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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And murdered through their masks, as if to sift My trembling from the air; the corridors Grew longer, bending out of shape, and drift Enshrouded every threshold. Through the doors Came whispers, half‑remembered, half‑designed, That pressed like winter’s knuckles on my chest; And still the ward‑lights flickered, re‑aligned To mark the pulse of something unexpressed. I walked as though the floorboards might collapse, Or tilt me toward a darkness I had known, Where every echo tightened into traps And every heartbeat felt no longer owned.
Yet through that trembling hush, a figure stood— A patient, pale as frost upon a blade— Who watched me with a calm misunderstood, As if my fear were something he had made. He raised a hand, then let it fall again, And muttered fragments drifting into sense: That storms of thought could batter any brain, That none were proof against experience. His voice, though cracked, retained a tempered grace, A cadence forged from long‑endured despair; And in the trembling angles of his face I saw a truth too heavy to declare.
For madness, in its quietest disguise, Can settle like a frost upon the bone; It does not always shout, but softly lies In corners where the mind stands most alone. And so I passed him, feeling something shift— A weight that was not his, nor wholly mine— As though the ward itself began to lift Its veil and show the seams beneath design. The nurses moved like shadows on a screen, Their footsteps merging with the humming vents; The world grew thin, translucent, in between The drifting of my fractured sentiments.
And still the year went on, a tightening thread That pulled me through each hour’s unsteady frame; The nights were long, the mornings filled with dread, Yet somewhere in that cycle, something came— A gentler breath, a pause within the storm, A moment where the mind, though bruised, could rest. It did not heal, nor wholly re‑transform, But held itself with slightly steadier chest. And in that pause, I learned to stand again, To walk the ward without the same despair; To see, in every trembling fellow‑patient, A fragile strength that hovered in the air.
So through the endless corridors I moved, Not cured, not whole, but slowly re‑aligned; And though the year remained a thing unloved, It left a quiet scaffold in my mind— A place where all the fractured thoughts could meet, Where shadows softened, though they did not cease; Where every trembling pulse, though incomplete, Could find a moment’s tentative release
Jim Bellamy was born in a storm in 1972. He studied hard and sat entrance exams for Oxford University. Jim has a fine frenzy for poetry and has written in excess of 22,000 poems. Jim adores the art of poetry. He lives for prosody.
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There was a grand fair in the wide field outside our not-so-famous town. People waited for it all year – saving a little, just enough to enjoy a day with friends, with family, to see new things, to bring home something fancy, a bargain to cherish.
The circus was the heart of it all. I remember, as a child, a clown who mocked his own misfortune – his sorrow turned into laughter for everyone else. We laughed too, forgetting, for a while, the weight we carried. The next year, I went back, searching for that face – the vividly painted smile, his real face hidden beneath the colours that shaped a foolish grin.
But the clown was gone. There were the same acrobats, the stunts on bikes, the magician, the elephants parading as before.
Except now, there stood a parrot – clever, talking, outsmarting its master, earning the applause of everyone, who didn’t even notice the clown’s absence
Dr. Shamim Akhtar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at ICFAI University Mizoram. He has recently authored a book titled Smoke and Society: The Culture, Consumption and Control of Tobacco in Mizoram. A researcher, writer, and passionate poet, he explores themes of memory, longing, and the human condition. His work often reflects a blend of lyrical sensitivity and deep introspection.
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Borderless 