I refuse to cut myself open 
for some man to see me
I refuse to bleed myself dry for him to believe that 
blood runs through me
I told you
I told you 
I told you
we told you
we have told you

I refuse to show you my pain
to open my pain
to re-traumatize my pain
for you to believe me
briefly

If you didn’t believe us already
you were never going to believe us
a river of our blood pours from the sky
you grab an umbrella and say
“God, this better not ruin my shoes.”

​
Author Bio:
Anna is a high school teacher in Brooklyn, NY, with a prior professional background in public health. She finds poetry instrumental in processing and healing trauma, and takes great joy in sharing and creating work with other poets and writers. In her spare time, she also enjoys climbing, painting, and advocating for social justice. 

Tonight, the sky’s a picture box
where stars that pulse and pulsate
are like fireflies my sister and I 
tried to catch, but couldn’t keep 
in our hands long enough to put in jars,
and carry them like lanterns in a storm.
We would wait for the darkness
when bats that looked like birds
would rise up from our tree
flitter, flutter, flying far away.
When dishes smacked against 
kitchen walls and blinds slammed shut,
we knew we had to go 
somewhere else.
Our navigators:
street lamps,
the brightest stars,
a steady white moon.


Author Bio:
Sherri Levine lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches English as a Second Language to adult immigrants and refugees at Portland Community College and Portland State University. Her work has been published in The Timberline Review, Hartskill Review, VoiceCatcher: A Journal of Women’s Voices & Visions, Verseweavers, Perspectives Magazine, The Poeming Pigeon, and The Sun Magazine. She won First Prize (Poet’s Choice) in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Biannual Contest (2017). Sherri recently served as Poetry Editor for VoiceCatcher. Her debut chapbook, In These Voices, has just been released by Poetry Box. She escaped the long harsh winters of upstate New York and has ever since been happily soaking in the Oregon.

The snows of yesteryear
No longer come to walk,
They’re hanging in a wardrobe
Pressed inside a dream
While the charcoal petals brittling 
Between the twisted vines
Flake in cold soliloquy
Where once they were employed.
I’ve seen not the hand of friendship
Not the texture of its skin,
The wind is blowing cold
The rain is driving hard.

You flower in the canyon streets
A stoic Mona Lisa
Telling me to meet you
By the Jordan river
But the absence of your shadow
Casts me as the fool
And throws me in the dirt
Where weeping seeds
Are sown.

Pushing out the darkening spine
Plays a bitter timbre
As halcyon days bow their heads
Before the force of winter.
You spend your time in clover
Wearing a mask of paper
Playing everyone for fools
Choking on ashes and pearls.

And then you stand and count
The diamonds in your number
But the fingers always grasping
Are begging for applause
And the coolness of your summer
Beats on my reflection
Chilling me in mirrors
Upon which gray clouds roar.

It’s not in death’s dark chamber
That these words are given fire
And it’s not in distant woodlands
That strength is forged in steel
But in the heartache of dark scratches
Lying on a paper,
In the bleeding waters running
Where bark is stripped and peeled.

I don’t know the clever lines that
Dylan Thomas would emit
Or the wit of Oscar Wilde
Or the depth of Friedrich Nietzsche.
All I know is that I miss
My friend like a blanket
Like a coat that is hanging
In my darkening wardrobe long,
And as your shadow slowly drifts
From the armchair to the highway
I am trapped inside the mist 
On the lake on which I’ve cried,
For the snows of yesteryear,
For the snows of yesteryear, 
For the snows of yesteryear.


Author Bio:
Martin grew up in a violent family, was forced to leave his country and by 17 was living in a park on the other side of the world. Libraries were warm and poetry a best friend. Escape to magical places and hope. Strength of character meant by 25 he had qualified as a lawyer and had dug himself out some very dark places. Poetry paints images, word pictures... layered with nuance and a chance to stretch words to reflect a feeling, an emotion (not captured in prose) -- the sideways glance of the silent actor.  He writes for himself, an ongoing therapeutic expression of hope.

The damage that you have done to your insides is on you but what about the damage done
to your head and heart. Who’s responsible for that?
I know that you’ll never tell me who did what to you so you’ve left me no other choice but to assume.
Was it them, was it him, or was it both? Are they the reason why you are who you are today?
What I would give to go back in time and protect you from the monster or monsters that caused you harm.
I would tell them that they need to love you unconditionally, hug, and kiss you
or else they’ll mess it up for the upcoming generation.
I’ll tell them to break the cycle, so that you can break the cycle. No more addiction, no more pain,
and no more suffering passed down from them to you.
I’m just thankful that I was strong enough to break the cycle but I wasn’t left untainted
because for the rest of my life I will remain in session after session. 


Author Bio:
Magdalena Garcia is not a professional writer. She writes as a form of therapy and from her heart. She is a domestic violence survivor as well as a child abuse survivor. Her poems are raw, unfiltered, and explicit. Not for the faint of heart. Her poems have been featured in Synchronized Chaos (July 2018 edition). 

A woman knows uberty source
And learnt the tradition of attractiveness
A woman sees treasures of a man
And love to sail to a place of calmed peace
 
When I become a woman
I want to be more just than a womb man
And teach the culture of generations
I want to put kids on my lap to pat
And enchant prayers that find-
Its way to the veins of their destiny
 
A woman verifies pains of agony
And sweat out to put meat on the table
A woman smiles with scent of different fervour
And her heart bigger than the world
 
When I become a woman
I want to be the voice of unheard wails
And happily plough for food in every soil
I want to stretch stretches to those in need
And embrace heart that sink with bitterness
While being a woman.


Author Bio:
Daniel Ajayi is a devoted poet from Lagos Nigeria. He is passionate about his career and sees reasons life gave him. He writes from his reading of human behaviour, a graduate of human resources management. Some of his works appeared on spillwords press, Storried, Ovi and elsewhere.