss them, feel cheated, aghast that the universe
doesn’t think more highly of us than to steal away our loved ones.
And when they reach their unexpected end and beach their boat
upon that distant shore, we wish we’d have spoken with them more,
asked after their joys and griefs, reached out, been a better friend.

Author Bio:
Mike Aleman grew up in a Mexican-American household of readers. His father read Spanish and English, and mother, only English. He spent many happy and fulfilling summer hours at the library and its park-like surroundings.

Mike became an English teacher, taught lit and writing for 30 years, and had a grand time. Now retired, he writes at will, and reads stories, novels and poetry over KPBX, Spokane Public Radio.

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In the future (SafeBots)~ By Gregg Dotoli

10/14/2020

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Every cell is hashed
All thoughts filtered
Activities assessed
Weight watched
Eyeballs rolled
Every nanosecond event
gently placed with timestamp
Into our Bigbot
BigBrother’s wunderkind

Author Bio:
Gregg Dotoli studied English at Seton Hall University and enjoys living in the NYC area. He is a white hat hacker, but his first love is the Arts.

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Breath~ By t.m. thomson

10/14/2020

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The field we plow
under a cloud-heavy
sky is rowed and ripe
with broken toys--
baby doll heads
with missing eyes
Barbies from the chest up
hair impossibly-tangled
an arm here & there
cracked tops
chipped marbles
the grungy seat of a tricycle
torn tassels from ballet days.

That’s one truth.

Here’s another--
you can still plant
in this field of fragments
& filth.

Kneel and drop seeds--
magnolia zinnia dianthus
allium whatever--
into the empty heads & torsos
turn the tricycle seat upside down
& sow something soft & low into it
like moss or even the plainest
of grass.
Throw marble & tassel on top
for adornment.

Make use of the shattered
& severed & collapsed--
this is breath.

~inspired by Lisa Lach-Nielsen’s “Gardening”

Author Bio:
t.m. thomson has been in love with poetry since she was very young; her first poem was about colors. She draws much of her poetic inspiration from nature and art, both reality and artifice. Often poems occur to her while she takes walks or while her hands are immersed in soil. She refers to herself not as a “gardener,” but rather as a “player in mud.” Her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal and Whispering Prairie Press: Kansas City Voices and will be featured in Blue Ash Review and mutiny! magazine in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards, and she is the co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky, a book of ekphrastic poetry, and author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWrite

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A Love Letter For The Soul~ By Ashley Virginia Matthew

10/13/2020

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Poem
A Love Letter For The Soul
By: Ashley Virginia Matthew

Dear soul, your love is true.
Blessed soul, your love is strong.
You love in all you do and your love can do no wrong.
Perfect soul, your love is brave.
Kind soul, your love is giving.
Your patient love came to save and it gave a reason for living.
Pure soul, your love is gentle.
Beautiful soul, your love is humble.
Your love stays non-judgmental even when I take a stumble.
Angelic soul, your love is genuine.
Innocent soul, your love is free.
Your love forgave all my sin and your love you gave to me.

Author Bio:
Ashley Virginia Matthew is a graduate of Cedarville University. She majored in Journalism and has two minors in Creative Writing and Bible. She currently lives in Fairfield, Ohio and enjoys writing fiction and poetry. Ashley has been writing as a hobby since childhood and enjoys writing on a variety of genres, from fantasy to romance. Her writing is influenced by a vast majority of topics, including sports, personal life events, historical figures and more.

In her spare time, Ashley also enjoys traveling, exercising, shopping, reading and listening to music. Some of Ashley's previous writing experience includes being a staff writer for KayfabeKickout.com, an intern reporter for The Pulse-Journal, a reporter for two collegiate student newspapers and a reporter for her high school student newspaper. Ashley also writes the bi-monthly newsletter at the company she works for. Ashley's writing goals include someday being a published novelist and to always strive to improve at her craft for writing.

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Floating Embers~ By Robert L. Martin

10/7/2020

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Skyborne magic approaching
from the corners of the east,
embers drifting in space
in the wake of the journey of the sun,
the daughter of the blazing sky,
a rendezvous with the
tides of yesterday,
when she ventured forth,
racing along the firmament
in a fiery chariot,
cursing the sting of the darkness
and chanting hymns of the Sun Gods
on her pilgrimage to the western lands,

her adorning the clouds
with colors of a deep crimson,
an artist with sensual strokes,
turning herself into a
cool globe of orange
before she dove through
the cracks of the earth
into the bowels of its home
in search of the lava field,
the same one she found last night,
to thaw her frigid hands and feet
and sleep in its comforting warmth,

as morning came and her eyes opened,
she rose again through the cracks
of the eastern corner of the earth
with her fiery body igniting
the wooden clouds that formed above,
peeking through the smoldering embers,
the charred sky riddled with
pink and yellow holes,
the beauty of the new day,
the journey of the daughter of the skies,
the dancing with the winds of time,
and the way she chose her colors
that embellished the face of the firmament,
her handiwork of the earth and sky.

Author Bio:
Robert L. Martin's writings have appeared in "Universal Oneness" anthology book, "Charles Carter Anthologies," "The Voices Project," Mature Years," "Poets' Espresso" among others. He won two "Faith and Hope" poetry awards and publish two chapbooks. He is also a pianist and the organist at First UMC of Wind Gap, PA.

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