Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Towards Stars with Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Public Domain 
50 SPRINGS…

What if I crossed the border
after 50 springs, summers,
falls, and winters? After all
the learning, the forgetting,
the labour, and lost loves, after
all the growing pains, the 
births, deaths, and family
joys and tragedies? What if I
returned to the land of my
youth, a much older man than
the seven-year-old, wide-eyed 
boy? I will offer the best of me.
Who will offer me the best of
them? I will have to find a place
to call home, a seat at a table
where I will have my meals, a
place where I could have a
conversation with someone
other than myself, a room
where I could read and write,
and most of all sleep. Who will
break bread with me, help me
decorate the house with books
and flowers, with paintings and
plants, and share stories, laughter,
and wine from time to time?  As
I write these words, other words
are being twisted, designed to
make people like me to return
to the place of our birth, if we 
are fortunate enough.


BUCKETFUL OF RAIN 
 
If it is goodbye,
I could use
a bucketful
of rain to drench
this fire. Reduce
it to smoke
before this heart
becomes ash.
 
Even the light
trembles and
the sun is
blushing seeing
this conflagration.
I should have
seen the signs
but I hope too much.
 
Play that violin
soft and slow.
Speed up the pace
as the fire
spreads out of
control. I can
take the heat
just a little bit longer.

LIMITS

I climb the branch
to the flower;
the spider-from-mars’
web-to-the-stars;
I flow and fly
with the wind further
still; through time
and newborn worlds;
I allow my thoughts
to remain on earth;
keep the sun and
magnifying glass
away from me; even
an ant has its limits.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in Los Angeles.He has been published in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Chiron Review, Kendra SteinerEditions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His most recent poems have appeared in Four FeathersPress.

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Categories
Poetry

Camellia by John Swain

White Camellia. Photo Courtesy: John Swain 
CAMELLIA

Columns stand on columns,
the high arch flares light
like white torchfire
illuminates the marble hill,
you transform the enclosure,
you filigree clear sleeves
of imagined air 
to gather camellias
the winter sky emptied,
bled in ashes on the snow.
Winter. Photo Courtesy by John Swain

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by the Origami Poems Project.  Additional information may be found at www.john-swain.com. 

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Harry Ricketts

Harry Ricketts
'Your Secret Life 5' 
    (for Jessie) 

Here’s your voice from across the world,
the kind of time you tend to call.
Still magic: “Hi Dad! How are you?”
 
You’re walking to the train. It’s cold.
Your voice breaks up, reassembles,
breaks up, reassembles again.
 
“Something    important    to tell you.”
As you talk, thirty years roll back,
telling my father the same thing.
 
“Are you quite sure?” I hear him ask.
Oh yes, quite sure. Sure then and now.
But you’ve missed your train; it must’ve left
 
early for once. That’s all you need.
You protest to the official,
prepare for coffee and your book.
 
No, here is your train, after all –
running late (leaves on the line?).
You’re aboard. You’ve started to move.

(Excerpted from Bonfires on the Ice, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2025).

Harry Ricketts is a poet and scholar who has published around 30 books. He has lived in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, since 1981. Until his retirement in 2022, he was a professor in the English Programme at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His books include the internationally acclaimed The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling (1999) and Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War (2010). His recent books include the poetry collections, Winter Eyes (2018) and Selected Poems (2021) and the memoir, First Things (2024). With historian David Kynaston, he is the co-author of Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic (Bloomsbury, 2024).

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain
Anatomy of a Strip Mall Parking Lot

It begins 
with that angled sidewinder 
of yellow curbing,

a planned pile
of artisanal rocks 
at the base of a rounded 
shrub,

and spaces for all the cars,
you can count them
if you want,

more yellow lines 
that match the leaves of the trees
in season.

And that chipmunk 
fighting with a crow over 
unseen bounties

while a bushy black squirrel
runs under parked cars

across from the large soapy windows
of the car wash place 
that keeps everyone looking
their best.
From Public Domain

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Nziku Ann

Nziku Ann
HOPE LINGERS 

I hear their stories—
and my heart drifts into their storms.
The air hums with sorrow,
an aura of misery
that speaks louder than words.

A tear escapes, unbidden.
How can life be so cruel?
So heavy with silence,
so unfair in its choosing?
Why must we surrender to such fate?

I see fragments of myself in them—
the same dreams,
the same quiet battles,
the same fire to rewrite the ending.

Then I hear them speak—
voices trembling yet strong,
breathing confidence,
power,
hope—
a convulsive awakening of the soul.

Another tear falls,
but this time it carries light.
Life may wound,
it may break,
but even in the wreckage—
hope lingers.

Nziku Ann is a literary enthusiast bases in Nairobi, Kenya. A beauty therapist by profession and an introvert who finds expression through poetry.

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Categories
Poetry

Traffic Jam by Rhys Hughes

TRAFFIC JAM

I was making toast
in the appropriate season 
for a wholesome
host of reasons
in a trundling caravan
on its way
to Amsterdam.

Suddenly I encountered
to my distress
an obstacle hindering
further progress:
a rather tasteless traffic jam.

Undeterred I proceeded
to spread that jam
on my toast
until the coast was clear.
Hadn’t I been
warned about the dangers
of queued strangers
by my mother?

In my haste
I washed it down
with strong Dutch beer
and now I fear
I have acquired a taste
for vehicles
stuck behind each other.

That’s right.
Every night before bed
I eat traffic jam
instead of drinking cocoa.
From Public Domain

Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Diane Webster

Diane Webster
SIDEWALK SHADOWS
 
Sunshine mottles 
through leaves,
casting shadows
of silhouettes
on the pavement below.
 
Look down
on a constellation map
spreading out for pedestrians
who stroll along.
 
Daytime sparkle
stars laid out
to travel light years
from block to block,
 
wormholing through
galaxies of heat waves
between universes
of neighbourhood trees.

 
A PASSION IN DAYLIGHT
 
She greets the rising sun like her daughter
used to peek her head over the bed sheets
to squint her eyes in the daylight bursting
through her curtains.
 
But she has only herself to wake up now,
to sit in the sun with her sewing machine
like she used to do with her mamma cat
purring on her lap.
 
She stitches together patterns of cloth
that sprawl in Picasso cubism period.
Once sewn together the piece functions
under the interpretation in the eye
of the beholder.
 
Her daughter hated to wear handmade skirts
or perfect-seamed dresses.
One of a kind made no impression because
her daughter dreamed of conforming to her friends,
a blend of sameness unravelling at the hems.
                                                                           
 
 
BY DARKNESS
 
He cultivates his office like a burrow
with shades drawn, a 25-watt
light bulb illuminating his lair
so when he steps outside,
he squints with prairie dog eyes
standing upright to assess his dangers
before progressing outward
almost holding on to the door jamb
until his fingers brush nothing,
and he is released
to forage down the carpet hallway
until laughter whistles in his ears,
and he darts back
comforted by the darkness
of his office burrow. 
 
KALEIDOSCOPIC PRIZE

This must be what it’s like
to walk inside a geode
when I step across
the cave’s threshold
and behold colours
sparkling in the interior.
 
An awe of wonder
in 360 degrees pushes
vertigo against my brain cells
attempting kaleidoscopic
reason between shape and colour,
 
Discovery of the prize inside
like in a box of Cracker Jacks...
the cave, the geode, the brain.
 
 
DRIFTWOOD WISH
 
Like dinosaur bones
scattered by scavengers,
driftwood tree trunks
lie on the sandy shore
awaiting discovery,
 
A crane-lifting ride
to the museum where
no seagulls sit and poop,
where no rain or wind
absconds with grains of self,
where a plexiglass sarcophagus
waits to house the carbon unit
behind fingerprints
and ooh/aah breath.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

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Categories
Poetry

Winter Meanderings by John Grey

From Public Domain 
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

The weather has landed 
and moved on.
The house evokes candy
with its frosted roof,
creamy shingles,
and crystalline hangings.
The grass is heavy
with its burden of snow.
And the trees gleam like porcelain
in the tepid sun.

Bundled up outside,
we leave visible footprints
in the yard,
whereas, in previous seasons,
our presence lacked such evidence
and yet, intuitively, 
we always know where we are,
what is ours, who we belong to.

The winter merely
reiterates the point I’m making.
It lacks our self-awareness.
So it sinks us deep instead.


ENVISION

Each evening, though
shaped by oncoming sleep,
my body informs me that
knowledge need no longer
conform to the physical.
So I gaze at black waters
of night, at sleep caves,
dream tunnels --
Senses float...sight on sound,
vision on taste.
Something awakens in me.
No, distractions ebb
so consciousness can flow.



NO POINT LOOKING UP 

Jupiter…it’s all just hydrogen and helium.
A liquid body with a small solid core.
No one gets to love on a planet like that.
Or vote. Or watch sports. See movies.

The sky, for all its heavenly associations,
is sure no cosmic comfort.
The light is dead by the time it reaches me.
And the moon, near as it is, is just a rocky squib.

My escape cannot be collapsing nebulae.
Or atmospheres of methane and ammonia.
Or icy dots. Or superdense neutron stars.
And spare me your planet X.  

There is no treasure up there.
No future. No work. No woman.
The good air sticks to what I know.
If I’m to breathe it, I can only be here.

.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. His latest books Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. He has upcoming work in Rush, Spotlong Review and Trampoline.

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Categories
Poetry

Poems by Tulip Chowdhury  

Tulip Chowdhury
SILENT GIVING 

Spring, summer, and autumn,
while the birds sang their seasonal tunes
humans beat loudly their own drums.

The bees collected their nectar well
while swans in the lake nearby
found their life-long mates
and yapped their love notes,

while sound and sights captured 
much of the yearly gifts to bless,
while in silence, a rose bush
gave her cloying fragrance 
and red flowers.

In life, we give of ourselves:
the best of what we have.


HOPES AND DREAMS 

The year 2025 found 
the world at a crazy stage
on which life danced.

Amidst the maddening politics, 
natural calamities and wars 
took the hardest hits.
In the turmoil, I feel like an ant under an elephant

When I wish to make a difference in life 
for someone in need — what have I to give?

Mother Teresa’s advice echoes
“If you cannot feed a hundred people,
then feed just one.”
I get up and venture out.

Surely, since I am alive and well;
there is something I can do for someone?

When hope for a better world crumbles like sand,
I send prayers up to heaven---
I know, they can move mountains.
And with prayers, 
I plant new seeds of dreams
for a peaceful world of tomorrow.

Tulip Chowdhury, a novelist, poet, and columnist, writes from Georgia, USA. Her books are available on Amazon. 

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Categories
Poetry

Homeward Bound

By Gautham Pradeep

A WALK BACK HOME 

I often find myself amidst the crumbling cliffside, 
mumbling words to myself. 
Within the mouth of the weeping river, 
I must disperse the ashes of an awakening. 
Through the darker brush, 
colour would soak the dry paper. 
In the corner of an eroding house,
I lack the search I'm entrusted. 
The mist I've felt this morn,
now buries me in a shawl of memories. 

The tiny tendril holding onto the iron railing, 
unwinds in the solitude it enjoys. 
It swirls in the nightly gale, 
swaying in its shallow reflection. 

A feeling surges in me, 
as the poison in a pitcher leaf. 
It urges the nightly stillness to visit the lonely house, 
its amber curtain still intact. 
The long lane, in front of me, 
is waning under the new moon. 
It was once the pen,
I had written my childhood with. 
The ink had flowed evenly, 
such as the poison in my drink. 
And now it must end abruptly, 
the tiny man in his bottle of wine. 
The twilight sky drinks the last few rays of the sun, 
while I sink in my purple drink.

Gautham Pradeep was born in Kerala, India. He is now pursuing an MBBS degree. He tries to explore the existential dilemmas of the his generation. His poems have been published widely.

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