I love silences
which steal my catwalk
and uncover the earth
into abyss of ages
have you heard of the rains outside?
believe me it is raining
it is whimpering
it is weeping
in abyss of ages
in roads called history
in by lanes of boot leggers
their children, sour wine
that is why I love silences
allowing me to weep and laugh
all at the same time
punctuated by gripping stories
of man's fall, history and his prescience

All at once I love silences, whispering
and then baying for blood.


Author Bio:
Ananya S. Guha lives in Shillong in North East India. His poems have been published internationally. He has been writing and publishing poetry for the last thirty years.

Whether the groaning is heard or not
but it is self-programmed to float out
from an ordinary two-stroke engine
that goes a long way
in keeping a life dynamic
from zero to infinity
extending and contracting
its two pistons together to give and take
the desired fuel of life
for driving it in top gear
on a single lane of ever increasing longings
taking and bearing
all the prevailing risks and uncertainties
to reach a destination or a drain.


Author Bio:
Pijush Kanti Deb is a new Indian poet with more than 234 published or accepted poems and haiku in more than 75 national and international magazines and journals (print and online) including: Down in the Dirt, Tajmahal Review, Pennine Ink, Hollow Publishing, Creativica Magazine, Muse India, Teeth Dream Magazine,Hermes Poetry Journal, Madusa’s Kitchen,Grey Borders,Dead Snakes, Dagda Publishing, Blognostic and many more. His first poetry collection,’’Beneath The Shadow Of A White Pigeon’’ (Hollow Publishing), is available on Amazon. 

Holiday cheer is leaking
through a slit in my cell
door which is closed keeping
at bay golden happiness
 
somewhere candles are lit, singing and champagne
somewhere a boy holds her hand
somewhere lines snake through exhibitions of religious fervor
     red through heartland with curving wheat
somewhere there isn’t beginning or end
     infinity looping like threads of arteries
connecting all the sighing bones
 
this last day of the year
this last hour
this last minute
 
standing on a footlocker
in my cell, watching the moon
hanging high over dark Prisoneyland
this last night presses up against
golden happiness
leaking through my door
 

Author Bio:
Catherine LaFleur is an incarcerated writer and poet working with ArtSpring Workshops. She is from Pensacola, Florida and is a student in the Incarcerated Student Program at Louisiana State University. Her nonfiction has appeared in the anthology Word by Word.

​The tulips are spring’s imprints,
Summer boasts a lavish hue,
Fall has its palette of tints, 
What acclaim is left to you?
Often, the sky’s overcast,
The days are tedious and cold,
Snow flurries and winds that blast,
All make you loathsome threefold.
What I do mostly regard 
As to your supreme appeal,
Is the peace that seems unmarred
And the warmth at home I feel.
Stories by the fireplace 
Boost intimacy and grace.
​

Author Bio:
Ahmed Mehdi is an EFL (English as a foreign language) teacher and a poet. He has been writing rhymes on a regular basis for the last eight years and has written about a hundred poems so far, most of which are sonnets. 

A fusion of cells result in a living mass
of potential and hope, 
Gift from God
growing, 
Each second life beckons,
No identity, 
yet a spark ignites.

It fights to survive, 
to thrive, 
stay alive,
A stream of red feeds, 
nourishes, 
flourishes,
Growing stronger, 
Feeling claustrophobic,
It knows it, 
Trying to close it, 
Failing to expose it.

Rushing emotions, 
Tied down by contortions,
Air around blows life abound
inside that cave 
of comfort and devotion,
Motion beckons, 
Movement stirs.

Realisation of existing, 
Participating,
Intellect stirs, 
Tuition from body
mind and soul,
Curiosity grows, 
Bestows a fresh outlook on surroundings,
Sounds abound, 
Patterns evolving, 
Language astounding.

Throbbing of life
almost complete,
Just starting out, 
Life awaits,
What to give?

The journey, 
Almost complete,
Let’s wait and see 
for new breath 
to comfort and soothe.


Author Bio:
Don Beukes was born, raised and educated in the last two decades of Apartheid in Cape Town, South Africa. He studied English Literature at UWC, a predominantly 'black' university where his love for poetry was cultivated. He wants to share globally his literal mentality and attempt to adjust our moral compass through his words and make us float on poetry. He writes in English and Afrikaans, which despite its negative association to Apartheid, is still the first language of many South Africans of 'mixed race' heritage.

(the science of pseudo-soul mates)

When the average human blinks
it is because,
during gaps in conversation
and excavating the mundane
and breathing each others silences
our brains fuse the moments
surrounding,
as if to prove to our hearts
that we wont miss what was deleted.
 
It is understanding,
 
that when people are
engaged in certain
and similar
circumstances they begin to blink in unison,
like a group of pre-teen girls
fluttering in front of their crush,
or hearts beating in sync
with bodies pressed
against each other through boxed up sheets.
 
That when people are
engaged in certain
circumstances they begin to blink in unison,
 
as if
all our brains are queued into the same lifeline,
 
as if
our pseudo-soul mates are somewhere blinking the same as us.
 
It is understanding,
 
that when we sit down,
tainted with remnants of social norms
and soap box professions
and people in poems
my lashes flutter faster than my heart beats
even though I think I could stare at you
for days
and miles
and ounces
through fields and in between.
 
That when we sit down,
and you lightly graze my hair with your hand
and I think of all the words that
can be written about my breath touching your skin,
all the poems
read by pre-teen girls,
 
as if
our story had an ending which someone would pine over,
 
as if
our story could have a heartbeat pseudo-scientists would be proud of.
 
Something like the moon,
and the stars
and the bits of the life up there that
I know nothing of
because I spent my time preoccupied
with you.
 
Because I spent my time preoccupied
with all of you.
 
It is understanding,
 
that when the average human blinks
it is because,
when excavating the mundane
and breathing each others silences
our brains know the truth
would kill us.
 
Our brains know
the poets in our palms are fierce
and the philosophers in our guts
can lie,
but when our eyes flutter
it is out of the hope that we wont actually miss
a moment.
 

Author Bio:
Valerie started writing seriously after her father gave her a copy of Fahrenheit 451 – she figured it was as good a time as any to start fighting the patriarchy. She has since been published in Lone Cypress Review, Red Cedar Review, Pif Magazine and Scheherazade, among others. She most recently curated a poetry exhibit highlighting National Poetry Awareness Month at her university. Valerie lives in Monterey, California and enjoys drinking stale coffee, marathon viewing The West Wing, and writing…always writing. 

There are lines that frame me in negative expectations.
There are sweet tufts of weeds I would like 
to pet like a kitten. And
eyelashes that spark a gentle nostalgia. 
There are too many eras 
walked through, never to be re-entered, 
and remnants of lore and legends 
like pigeon droppings on pavement, washed away by storm. 
I have grown too used to the drapes being closed,
to all mannerisms of my fugitive vitality being ignored. 
Saturn is a vacuum, 
galactic in its weighty substance and in its cold temperature 
push - condensing my liquid garden into impenetrable ice.
A tightening in my intestines. Shoelaces undone 
and left. I eat the seeds I am supposed to discard. 
I am beyond knowing if
I am broken. And oh the circle of things! Up the escalator. 
Colour-coded stars. A dermal abrasion. 
Things conspire like sunken feet in the mire
unwinding of doom. Archaeology I cannot speak of,
guaranteeing a false result. Straining to sound 
a faith that will cleanse. 
Distances crossed, to point to and witness
the handicap of being a single being 
amongst a kaleidoscope of organic tapestry.
Shifting to let go, to imagine archangel
power and not have it substituted with
a neutralizing force. Force that immunizes
growth from the throes of artful transformation.
There are hills and hallways that draw me to their altars.
Little did I know that dreams too long waited 
on become waterlogged,
that suffering is not a stigma or a banner to flaunt, and love 
is mostly about honouring inner limitations, 
challenging them to consolidate, regain momentum then 
unequivocally be breached or be immutably restored.
I am dissolved into this squeezing, into denying 
the little that I know that quivers precise, 
deconstructing the intricate
solidity of greed and hard resilient walls.
Orbits are barb-wired.
Countdowns counting, dictating short spurt breaths. 
As my tendons stretch 
only in my imagination. And these doorways become
sunsets I stand straddled across.
History is a hyena, grotesquely curved,
pulling down royal constellations. 
I have learned that peace can be a pyre 
were loins burn exquisite, can also be a dishonest maturing,
where desires are reduced to fruit flies annoyances, 
where coming to terms with reality is a step toward 
entropy.
Little did I know that bodies melt with their spirits – 
more than dead houses or gloves, defining one tick, one
conjoining of fibers, pulsing a fingerprint, pulsing one lifetime 
possessed.


Author Bio:
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 625 poems published in more than 310 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published eleven other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press in December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series in October 2014. More recently, she has a chapbook Currents pending publication this Fall with Pink.Girl.Ink. Press. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay. www.allisongrayhurst.com

Maiden:
“The small red boat I can hardly see
From my place under the palm tree
Around whose waist gold hangs free
For my eye seems to be dancing.”

Boat:
“The white-haired maiden I can hardly see
From my blue Mediterranean sea
Seems to be thinking:
“That restless small boat in the sea
Looks like a metaphor to me.” 

Observer:
The white-haired maiden under the palm tree
And the small red boat swaying in the sea
Gazed at each other from the blue distance
Adjacent to the boat, the maiden, and me.
(Lazhar Bouazzi, Carthage (Tunisia), April, 2015)


Author Bio:
Lazhar Bouazzi holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tunis. His speciality is romantic poetry and critical theory.

the new mailman wore an iPod
he stuffed the slot with magazines
and did not let them fall one at a time
as my post- it kindly requested
 
the kid from two houses down
ran across the lawn again
narrowly missing the sprinklers
i'll have to drop his mother a note 
 
my sister called
her oldest has cookies for sale
i still have dosi-dos from last year
i ordered four boxes of lornadoones
 
and you have gone
 
 
Author Bio:
While working in her middle school’s library, Bridgette Bianca met her best friend - a book of poetry written by a teenage girl in Harlem almost two decades before. She checked out A Screaming Whisper by Vanessa Howard so much she committed it to memory, down to the spacing of the text. That book held her hand until she was ready to write her own poems. Now, she writes poetry and hopes it can keep someone else company. Bridgette Bianca is a native of Los Angeles where she teaches English at the college level. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design.