Woman young enough to be–
but she’s not, and her eyes steam 
like blue chai tea
above the solar flare of her smile …
or not, depending.

Then she moves and her hair flows:
its subliminal susurration a siren call
for my fingers to follow its caress of shoulders 
gleaming softly as the hurricane lamps
through the canvas walls of a base camp,
and my mind wanders.

I wrest it back to reality: 
shamed by harder ardour 
and pragmatic self-imaging.
If I were twenty years younger …
I still wouldn’t rate such beauty
even if I’d had the courage then.

Self hate and reality:
the two bastards in my life...
but a dream is neither gateway
nor offence.

No Game

Sing to me the insanity of love.
Teach me the language of foolishness
and I will give you my remaining years.

Gan cluiche

Can dom an gealtachta an ghrá .
Múin dom an teanga baoise
agus beidh mé a thabhairt duit mo blianta atá fágtha.


Author Bio:
Encouraged by the – granted partisan – response to a short verse on a birthday card made in primary school, Perry McDaid persevered with poetry and prose to be widely published. A great source of solace and therapy through the Northern Ireland troubles he taps into his Gaelic roots beyond the contemporary and creates characters and scenarios to engage and entertain. He lives in Derry beneath the brooding brows of Donegal hills, often trekking their furrowed roads and verdant fields for inspiration.

His diverse creative writing appears internationally in the like of Bookends Review; 365 Tomorrows; 13 o’clock Press; Curiosity Quills; Aurora Wolf; Runtzine; Amsterdam Quarterly and many others.

Books published are Pixels: The Cause and the Cloud Cuckoo; Mythic Blood (The Milesian revised); Paladin of Tarrthála: The Dissector’s Cut and String of Misery (short story collection) cover genres from semi-autobiographical, through adapted mythology, to original science fantasy and horror. His pipeline project is an innovative collaborative SF/gothic novel with CJ Alexander.

Poetry collections include Victims and Angels; Crossing Vallecula; Open your Mind, Open your Heart; Ruby Silver and Cardboard City Opera. A selection of collaborations and numerous publications bring the count to well over a thousand published.

He also does art.

I wake up one morning and I can feel it.
I can feel that she's back but she always unpacks slow
as if she's not quite sure if she's ready to stay.
So I turn to the scrubbing, organizing, starting conversations
that I never got to finish from the time before.
Showering, pampering, spending time with as many people as I can
before she gets bored.
But no matter how hard I try to persuade her to move back in,
she always packs her bags faster than she ever brings them in.
And now I'm left trying to convince the people I'm standing in front of
that the woman they were just talking to is no longer here.


Author Bio:
Emily Moore is finding ways to cope with mental illness through art, which always brought her back to a functional state of being.

She received a gift today. A purple diary with a bird’s picture. The bird—a
cuckoo sitting on a bare tree, looked listless. It had lost its voice, she thought like she had
lost hers as they thought. Or is it—the cuckoo couldn’t recall the lyrics, being tricked by
the treacherous play of memory?

Once, it happened to her. Years ago, in a cultural program at school, she and her
friend sang a popular song of Abba:  Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong…

It was all perfect till they came to the last stanza. One line was missing.
They stumbled over the misplaced line, broke the melody. They stopped. Everyone stared at
them. Her friend, too ashamed; left the hall, sobbing.

She didn’t leave. She stood there, transfixed. Her memory frantically searching the missing line. She had to remember. Fast. Or else she would lose face! 

After almost a decade, she could hear the song, its flawed lines, broken tune. The
cuckoo became the singer. She was amazed. It got back its voice. Don’t lose your voice
again! Losing voice is worse than losing mind! Or is it—when you lose voice, you start
losing sanity?

Here, in this psychiatric ward, she felt happy and safe. She looked again at the
diary, with a bird in its cover. She couldn’t remember whether it’s the bird or she that had
lost words? Who was it?
 
 
Author Bio:
Marzia Rahman has an MA in English Literature from the University of Dhaka. She is a freelance writer. Her articles, translation, book reviews and short stories have been published in The Daily Star, The Independent, Dhaka Tribune. Her article Bringing Light into Darkness published in 2008 has won her CSF Journalist Fellowship Award for best report. She is also a member of Dhaka Translation Centre. Currently she is working on a novel. In addition to writing, her interest includes painting.

when August is about to end, 
I think about the leaves that incessantly fall 
from calendars. I believe I am the tree of calendars.

Every passing day, leaves me wondering
if the one who loses a father is an orphan, 
if a man who loses his wife is widower, 
what name do we give the loser? 
What do we call an idler of time? 
And if I myself am time, 
what shall I name myself, 
if I lose myself?

Day and night, not Monday or Tuesday, 
or August or September. Day and night 
are the measure of how long we last. 
To open and close our eyes is to last.

At this hour, every night, forever, 
I am the one who lost the day.
(Though I may feel, 
like fruit rises through peach branches, 
in the heart of these hours, rises dawn).

​
Author Bio:
Sergio A. Ortiz is a gay Puerto Rican poet and the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. He is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four time Best of the Web nominee, and a 2016 Best of the Net nominee. He is currently working on his first full length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.

They say happiness is a state of mind
It is free from pain and gain.
Where can I find that state? Does it exist?

They say ego is mistaken body with self
It is fed by power and pride.
Did I make that mistake? Do all?

It is not the gender that rules
It is the difference in seeing that does all.

Trapped in the unknown, 
Knowledge cannot justify itself.
Trapped in the ego of gender
Humanity neither finds the self nor the happiness!


Author Bio:
Thriveni C. Mysore is a teacher by profession. Poetry is her passion.