Flash Fiction By Cameron Kimber

I turned the street corner onto my block. Not far away, behind a line of parked bikes, there stood another westerner. He was holding a large microphone with a fluffy black dead cat muffler on the end of a tiny boom. A thin wire connected his over-the-ear headphones to a small box hanging from his pocket. His face was sunbaked to the color of adobe and covered in a few days of scruff. He wore cutoff blue jeans and a tank top to stay cool in the sun. Deep wrinkles betrayed his otherwise youthful face, as if he spent most of the time squinting. When I walked past, we exchanged nods, though I probably looked rather confused, curious of what sounds there were on the street that demanded such equipment to record.

Poetry By Alexander Lothian Wilson

Dancing in Aleppo

This was the street where
We lived. Walked in the shade
Of palm tree fronds rustling.
Where we sat in the sun’s fade
Talked of our day, breathing
The sweet scent of jasmine.
This was our house where
Our child laughed, played
In the warm bright sunlight.
Where in love we danced
In the cool white moonlight
Face to face, in close embrace.
This was our home where
We wove our life’s tapestry.
An incubator, a warm womb.
A sepulchre of memories.
Now, it is a sealed tomb.
A catacomb of your bones.
Now I exist here
Alone in this sunless land
Remembering our love
Our child’s warm hand.
Remembering our lost life.
Remembering you.
Now you dance alone
With ghosts and angels
In Aleppo, where we once lived.

Poetry By Ivan Pozzoni

MORTACCI!

Driving past the cemetery by car,
a city within the city,
low rents from poor demand,
we realized that not all our dear departed
have understood they are dead.

Shouts, tears and whispers,
with the mild grumbling of the less boorish,
chase the flights of butterflies,
like the constant monotony
of the fading of an old shawl.

There is the old marshal of the Carabinieri
who, not yet accustomed to foreigners,
loudly demands, about the non-EU stranger,
strict bans on a funeral marker.

There is the girl, dead in adolescence,
who spends the day doing nothing,
papering with newspaper photos
the walls of her tombstone.

There is the maniac, fresh from the coffin,
who, not yet resigned to the grave,
wanders telling everyone how beautiful
the dreadful view of his chapel is.

There is the nymphomaniac in a tennis suit
busy gorging on rigor mortis
trying, with casual ease,
to exploit the advantages of burial.

Why,tell me,is it unbelievable that the dead might live,
in spite of the undertakers,
if you who insist on declaring yourselves alive
live as though you were dead?

Poetry By Yongbo Ma

Encounter with a Cat on Midnight Streets

You lay sprawled in the centre of the street, eyes half-open.
Poor little thing, what happened to you?
Your gaze seems to ask me, what is life?
I had just returned from a meeting discussing the meaning of life,
drunk on wine because life is so beautiful,
though the discussion was dull, led by zombies.
I never expected to meet you like this,
“Death” lying on the path I, “Life,” must take.
As if questioning me, unknown death, how to understand life.
The midnight street suddenly falls silent, and I hesitate for a moment,
thinking to find a branch to move your flattened body to the roadside,
where passing cars will crush it repeatedly,
until your emaciated pain is swept away by the sun’s custodian,
or it becomes a golden beehive, dripping with blood honey.
But in the end, I did nothing, exchanging a meaningful gaze with you.
I turn away, like a soul leaving its shell.

Poetry By Julie Brinson

revolutions per minute

time did nothing but pass
you moved on to your happily ever after
and i moved on to survival, barely
bad decisions following bad decisions
years later reunited, but you didn’t wait
instead, you chose another inferior replicant
and i am here, still passing time

Poetry By Wilma Fellman

A Choice to Feel

A life, a love a lesson learned
We spend our lives avoiding burn
We seal it up, cement it closed
Make sure the memory is a rose

Just pretty, silky, glossy things
That stand the test that time remains
No thorns, so singe, no darkened edge
Plant neat rows that form a hedge

A hedge that hides unpleasant feel
That forms a wall in which we seal
Those feelings that will make us sad
That pierce us wounding all we had

The goal is just to make it go
Away where no one reaches low
We strive to keep it so at bay
That we don’t feel it every day

But as we age a change occurs
The thorns, the singe, the prickly burrs
Become a part of who we are
As much a part as any scar

The seal breaks up, cement cracks too
The hedge no longer hides the cue
We feel it all, and all at once
Explosions felt from every front

No longer can we hide our pain
Attempts fall flat and are in vain
We’re raw and yet at last so real
We need to shift and choose to feel

Poetry By Richard LeDue

Poetizing

There’s enough songs about love,
so I’d rather poetize
on how my morning coffee is
just another night haunted by steam
shaped ghosts, making me feel alive
enough to think of my weekend whisky
as a church on a sunny day
during another funeral.

Poetry By Cameron Kimber

Not Today

Dancing candle light
cuts through air thick with smoke and steam
its bouncing reflection
bends off the slow curve
of the row of empty aluminum cans
nestled at the edge of my reach

The door swings open
What are you doing in here?
I sit up and demand of you
splashing soapy water over the walls of the tub

The black hem of your cloak mops up the wet floor
“Don’t mind me, just having a snack” you say,
plugging in the toaster you produced from who knows where

You must have thought I was feeling self destructive,
I mean- here I am, all alone in the water, hot like blood in my mouth
You sit on the edge of the bath.
“Pass that over here” you say, motioning at the cheap cigar dangling from my lips

You close your waxy eyes as you take it in
and exhale; our breath mingles in the tense air
Your toast leaps up, piping hot
as I reach for my stoagie.
It slips through my startled fingers into the water
and sizzles as the life is extinguished from its glowing embers
You nod, putting away the toaster.
Until next time

Poetry By The Hermit Poet

Patience

those who slice and dice
are sloppy with the fine points
sit and have patience
overtime
these mortals
will slip
on their wet deception