They said my dialect is vernacular.
They said my mother tongue is barbaric and uncivilized;
So I became sad and in turn, threw caution to the wind.

This was when...
I lost my decency of language use
and so,
my hatred for the English language grew.

Grammar was like having two grandmas
Syntax was like paying tax on every sin
Phonology seemed like tiny ticks on my phone
and morphology, Ohw Gawd!
It was like sweet muffins soaked in sauce.

I was having a public speech;
November 6, 1954,
busy fanning the flames of my motives
then suddenly,
grammar kissed my Jesus
and twinkly twinkly,
the soldiers of language-felony came rushing in
taking me to the cross of shame
and nailing my ignorance to the wood of morphemic-defiance.

Had I known my crimes would have me to the guillotines of profanity,
my head I would have saved for pizzara-n-dish.

The judge stared into my eyes
with sunken sockets
deep into the depths of fear.
My heart rested on nails and crushers
and my beats looped on crouches
as he read Humpty Dumpty
of my unforgivable sins.

“this man here,
I consider a linguistic minor,
has proved dangerous to the wellbeing of language.
For on the 7th of November, 1954,
he said with no reservations,
‘we must all [fights] to make this revolution a success’
and as we all know,
Section five of the concordial and tensile constitution
Clearly states
‘No man shall prove dialectal-deficiency in matters of public concern’ ’’

Maybe my head could have been saved;
and my pound of flesh, reserved
but ohw Gawd!
I murdered the last born of phonology.

I had started to think that all romances turn out tragic;
Shakespeare I must ask,
and my stuckedness to civility to my waterloo;
Myself I must inquire
For it was meant to be a wooing of my sweetie pie
But who knew it would be my hellrunoff-line?

“I [ombli] ask for your hand in marriage”.

Pardon my manners;
my head must travel down this lane
from the blade through the rolling levers
for the judge read aloud.
“No man,
Incompetent in matters of phonetic articulation
must murder an ‘[h]’ "
but how could a man
show his manners to a gentle lady
than to attempt a variety
higher than the roof of his tongue?

In the least,
My counts were about a hundred.
Maybe I could have saved that last piece of my head;
a souvenir to my brother
But Ohw Nou!
I womanly slaughtered paradigms and syntagmas
and in the same hour,
I shattered collocation.
My bad!
I severed the right arm of semantic relevance.

I was on the walkway:
Mono-logging about my immediate difficulties.
My minusculeness in a world of linguistic complexities
and so I said,
“I would one [days] have a lounge in my cup of cupcakes”
Little did I know
that the diglossic winds of stratification carried my mumbles away. 

So,
here I am,
with a thousand linguistic count-charges,
being dragged to the blades of my deficiency
that my head can be tossed off its roots.

But before the melon on my neck spurts,
before it rolls down the isle of minors.
Before my blood drool through this metal slab;

This I must confess,
that I have no regrets;
for my babarikness in my cold blooded murderings
cause language to me is nothing.
Nothing but a convention of lemon-flavoured ice cream.


Author Bio:
Anu Soneye was born on November 20, 1999 in Ile-Ife, Osun state, Nigeria. He is an undergraduate student of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. He loves to write poetry and short stories. He is also a lover of music. 

I thought that I could run 
like a wild stallion on an open field, up mountains, 
across the desert of O’Keeffe, sparse and flat
like water over stones pushing sticks and leaves 
and rushing to pass from moment to moment 
changing shape, formless, but always in motion, 
but the arroyo was dry so I went back to the Huron 
and found that the river still rushes 
and the willows still touch down 
on the shores where the Potawatomi trails 
keep going until dark 
and although you are only a few yards away from civilization 
the moon is shadowed by conifers and oak trees 
and leaves of varying breadth but to run is to lose your own breath 
and now I know that to run like a wild stallion on an open field or like water over stones pushing sticks and leaves and rushing past willows and waterfowl is no more likely than a dammed up arroyo because 
rivers never stop and
people do. 


Author Bio:
Maryann Lawrence is a writer, a salesman, a mother, a wife, an undercover hippie, deadbeat charwoman and wanna-be financier. Her stories are guided by misguided ideas about people, and the delusion that life should be idyllic. She has worked in offices, fast food restaurants, fragrance stores and security guard agencies. Her favorite job was a beat reporter for her hometown paper. She once lived, barefoot and pregnant, on a campground outside Santa Fe, an adventure she is longing to top. 

​Tick on, old clock. Annoy my silence.
Your face stained by time is the fruit of your character.
Once again, I am lost in your troublesome madness.

Tick on, good time. Don’t mind me. 
You have seen my past yet you bleed no tears.
I fail to understand why you look so sad. 

Tick on, old clock. Pass me by. 
Tomorrow, I fear, you will do me no justice. 


Author Bio:
Bronny Kraus is a South African living in the USA. Bronny realized her passion for writing and poetry at a young age and started personally documenting her writing since she was 14. Bronny grew up in a household where her voice was silenced and writing was a means to express her emotions and thoughts and a form of release. With no formal education in literature or writing, her poems are mostly free form and stem from an internal place of what she feels is meditation for her soul. 

​Jesus is coming.
Duck behind the ditch like a killer.
You don’t need reminding of your sins,
Mothers are for that, each wrong, a thriller.

Jesus is coming.
Hide your Bible,
where you’ve underlined the dirty parts,
and hope you won’t be liable.

Jesus is coming.
Get a cross for good luck.
He is pointing at my desk and saying, 
“You may bob or weave, but with me you are stuck.”


Author Bio:
Amanda Tumminaro lives in the U.S. She is a poet and short story writer and her work has been featured in Thrice Fiction, Jokes Review and Stickman Review, among others. Her first poetry chapbook, “The Flying Onion,” is available now by The Paragon Press.

I thank Poseidon for giving me the keys to this endless ocean. For me to ride the waves and infinitely get lost in them. Maybe I still think the ocean is this ominous dark water, but I keep coming back to it. This beacon that calls out to me at all hours reaching into my soul and lighting a fire. My fingers trace the silky surface, and I am in love. At night, the moon's relationship with the sea is the serene sound of crashing waves I love to hear sitting in the sand breathing in the salty air... Most never feel it. As soon as the sun begins to kiss the sky, the ocean calmly paces back and forth breathing in a kind of new life I also envy, watching from a distance, as a bystander. When my time comes to leave the only home I've ever known, this beautiful Earth, a piece of me will die with the ocean. Along with the great whites that seem to never stop swimming and with the turtles on land, I'll swim too guided by the moonlight straight to the water. 


​
Author Bio:
Marcela is currently studying environmental engineering because she has a passion for taking care of the environment as societies grow. The ocean is her favorite fear, filled with creatures the world knows nothing about to it being a great pass time for people. She is an avid Instagrammer and posts a lot about her dogs: Sofi and Tyler. Her writing is inspired by poets Michael Faudet and Orion V. Carloto

foster brother.
in kindergarten, i learn how to recognize the face of danger. it wears casual clothes to fit in with casual people. it also smiles to appear as warm as the friendliest of us. i learn that the face of danger can look a lot like mine or yours. but i never expect it to. after all, the stranger next to danger implies that the attacker will be someone foreign. no one mentions that strangers will come in the form of family members too. no one tells me to lookout for you. my brother. the last person i expect to crawl underneath my sheets at night. my brother. the taste of your tongue is as foul as your desire to pry open my legs. my brother. you manage to rob me of my virginity and my ability to say something about it. yet you ask if i enjoy the ride anyway. you watch me slip in and out of consciousness with a smile swallowing your face. my brother. in kindergarten, i learn that the face of danger can look a lot like mine or yours. but never did i ever expect it to.


Author Bio:
Starlenie Vondora is a Dominican-Haitian American from Chicago, Illinois and before that Miami, Florida. Shortly after her birth, Starlenie spent eight years in foster care before reuniting with her birth parents at 8-years-old. In the third grade, Starlenie developed a passion for writing poetry, music, and short stories. Twelve years later, Starlenie still writes for the therapeutic process of pressing pen to paper. She also writes so as to store the wisdom she’s extracted from experiences, for that is the reason she persists today. It’s finding in herself what she’s searched for in others that the wisdom has taught her to do. It is the wisdom that taught her that love is meant to replenish your roots and if it doesn’t then you’re using the wrong fertilizer. That wisdom has fueled her on the journey to restoration, so she cherishes it. Vondora stores it in the back of her mind as well as in notebooks. Now she offers it to you today.

I walk a lot for exercise. 
As I roam my neighborhood, 
I keep my eyes out for 
discarded treasures. 

I bring home pieces of rope,
elastic hair bands
(unappreciated by my wife), 
and slightly used ink pens.

Once, I collected dozens of
ziplock bags scattered across
my neighbors' yards by 
drive-by marketers hawking 
pressure washing or lawn care.

Each contained a business card
(perfect for my fire pit) and
a few pebbles to weigh them down.
The pebbles I left behind.
Reluctantly.

My wife is accustomed to these 
shenanigans, and puts up token 
resistance each time I bring a 
treasure home. 

Today, though, was a Hall of Fame moment.

Today, I liberated a slightly used 
black beret from the grass outside a 
construction zone. I bet only a couple 
of cars had run over it.

I wonder if God feels this giddy
when he collects a wayward
soul from the gutter?


Author Bio:
Mick is a writer, father, and effing bug slayer who is not allowed to buy his own clothes. His creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous consumer magazines, newspapers, literary journals, and three books of poetry. He is a member of the Gwinnett County Writers Guild and founding member of the Snellville Writers Group. In 2018, he created the ‘Books and Beer’ reading series to benefit the local food co-op. He lives with his wife and a dozen larcenous squirrels in Atlanta, GA. His next book is coagulating nicely. More at www.MickeyKulp.com. 

Perfection is the mallard's brilliant head,
so green and iridescent in the sun,
such orange feet displayed in waddling tread,
designed, of course, to swim and not to run.

He flaps his wings before he settles down
so regally upon the floating wharf,
so much at ease, but then he looks around.
We're very still so he won’t metamorph

Into a paddle boat and swim away.
Does he have family? Little ones half grown?
A weasel prowls the shore in search of prey.
Is that the reason why he's all alone?

He turns his head and nips beneath his wing,
then listens to the trees and robins sing.


Author Bio:
Ruth Latta is a writer in Ottawa, Canada. Her most recent book is the novel, Grace in Love (info@baico.ca) For more information about her and her writing, visit her blog
http://ruthlatta.blogspot.ca

My daughter and I use our bodies to tie the breeze
into ribbons—a landscape of swaying grasses, clover,
oak, and pine joining the dance. Even the berries
bob their heads on branchy necks, sparrows
catching them in pose, plucking shiny bodies, flying
away to feed their futures tucked into gutters
lining the roof of grandma and grandpa’s house.
We spin around—her stuttering feet playing the earth
like a typewriter to keep up with her feral mind
where fiction whirls out of real life—the breeze
into a storm, the sun’s limbs gathered
through clouds, the scent of secrets approaching,
grandma’s laundry on a line behind the house pulling
at its seams—foxes, felines, and ferrets in nooks--
a forest and hunters treasure-laden with terrors and traps
jostling like a symphony of keys, each one
set and buried, camouflaged as roots or leaves.
A nest of tangled birch branches promising
an oracle of bugs that rollick beneath in the dark damp
dirt. But when it bites, it pulls a tongue pierced
through, one bloodied black ant kicking itself free
of saliva. All in vain. Ten legs strike the air,
the earth, the grave--click, click. Suddenly, my daughter
whoops loud and stops her twirling, falls down,
melts into the grass as grandpa teeters towards us
on one strong leg between two canes. We listen
to his laborious clap, clap—patient and frozen in place.
He smiles and shouts Don’t stop because of me!
and we smile back until he turns to tend the bushes.
I melt into the grass beside my daughter. We dance.
 

Author Bio:
Kimberly is the author of White Goat Black Sheep (FLP) and her poetry has appeared in several literary journals including The 3288 Review, Temenos, Storm Cellar, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, The West Texas Literary Review, Windhover, Ruminate Magazine, Relief, RiverSedge and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She is an MFA graduate of New Engl and College, a book reviewer for NewPages, an editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose and an Assistant Professor of First-Year Writing at Michigan State University. Her writing explores trauma, sexuality, violence against women, motherhood, and displacement. To read more of her work visit kimberlyannpriest.com. 

Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter 
virtual spaces where we each inherit 
our own piece of real estate 
to develop and manifest our own facades.

On fleek, on point, 
oozing virtual hotness.
Gucci bag, Christian Louboutin Shoes, 
sporting latest trend from Kardashian goddesses.

No need for plastic surgery.
My selfies are taken from the best angles.
Filters providing the ultimate tan 
and immaculate skin.

Yoga pants, messy hair
Kids dressed in garbage bags.
Sneaking off to Walmart
fetching frozen pizza and a gallon of Blue Bell.

Horror! Kelly Jo Steinbrenner Smith 
on the other side of the Little Debbie display. 
Run? Leave my kids 
so she won’t know they are mine?

Nothing but a box of Zebra cakes shielded me. 
I turned my cart, my kids and selection full of senseless calories 
toward the checkout stand 
pretending not to see her majesty of Grand City High School. 

Unbeknownst to me, 
Ms. Smith just as abruptly turned her head 
Smiling at the faceless person 
giving out free samples.

Tasting cardboard bacon 
Avoiding the possibility 
I’d see the ten pounds remaining
since baby number three popped out six weeks ago.

Everything I’ve never accomplished 
ran through my head 
in thirty seconds flat 
on my drive home. 

Failures. 
Weight gain. 
Parenting skills
all on display.

I’m never going back 
to that God forsaken place. 
Another Walmart is only 26 miles away. 
I’ll start shopping there.

Pulled up to my tattered picket fence, 
unloaded my 2010 minivan.
Scarfed down half the gallon of Vanilla Bean
Baking therapy commenced.

Created an Oreo cake 
Shaming Martha Stewart, 
posted pictures of the heavenly vision 
on every social media outlet imaginable. 

Oh look. 
My first like. 
Oh wait. It’s changed to a heart.
I’m loved.

Validated! 
I’m the greatest baker/mom/woman ever!
Wait!
Who loved my cake? 

Kelly Jo Steinbrenner Smith 
that’s who.
My stars have aligned. 
I don’t have to drive 26 miles.


Author Bio:
Kim Harris is currently attending Tarrant County College and studying to become an elementary teacher. She has six children and eleven grandchildren. Having raised five daughters, she realizes the importance of advocating for women and seeking to build each other up.