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Robert Browning~ By Lana Bella

11/30/2015

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She could not say with any conviction what had turned her love affair into something altogether else, and so gravely out of reach in its current state of ruin. Those sweet bygone days tore alongside her as she broke away, from what she did not know, but whatever it was, it had chased her out alone into the desolate grounds of fate; tumbling and half-falling, retracing memories of and plunging back into the forgotten years. In the recent days, it seemed she could always make out unmistakably the memories of bliss in naiveté, and anguish in wisdom, all engraved upon her waning spirit. The wretched self and her other more able-bodied being, both past and present, were slight in their bearing, and yet, the faint mingling of whispering, sighing and weeping, became the constant noise which accompanied her as they rattled upon the fragile hinges on her soul. 
 
The familiar arrival of the after light fluttered by, trailed inward from under the entryway like the rattling tail of autumn smoke, made ominously bright by the hanging kerosene lamp burning ever so softly beside the dusty wooden chair left on to light its way. She breathed in the crisp November dusk, mixed with the sharp pain of the unforgiving tides from the hovering affairs of her recent life. Her gloveless fingers had grown numbed with cold, smoothed along the aged writing chair set away from the curved stairway; the lustrous inky strands had since came loose of the ivory comb and tousled down upon her shoulders in disarray; those amber eyes have lost their dazzling brilliance, now flashed instead of anger and pain, then all at once hurled themselves across the stained teal tiles and directed up, brought to a standstill by the steadfast gaze which reflected back from the looking glass on the dressing vanity against the corner wall, and under the gold-colored lamp they appeared unflinchingly bright with unshed tears.
 
It felt like the whole world had moved on, herself breathed still but not living, abandoning her in a nostalgic and derelict past she'd never again visit. Just as suddenly, a startling sob escaped her lips, conceding that any consoling word of insight already came too late, as if out of whimsy, each and every crafted word had wittingly lodged themselves deep within her catatonic consciousness, idled away under its dark recess while slithered to the bottom-most among the overlays of time, where they at long last, mingled with the other muffled and unspoken thoughts which had lain dormant in hush suspension. The artless illusion of her innocence, made haste by the weight of neglect, had her swiftly sped downward to a maddening void of guilt and torment; and there, was where she stood at sea, on the verge of coming to be a lost beauty, no longer a misspent and simple youth yet holding on to traces of the girl she had been. How hauntingly sad and mad and bad it was, but then how it was sweet, this gravity of regret. And how utterly sad to realize it's too good to leave, and sadder still, too bad to stay.
 
*Author Note: Robert Browning was written with the poet’s famous quote in mind: How sad and bad and mad it was. But then, how it was sweet.

Author Bio:
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with over one hundred journals, including a chapbook with Crisis Chronicles Press (early 2016), Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, QLSR (Singapore), elsewhere, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She divides her time between the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a wife of a novelist, and a mom of two frolicsome imps. 
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The Stories I Have Told~ By James Diaz

11/25/2015

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A drop of water 
it is human memory wont be long
sit still this light is a don't-ask-don't-tell occurrence
it winds its dark elbow along the cool crack of sky
the quickest route wont bring you home
“I know Momma, but it has been ten years now”
nothing grows its all brick 
wont be long but it has been
try again walk harder this life
when you least expect it
will one day be so beautiful to you.


Author Bio:
James Diaz considers poetry to be his small act of survival. For as long as can remember, writing has been a part of his world, his healing potion, his attempt to find out who he is. If he were not a poet he would most likely be a song. Other poems of his can be found in Ditch, Cheap Pop Lit, Pismire and Collective Exile. 
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How I Knew~ By Rayna Yu

11/24/2015

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Early November
The grass grows in scraggly tufts
Burnt brown by the cold 
That nips at us through our woolen blanket

We sit with knees tucked to our chests
Complain about the weather
Wonder why we joined the tennis team 
You make a tent with your shirt
And hide beneath it, your
Dark braid sticking out of the collar

In small shuffling steps we
Walk around the court
Our arms wrapped around ourselves
Tight as sweaters
You are hunched over and shivering and laughing
At how ridiculous it is to
Play tennis in the winter
I am shivering too
But not from the cold

The metal bench presses cold into my thighs
We are connected by
The thin black wire of
A pair of earbuds
I play your favorite band
You mouth the lyrics
Softly
Like you don’t want anyone to know
I steal a glance of your face, bit by bit
Of eyes equal parts green and brown
And the curve of your cheek
Brushed red by the wind

The space between us is the
Precipice over a 
Great and confusing ocean
I do the only thing I can and
Pull you close and
Hope you never know how I see you

We still wave hello in the hallways
Make promises to hang out

In my mind we have lived a thousand years
Of intertwined fingers
Beneath woolen blankets
 

Author Bio:
Rayna Yu is a violinist and writer who lives in Virginia. In her spare time, she works on her young adult fantasy novel and plays with her cat. Rayna currently attends Colonial Forge High School.
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In Movements through Time~ By Susandale

11/23/2015

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In movements through time 
Autumn evokes the buried
Sleeping, but always there
We hear it in the sounds of rain 
and the vagabond road

Let the silenced voice speak
Declare that autumn is the death
that enhances the existence of life
being flown off 
on the wings in pursuit 
of a persistent yearning 

Often left in the hollow places of October 
Where September’s fading blossoms once roamed

Illusive, tenacious, the yearning
Like a moth to light
A heap of broken images drifting
through the territory of dreams
Where lie memory and space
geography and time

All coming to fruition in the bounty of September
only to die in the cold hardness of November

Author Bio:
Susan Dale’s poems and fiction are on West Ward Quarterly, Ken *Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. She has two published chapbooks on the internet: Spaces Among Spaces bylanguageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time by Barometric Pressure. 
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Montreal~ By Virgil Saunders

11/23/2015

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I heard the other day that you were there,
somewhere,
somebody remembered what we were.
 
I must’ve dug in too deep,
dug my nails in until my heart bled
and stained all over your white.
The nights we flew on
I see a little less everyday,
the snowflakes are melting into a new day,
absence missed like frost on a pane.
 
If you were the one who came so far,
why did I take all the chances?
 
 A New Year came,
rang in on the lips of a rotting stranger,
red wine staining the snow, my lips,
falling into the street, gasping
for the morning.
 
The truth is,
how hard it is to tell a week’s worth of fiction--
I’ll hang on to those lies
‘til only they keep me company
 as the years pass and we are forgotten.
 
No matter where we should meet again--
heaven or hell,
I will smile
and let fiction bring you to your knees.


Author Bio:
Virgil Saunders is Maryland native with a passion for language and literature. While Virgil has been writing since childhood, it was not until the University of Maryland's Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House came calling that they were exposed to what creation could be. Exposure to various forms of life through the work of journalism has led Virgil to a more realistic sense of storytelling on subjects such as Rwanda and the world of retail. A thirst for learning new languages is only one aspect of Virgil’s appreciation of the art of words through syntax and sound. And indeed it is an interest that has led to many travels. Drawing on life spent in the Washington, D.C. area, Montreal and France, they have crafted poetry published in NEW MAPS and Blackberry: A Magazine, with much more going towards the re-telling of world events.
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Now I Know How Loneliness Looks~ By Iryna Lialko

11/19/2015

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Now I know how loneliness looks
one
of a great number
of masks

is more right.

The loneliness is
                      empty
                              slanting
                                        streets.

The loneliness is the
                           dead

                       of        night.
It is grieving
and
the growing mute night,
eternally beginning,
not predicting the dawn.
These are shaded and cooled-down lamps
warmed
without light
at the edges of avenues.
There I stand.
Autumn without leaves
and the beginning of winter without snow eternal winter
not predicting spring.


Color of eyes
of loneliness -
silent, sickly hepatoyellow
neon of the only one bulb
in the ephemeral
totally empty -
wildly empty -
forever empty -
shellacked avenue.


Loneliness
it is calling me with
dark internal voices.     
To go,
to speak with the greedy gobbling
shadow.
Shadow.


The loneliness is to look back, peer at the gloom,
to drink gloom,
to be overflowed with it,

to drown in it’s silence, to sink
in its
cold

deep
                                water.
the loneliness feels warm round you,
but it is cold inside.
The light is round you,
but dark inside.

Loneliness - melancholy -
for something
far and sacred -
melancholy for itself.

It is emptiness in it of itself.

​
Author Bio:
Iryna Lialko was born 1981 in Ukraine. She is a performer and painter, currently working in Tennessee (USA). She can be found at: www.lialko.com.ua
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Bendable~ By Sonya Groves

11/18/2015

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I’m bent 
but not broken, 
and that’s the problem.

Better to be broken, then fixed. 
Perhaps weaker but not misshapen 
like a warped carnie mirror.

Bent is to the will of others, 
an accommodation,
a distortion.

Are you
Flexible?

Are you
Nimble?

Are you
Malleable?

Really are you bendable? 
How far can they stretch me? 
How thin can I go?

Maybe like a thin piece of juicy fruit or 
a fiber optic cable, so thin as to be 
translucent.

No. I don’t want to be flexible, nimble, 
malleable, bent. I’d rather not give way
but break instead, I say.

I’ll mend the cracks, 
show my scars, 
stand my ground anew.

The years will leave me chipped
and tattered, but not bent. The girl 
of 19 will still be in the woman of 90.
 

Author Bio:
Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal and been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.
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Emirates~ By Sultana Raza

11/17/2015

 
Culture is filtered through
the carvings of a wrought-iron gate
the loops and flurries
of an ornate ventilator
intricate patterns of henna
on decorated hands
causing the piping and fluting
notes of ululating music
to stretch out, reach high
piercing like a nose-ring
with a small and glittering diamond
bright as a camp fire
glowing deep in the desert
with its smoke
rising, undulating
like the ever-shifting dunes
round and smooth
as the curve of a scimitar
raised in a hand
bedecked with five jewels
painstakingly crafted
like all the subtle nuances
of Arabian refinement.


Author Bio:
Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza has an M.A. in English Literature. Her articles have appeared in Flick Feast (UK), Sound on Sight (USA), the Peter Roe Series (Tolkien Society UK), Le Jeudi, the Wort and paperjam in English and French. 
 
Sultana Raza’s poems have appeared in Ancient Heart Magazine (Australia), India Currents (USA), London Grip (UK), Literary Gazette (USA),  Caduceus (Ed. Yale University, USA), Beyond Bree, (an American MENSA newsletter), the Peter Roe Series, (Tolkien Society UK), The Whirlwind Review (USA), Silver Leaves Journal #5 (Canada), Muse India, and The New Verse News. More are to appear in Allegro, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Catch and Release (Columbia’s online Journal).
 
An awarded artist, Sultana has participated in exhibitions in many countries in Europe and the USA. An awarded artist, Sultana has participated in exhibitions in many countries in Europe and the USA. Her art-works have appeared in The New Collector’s Book 2014 (NY), and International Contemporary Masters Vol. IX. More is to appear in 3Elements Review.
 
About: http://sultanaraza.com/about/
Tumblr: http://sultanaraza.tumblr.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SultanaRazaAuthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sultana.raza.7
Artist’s blog: http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/335930-sultana-raza

​Questions for my Daughter~ By Jennifer O'Neill Pickering

11/16/2015

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• Why did you leave…?
Time won’t wait. I was born to fly away--- open your hand that is all it will carry for long. I wanted a room to fill with success, mistakes, jumble of drawers brimmed with scarves from Paris and Hampton Court, promise of love, my mess, my order a quiet place. 
• Why did you leave with a musician?
His music plays in the key that unlocked my heart.
• Why have you chosen this drafty Victorian with rooms without furniture, windows, that once open, refuse to close? 
The rooms are furnished with light, through their windows float the delta breeze that chimes the ancient elms--- because this is enough. 


Author Bio:
My beginnings were uncertain. I was born a twin having a twin brother named, Richard. We were a complete surprise to my mother and the doctor and weren’t given a chance of surviving. We did, and came home to my grandparents’ house after spending a week in incubators. The isolated rural setting of Tierra Buena, CA provided a blank page to scribble on with the imagination. The house we lived in, a craftsman bungalow, had a tin roof that sang when it rained and was surrounded by the peach orchard on three sides that my grandparents ranched. Each spring a flicker returned to its nesting hole outside the upstairs window of the bedroom I shared with my other three siblings. Our front yard had a view of the Sutter Buttes and “rattlers” were frequent visitors to the cool shade of the yard. I didn’t meet my father until I was five. I have been writing and making visual art since a young girl and I’ve never stopped. 
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Tomato~ By Mira Martin-Parker

11/12/2015

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I am a tomato. 
I have always been a tomato. 

I am a thick-skinned early girl, 
grown with very little water
in lots of dirt.


Author Bio:
Mira Martin-Parker earned an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Mythium, and Zyzzyva. Her collection of short stories, The Carpet Merchant’s Daughter, won the 2013 Five [Quarterly] e-chapbook competition. 
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