Tonight's soundtrack
Includes
The soft whirring
Of rotating blades
Above my head 
As they lull my thoughts to
Sleep
And usher in
Tonight's cast
Of worries and dead author's quotes,
And other things unspoken
Before midnight.
Their presence brings an uneasy 
Familiarity
To the room
And a longing for better 
Company
At this hour
A wish for companionship
And soft words 
Before sleep.


Author Bio:
Anne Mikusinski has been writing poetry and short stories since she was seven years old and most probably making them up long before she could hold a pen or pencil in her hand.
She finds inspiration in music and art, and sometimes, even little things that happen every day. Her influences range from Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas to David Byrne and Nick Cave, and she hopes one day, her work will inspire others in the same way these writers have been an inspiration to her.

Stained glass windows at Fellowship Hall
were known for their cobalt-hue and fish tails.
Braided carp swimming in smalt waters.
Folding cots positioned under them.

Guests stayed overnight on Thursdays
in the winter only. For warmth
and tuna casseroles with bread-crumbs.
Baked by volunteers on kitchen duty.

Rachel did community service there.
She spent hours at Fellowship Hall.
Gatherings of plastic plates and salt.
Forks, spoons clicking in a chatter.

People were afraid of her. Rachel asked
a lot of what-happens-when questions.
Lolli answered with a point, wave. Harump.
Her face was like a Russet potato.

Her brothers said it was “good for mashing.”
So they did when she refused to remain quiet
about them hush-hushed things. They silenced her
as punishment for having “sass-mouth.”

Lolli cooked, nodding along to a hymn.
Boys, licking ketchup packets, poked her side.
She stuck out what was left of her tongue,
making a lo’ pop sound.


Author Bio:
Paula Eglevsky lives on the East End of Long Island, New York. Her writing has appeared in various newspapers, journals, and magazines. Ms. Eglevsky graduated from the State University of New York at Albany with her Bachelors of Arts degree in English. She earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree from Long Island University, Southampton College, in Creative Writing. She previously published a book of haikus entitled Ladder of Starlight and currently teaches at Suffolk County Community College. Ms. Eglevsky believes that learning is a life-long process and is pursuing a doctorate degree in Literacy Studies at Hofstra University. 

sometimes when I am very still and just be
I am allowed a look under the veil
behind the scenes of infinity
a cosmic kaleidoscope opens behind my eyelids
each fractal more beautiful to behold than the last
spinning and twisting out self similar patterns
reds, greens, violets and blues
a breathtaking iteration feedback loop
unfolding and multiplying down an endless tunnel
silent visual music playing out the song of the universe
in this dreamworld of sonorous solitude
I understand the connection of things
  
 
​Author Bio:
Tara L. Carnes is a musician, composer, poet, teacher and spiritual director. She is a graduate of the University of North Texas (M.A.), and the Haden Institute’s program in spiritual direction. She has always loved to read poetry, but only began writing poetry a few years ago through her spiritual direction training. Tara’s poetry has appeared in Voices de la Luna, The Rose in the World, Illya’s Honey, SageWoman Magazine, Cholla Needles Magazine and Presence Journal. She lives in Houston, TX. 

Here at Life's end, nature's
temptations, quite so,
have grown numb
 
numb as my big toes,
worn too many shoes
in leathered seasons long
 
walked too many miles
along the circle of this worn track,
boots rubbing left ankle to the quick
 
neither imagination on the run
nor the mind milling,
grinding its last cache of corn
 
sharpening a rusty blade
on the stone, looking back to the grove
 
peeling an orange all the way
around to insure the whole of globes is done
 
what can make the rights
and wrongs of truth better known
than a cruel day in the sun?
 
pictures and paints remain
of an acre of an orange grove
edged with raw, mowed grass,
I inhale.
 
one more time around the acre,
exercise of the creaky legs.
 
inhale the twilight air,
lick the dew from the pores
of the rind of the orange
soon to fall back to earth
 
but still color orange as they spin
like a top inside a larger globe
 
this is my day of time under
my crossing moon--
the night will not be long,
sleepless with dreams,
 
stumbling through my second world,
just as confusing as the first
 
and the cruel heat of tropical midday,
at least survived as the sun burned
the roots and demanded
more juice from the sea inside the rind.
 
Hear me out: walk with me
grant me an old man's rant,
I am not the loquacious kind,
 
Let's stride until I find that empty place
wide enough to draw the line in the sand
beyond where not even Lear would have
stumbled on.

​
Author Bio:
Rollie Emerson teaches TESL English in Japan and is recently at Chiang Mai University in Northern Thailand. ​

1) your grandmother tells you the story of the boy whose lambs were eaten by a wolf 
you don't know lamb could be a little girl grazing her horses in a meadow
man can be the wolf keeping his eye on her
tracing her movements
sharpening his claws
so you listen carefully to the story
until you fall asleep
and wake up next morning to the news that wolf has done his job
and villagers couldn't save the lamb

2) 10 years fast forward
and your daughter tells you 
her social science teacher taught her 
that india is the developed country with the greatest infrastructure
and fastest vehicles
and biggest manpower
and the culture is called rapeculture here
and there's this subject in her school
called 'how to not demand'
where they are taught how to move out from house covered from head to toe
and murmer 
they are no longer told the stories of lambs and wolves
but nirbahaya 
and kashish 
and zainab
and given homework to write five points
where nirbhaya went wrong while boarding the bus
and what kashish wore in the marriage
that provoked her rapist
SHE COULD NEVER FINISH HER HOMEWORK
so you teach her alphabets where
A stands for 'asifa was 8-year-old and innocent'
B: boldness is not shameful
C: character is not determined by the fabric
DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWX
Y: your skin is not an apology
Z: zainab was 7-year-old and innocent
but you're afraid
so you play magic tricks 
to reverse the growth of your daughter's breasts
because bigger the breasts, more the eyes on them
and you're afraid of the wolves

3) back to the present
you tell me 
the government is not at fault 
but just the mentality
you show me the newspaper headlines of growing tension between communities
saying this is exactly what the rapists wanted and people like 'you' are giving them 
by calling out on government
you say don't bring stupid things into it
they don't need attention
cut the argument
change its face
an incision here 
a little there
make it look like something that's apolitical
but I'VE BEEN BORN IN A COUNTRY THAT'S POLITICAL
and asks me to choose who should be in the position to save lambs from wolves
and if same people start feeding wolves with the lambs 
then i'm not going to mould my argument into something that sounds pleasant 
and APOLITICAL to your ears
because
we've spent 70 years not paying enough attention 

4) because i don't want to play magic tricks on my daughter 
and tell her that having vagina is not a privilege
being a woman is not a privilege
because i don't want my daughter to learn that rape is 21st century top subject 
and still FIRs are not lodged
women go home unheard
and hang themselves down the ceilings
because death is better than humiliation
because candle march is a ritual
and even before the candles melt down
there's new 8-month-old raped by her relative
or 60-year-old raped by neighbour during holi
and somewhere some leader comments that 'boys make mistakes and it's okay'
like having penis is a victory
and still you ask us to wait for the mentality to get changed
and not expect a concrete step
even if it takes 1000 years
and no girl is left to tell you that she is afraid of going to school
because the son of MLA,
who is already accused of rape,
follows her

5) write the name of asifa on your left cheek
and zainab on right
write the name of nirbhaya on your forehead
and cover your whole body with all the names you've heard in the newspaper, TV debates or anywhere else
and tell me it's not covered
tell me there's still some space left
tell me there's still some humanity and shame left
tell me there has been no killing
tell me this is not rapeculture
tell me there would be no need of teaching your daughter alphabets
where A would not stand for apple
but asifa
Z would not stand for zoo but zainab
tell me by the time 
you finish reading this poem
no girl would 
be abused
or molested
or raped
somewhere out there.


Author Bio:
Ayushi Kainthola is an 18-year-old woman, currently pursuing English honors. To her, writing is her personal space where she is allowed to be herself. Writing liberates her. She enjoys books, tea and a good conversation. Ayushi is happiest when she finds these three things together. 

An angel hovers silent
a taloned foot spring-loaded at the back of my neck
eyes heavenward for the signal 
to yank my head to and across the floor for eternity

Religion may be a lie 
but any other reaction feels less evolved next to prostration 
The dividing line between man and ape 
The aha of the soul 
What happens when you glimpse by eclipse 
that every single thing in your life 
happens with as much necessity and perfectness as the orbits

The only real prostration is involuntary 
Life is endless prayer for that fall 
that fall the only point in life when prayer ends.


Author Bio:
I'm a 28-year-old Pakistani American ex-Muslim ex-Canadian ex-student ex-cool guy self-evicted recently. It would be years now who just wants a chance to write for a living because everything's either hellishly boring to where I have to pretend I'm scoring points in some cosmic moral fiber ledger or so hard I have to bank on that ledger if I hope to make a dent.

​A pity, a leap 
You gasp and you're falling 
His pains twirl around my wrists like loving chains 
Sorrowful longing sweetened, settles by the shimmer I caress in his eyes 
Make the air run out between my lips 
steady me in the in betweens 
We were meant to die 
When the water wettened our wood 
But the moment that's not coming will forever last 
Make me wear the poets' skins 
Make me dwell in what makes poems be 
Make me one pulse that's swallowed in its pink desires 
I'm parted like the seas 
I'm marbled in the miraculous journeys 
What am I my lover? 
But the light that sheds and conceals

​
Author Bio:
Nikoo Paloom  is a writer based in Tehran. Due to the censorship and lack of literary journals in Iran Nikio has never had the chance to be published. 

Walking home one evening
I notice a dim blue light; between 
the black cracked glass of sluiced tree-gangs
and the chest-high grass gleaming with dew
flinging like flint in the mountain’s breath

I waited for Gabriel, or the baptist’s head
to roll down from the upward climbing reeds
but there was no arrival, kind of like pain
only less sight, and bird noises
there was nothing but a fantastic sick-heat
on my skin. And the blue swell of the fractals
that hung up between like fruit in the trees
of this place, the world’s negatives

My simple brain tries its best 
to unlearn sentiment. 
Like lifting a toenail, the soul prostrates
jeans heavy in the sucking purple mud
and I start praying to un-feel water
to reverse the touch of the wind
but for some reason
My heart always pulls back and under
before gushing beauty like peroxide
in a wound

I decide that if nothing else, before I leave
at least I will work out the exact color of this blue
until I can make it wait like a formula.
It’s almost a robin’s egg blue
the oxidized blue of a century old truck
the hoarse, whispery blue of my mother’s arthritic hands
wrapping bloodless around the skillet handle in ground freeze January
and I realize I can’t even look at it too long
before my eyes have to shut, and watch it gloat
flitting like a pink kite in the clear blindness 

Eventually I get up and turn back down the slope
towards home. Working out a bad story about
inheritances and curses for myself
And when the ones who were waiting 
for me ask where I was. It’s easier to just say
that I drank more than I out to have
and slipped into the creek

but when I blink between their movements
I can still see that pink kite
and when they’ve gone to bed, I can still get up
and watch a portion of blue squared in the window
long enough to remember my nebulous world on the mountain
and the feeling of being god
just as strange and lonely 
as being the cricket


Author Bio:
Nick Vafiadis is a writer and editor for 'Satellite', an online arts and culture journal. He likes chicken nuggets, jazz, and bad poetry. Nick admires the work of Larry Levis, Charles Bukowski, and Arthur Rimbuad; though he's sure they would all be thoroughly embarrassed by his own work. Nick writes because he prefers it over praying or watching sports. Although Nick has not been widely published, his mother still believes that he is an undiscovered genius. 

I'll remember the kisses
that possessed my body with delectable shivers.
I'll remember the talks
when you spoke my words before I opened my mouth.
I'll remember the dreams
about our travels abroad and our Sunday evenings. 
I'll remember...

until I forget. 


Author Bio:
Dayna Lellis graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 2013 and Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2014. She works as a middle school teacher in New York and writes poems in her spare time. 

*Original poem written by Sgt Jack Powell while deployed during WWII

I stand alone by my gun tonight
Gazing out over the restless sea,
With straining eyes that search the void
For signs of the enemy.

In the sky above there's a million stars,
And the moon casts a ghostly glow
Which illuminates with a quiet light
Giant ships riding row on row.

Though my eyes continue to pierce the night,
My mind is far away
And I see a boy saying goodbye, farewell,
The time?... A year today.

He turned his back on home and friends;
On a girl with eyes of blue,
He turned is face to a task ahead--
One hard and grim he knew.

And during that year he learned a lot
And in mind and stature grew,
But where ever he went it haunted him,
The face and its eyes of blue.

They were there in the fogs off Frisco,
In the sky off Waikiki;
They were there looking down from Diamond Head,
And in the Coral Sea.

Many men have gone to sea to forget
Some woman's face, voice, charms,
To find hell on a South Sea night
In the longing for her in his arms.

And here am I, the same as they
Just a wanderer of the sea,
Pursued by a vision with golden hair
And eyes as blue as can be.


Author Bio:
John "Jack" Powell (1925-2011), was born and raised in Chicago, IL.  He volunteered for the United States Marine Corps during WWII and became a Sargent, qualifying as a sharpshooter. He was on a troop transport (S.S. Henderson) as a seagoing marine for 2 years and then rotated back into the infantry. He attended Sea School in San Diego, CA and he was stationed in the Pacific and Mediterranean. After the war, he and his wife Mary Lou established a life just outside of Chicago and raised 4 children. He worked for Illinois Bell in data processing for around 40 years. He loved his family, history, and traveling.