Rain brocades the canopy palm, glass lions silver the cornerpost of a marble dome. We read a tablet of leaves on the ceiling, you step over a crescent of roses, the candle stars swim in the black trees. Fountain waters branch lavender between helical pillars, we awaken cords and strings, we turn our amber mirrors upward, the sky fallows mosaic pastures at the height of the ciphering earth.
A Roman floor mosaic from Ostia Antica from the Immaculate Conception Room, Vatican Museum. Photo Courtesy: 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 http://www.john-swain.com.
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Time has erased the road where I walked as a child. The last time I walked through here there were trees and grass.
Time has eroded everything. There is no shade, no flowers blooming, and no fruit on the vines. It is all rubble.
How sad it makes feel to see this road go away like if it never existed. I have only returned to say goodbye.
THE END OF SILENCE
I am almost at the end of silence. I am way past the end of love. Everything is almost over.
Where could I go now? And does it really matter? I feel the wind in my eyes. In a matter of time, I will be blind.
Summer is long gone. The glass is neither half empty nor half full. The leaves that fall at my feet will be followed by their mother trees.
I will spread out like a tortilla The sea will carry my remains away toward sunset like my will says. The sky will fill with clouds and birds will sing my goodbye song.
My time will soon run out. I could still hold out for a moment. I am as impassive as solitude. My eyes are fixed upon the sun.
Lay my soul to rest. Let me pass like all things.
THE FOG BELOW MY FEET
The ceiling has dropped. There is fog below my feet. The ceiling has dropped. I can barely see the street.
I can imagine this a meeting of ghosts gathering all around us. It must be their mouths blowing smoke out of a ghost cigarette.
I grounded my car. I left the keys on the nail. I grounded my car. If I drive, I am sure to fail.
I can imagine I am walking on clouds rising from the ground. It is nature, the fog-maker, reminding us to look out and slow down.
Art by John Constable ( 1776-1837). From Public Domain
Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry has appeared in Abramelin, Barbaric Yawp, Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Fixator Press, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, The Literary Undeground, and Unlikely Stories.
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Late, late August; the ample rains muddy The floor of the forest in dear desolation. The berries lie pristine dampened By the final drips of last night's drizzle. The forsythia blooms unhindered outside The window as my mind turns to America. Each year, as fall approaches, I think of you. Yet all I do now is turn, turn, turn to the rain. The leaves moisten in indefinite wait for the Sun that leaves no room for conjecture. The shadows tell diverse tales at different Hours of the day; my watch dissents sometimes. The infidelities of the clouds run amok in terse Acceptance of their inabilities to shimmer. Prodded by the indecisive nature that life Bestows upon my very being, I remain rooted To the oranges that fill my basket with yearning. The grass would leave no imprint of our touch, Nor the daisies without whom monsoon had Little meaning. The jasmines would be seen Flitting about with a sense of purpose As we chased them without pity or faith. With a deep lust for expectation, I remind myself Of the days when we would crowd these streets Littered with the shrubbery of touch-me-nots. Every year, I would hope against hope.
(First published in The Past Is Another Country, poems by Mohul Bhowmick)
Mohul Bhowmick is a national-level cricketer, sports journalist, poet, essayist and travel writer from Hyderabad, India. He has published five collections of poems and one travelogue so far. His latest book, The Past Is Another Country, came out in 2025. More of his work can be discovered on his website: www.mohulbhowmick.com.
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It’s those words in the smaller pairings that offer imagined depth but inexact dimension with eyes that cannot see newness in weakened light absent colour words that can be read from the ashes of what never was in a time escaping into the dimming sunset: if only I could see my choices replayed if only I could hold them when the air was younger when they floated on a gentle breeze and were touched by an earlier sunlight when I knew what it was to be in the moment and I was captured by words still to come. If only they were here if only the words I heard then continued to speak now.
SR (Salvatore Richard) Inciardi was born in New York City and attended Brooklyn College and New York University. SR Inciardi’s poetry has appeared in the USA and in Europe in various online and print magazines including Green Ink Poetry, Harrow House Journal, Grey-Sparrow Journal, Borderless Journal, Written Tales,among others. He was a contributor to Green Ink Poetry for their publication on Kennings: Equinox Collections: Autumn released on Amazon in October, 2024.
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A new lamb insists upon, really only one thing, and so her bleats increase into a screaming mantra. But spring shadows a rough beast
who drags his feet through the grass even in the day-long sun, even as the breeze massages the dry pasture slowly awake. Just when old Mother Ewe
can’t take one more snowfall, the sky darkens, the flakes begin to dress her fleece, and she lays down on her bags to low the same prayer with her lambs.
C. Mikal Oness is the author of Oracle Bones and Water Becomes Bone. His latest collection, Works and Days, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
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sometimes they arrive like a fox with a mouthful of feathers because somewhere, something has died or been eaten alive or they startle you like the clapping of pigeon wings – a spasm of applause in a silent wood – an idea stirring up there in the wet branches, one you’d half forgotten others push their way out of dreams, in the way tiny quills would poke through a feather bed or goose down pillow, to remind you of all you are resting on but the best of them drift down like a blessing, rocking like an airborne cradle to land between the gold of the nib and the cream of the paper with a message from the bird who’s already flown
Chris Ringrose is a writer of poetry and fiction who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His latest poetry collection is Palmistry (ICoE Press, Melbourne, 2016). Creative Lives, a collection of interviews with South Asian writers, was published by Ibidem Press, Stuttgart, in 2021. His poetry website is http://www.cringrose.com
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Beside a relentless freeway, which is anything but free and takes its toll on users and non-users as well, ‘boys’ meet for coffee at Mothers Instinct with no apostrophe or wives in sight. They’re old boys now, content to breathe and able to coast on Old Age Pension. They laboured long, fathered kids by un- leashing millions of apostrophes into wives, had operations via Medicare to fix things that could have meant never retiring. Considering current high price of houses in their suburb, they are now wealthy but that does not stop them breakfasting at home before venturing out for second coffees. Too late to become loose with money, they leave that to the next generation. Every boy knows what every other boy knows – they watch same TV shows – so, no serious debate. Chuckle, toss gossip, kid each other, talk sport while picking at pastries that wives wouldn’t approve. You’d think their lives had been one long joke here in big city. Sip that pricey espresso, chat, zone out then wander home for lunch. Their wives, the ‘girls’, are elsewhere for pre-coffee yoga. They also laboured long, had the babies, kept every body fed. Fact is women usually outlive men, perhaps due to mothers’ instinct.
Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada, who now lives in Allover, Australia. He has published poems in 24 countries. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press.
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Poetry by Atta Shad: Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch
Whether morning or eventide, dawn or twilight— what remains to be said of the rainbow and raincloud, of the scented breeze, of the beloved earth? The heart seems withdrawn from all.
The heart, a patient mendicant, feels and endures each rebuff. Desire wanders beneath the scorching sun, a traveler without a destination.
Night falls, (so we’ve heard). Day breaks, (so they claim). But who can tell of day and the night? Both are deemed dead now. Joy wraps itself in mourning’s cloak.
Love’s springtide carries the green pulse of bloom. Yet to slay hope, to shatter a vow, is a catastrophe enough for any age. Love and wrath are bound in a single knot.
In the mirror of dreams the world becomes a marketplace. And in that marketplace a shadow falls over translucent melodies of spring, over verdant meadows, over pearl-laden, swaying fields.
Eyes go blind. Ears turn deaf. Only wealth gleams, only riches glitter.
What remains to be said of the rainbow and raincloud, of the scented breeze, of the beloved earth?
In this marketplace you are for sale. So am I.
The heart, a patient mendicant feels and endures each rebuff. Desire wanders in the scorching sun, a traveler without a destination.
Atta Shad(1939-1997) is the most revered and cherished modern Balochi poet. He instilled a new spirit in the moribund body of modern Balochi poetry in the early 1950s when the latter was drastically paralysed by the influence of Persian and Urdu poetry. Atta Shad gave a new orientation to modern Balochi poetry by giving a formidable ground to the free verse, which also brought in its wake a chain of new themes and mode of expression hitherto untouched by Balochi poets. Apart from the popular motifs of love and romance, subjugation and suffering, freedom and liberty, life and its absurdities are a few recurrent themes which appear in Shad’s poetry. What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else.
Shad’s poetry anthologies include Roch Ger and Shap Sahaar Andem, which were later collected in a single anthology under the title Gulzameen, posthumously published by the Balochi Academy Quetta in 2015. The translated poem is from Gulzameen.
Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights of Atta Shad from the publisher.
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We are living under fallen skies in dark basements of sorrow a world of broken elevators and stairs too steep for us to climb up from our depth of despair lying curled like a foetus for comfort waiting waiting and waiting for the skies to clear waiting waiting and waiting for the sun to fill the blanks waiting for the sun to shine again
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality.
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I could be a molecule of thought Uncanny, secret, Dimension less.
I could be all elements --immense, eternal -- A cosmos holding galaxies of passion.
I may be a note of music Hanging in the air, faint, feeble, But repeating like an echo,
Or a speck of silence in a wind-funnel, Gyrating into a tornado, Sonorously lingering to infinity.
I’m overwhelmingly tender. I hold worlds in a gentle embrace. I’m also a razor blade, Can slash love with a single stroke And leave it to bleed to death.
I am war. I am peace. Dispassionate and diligent, I’m a nuance undulating through Sangfroid and turbulence.
I’m a bubble forming, dissolving, Forming again, breaking again, Floating relentlessly to join waters On alien shores And linking minds.
I’m a length of thread from a kite that is Stubborn in its desire to fly, Connecting to the Earth While scanning the strip of its sky.
I wander free, unfettered by Diverse minds and tongues, Wearing my happy pan-world face,
Spanning dams and deserts, Oceans and mountains, Freezing and erupting in alternate moments, I travel borderless.
Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.
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Borderless 