Persian poems written and translated by Akram Yazdani
UNTRAVELED SUITCASE
The suitcase never left. Its lock held untold stories, its corners heavy with silence. Each day, the road waited, empty, while unseen journeys moved quietly beneath its lid.
MULTI-VOICED MIND
In his mind, multiple voices whispered at once— not to command, not to warn— but to open windows that led to different times.
Moments folded over one another, like two seasons unfolding simultaneously on a single page, and every choice breathed silently in the hidden world before it could find a word.
There, there were birds, half-formed, with feathers unaccustomed to the world, yet knowing the weight of flight; birds whose path was neither toward sky nor toward earth— but somewhere between decision and fear.
He paused. He breathed. And gazed at the path passing through him. And there, in the impartial silence, one of those half-formed birds called his name— not from the past, not from the future, but from a moment yet to arrive, already decided.
Akram Yazdani is a poet and writer from Mashhad, Iran. She writes her works in Persian and provides English translations for publication. Her writing explores silence, memory, and minimal moments of perception, seeking to connect personal reflection with shared human experiences.
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The bag I carry to work everyday is a sole witness to my cheers and jeers. Cheers. Cheers to moments when a thought-provoking quote in discovered in a new book, In Margret Atwood’s On Writers and Writings, enlightening my dim brain, feeling fogged in this northern nippy weather. Cheers to spaces where marigolds are spotted gyrating to gushy chilled winds of January In a lawn in front of my college library, shining in its morning dewy glory. Cheers to lunch time when home-cooked food restores my faith in selfless love -- Love of my husband, who diligently cooks and packs and wraps and locks my lunch box. Cheers to a noon, brimming with camaraderie of all who throng college -- The younglings, the chatty students, basking in the sun with all their trinkets and dogeared books. Jeers. There are many jeers too. Jeers to the whims and fancies of a parent of two, Her unmooring position with respect to the others, whiling away their day, nonchalantly. Jeers to the mounting to-do lists of an aspiring poet, The puerile blurbs or the clunky compositions being on the back burner for some time. Jeers to the rising indifference and disdain among mortals, The dereliction of what ought to be done and the celebration of the snivelling obscurity. Jeers to the fact that your best friend lives in a far distant city. The companionship and the tickles you shared are always remembered amidst the fissures and cracks of the day. Jeers to the decreasing number of cold winter days, The diminishing charm of winters, the apparently irreparable climate change taking its toll on all that is nature and human. Jeers to the scouring it takes to cleanse the mind of daunted blankness and the silence of boredom. The incessant frenzy of ever day hustle, and disorderly nests of imaginative abodes, far away from the maddening crowd. The bag I carry to work brims with cheers and jeers, Hopes and hues, Sighs and trials, And my relentless efforts to be better, calmer and quieter.
Alpana teaches in a government college of Gurugram, Haryana. She is a parent of two and is busy rummaging lost pieces of toys during her waking hours.
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In the sky there is a cloud that looks exactly like you. What should I do?
Climb a tall ladder to the highest rung and plant a kiss on your cumulus lips?
Or just wait below for you to snow, then collect your love in a bucket?
The second option resists adoption because cumulus clouds generally produce little or no precipitation.
I will choose the ladder before you pass over and make me a sadder meteorologist than my forecast predicted.
2: Thunder in the Fountains
I have heard thunder in the mountains many times but never before in the fountains of this elegant city.
What a terrible pity you aren’t here with me to share the sonic anomaly and stare at the lightning under the bubbles.
Together we would jump into the booming water and splash among the fashionable flashes of implausible weather.
But you are in trouble, caught in a whirlpool far away, spinning faster every day and poking out your tongue at my unseen concern.
You make me feel like a worm that never learned how to keep my sighs inside instead of a highly qualified climate researcher.
3: Fog in my Throat
The river fog is thick today but come what may I intend to check the barometer as I do every morning and scribble down the readings on potato peelings because I have run out of paper.
The atmospheric pressure is high, compressing the air and inhibiting cloud dispersal: a reversal of the conditions appertaining when we resembled kittens: playful, fluffy and meek, so long ago, maybe even last week.
It is slowly dawning on me that you don’t really want romance with a needy meteorology professor who can’t afford to buy pants. I will cover my legs in dough instead and bake them into bread. I might never be able to forget but every step will involve a baguette.
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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Seniors sit in mute repose our minds gone to sleep - no poems today.
Shining Insects
living secret lives, sung in ancient tongues of empty places, silent and mysterious.
Does Life Imitate Art?
Or is it merely a wish to fulfil
one wants to be the subject of a Rockwell or Renior
would we be the hung hero or the oft – slung political satire?
Sometimes
your actions — create more disturbance for others than they do for you
ice caps melting
water rising, seaside cities
submerged, Atlantians say,
welcome to the neighbourhood!
An Artist
Double vision helped Van Gogh
create heat waves
Poet Laureate for the League of MN Poets, Annette Gagliardi is published in numerous journals in Canada, Sweden, England and the USA. Gagliardi’s chapbook: Caffeinated, won the Literary Titan Gold Book Award for 2024 and an International Impact Award, 2025. She has just won the John C. Rezmerski manuscript award, for her book,Benevolence.
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Seasons gently fold into one another Silently, Not making too much noise but Leaving no space for A signature smell of each till finally they could not be told apart.
The secret summer koel sits stiff hidden in the wet boughs Flapping rain off its drenched feathers, Its song gone hoarse in the thunder storm.
Monsoon paper-boats lie cramped in parched puddles Amidst dead dragonflies littered around in a mess.
A sedate autumn, heavy in its Yellow bounteousness, Waits behind the frost-draped trees, Scorched by the day And soaked by the night.
Winter kites struggle Through the smoky warmth Of a sweating sky. Their long curvy tails, Caught in the crisscrossing strips of clouds, Wriggle and writhe and roll clumsily Like flying serpents in many hues.
This is yet another world That experiences terrible mood swings. Seasons blend into one another In obscure irregularity, And the century old pattern of living Goes haywire. Mankind's mood changes too -- Is really life falling apart In this absurd mess?
I wouldn't know, I just sit fixing my aching gaze On the path of another time, For the return of a tomorrow of a foregone age that has shifted from Its course in the anomalous days. But is sure to find its way one day To my waiting window!
LET US MOVE OUT IN TO THE UNKNOWN
Let us move out into the unknown In the smoke of sunlight, Breathing the hollow whispers in the wind, Straining our ears for the morning music That struggles to Wriggle out of the frosty boughs.
When the dwarf days reflect on the Parchment of streets, When the afternoons slant grim on the terrace And hibiscus buds blur on the Misty splotches of glass, It is the time to move into the unknown, Brushing off the patina on the bones And fingers of ice tracing out a Warm tomorrow On the shivering edge of the Season’s map.
Let us move out into the unknown. Who knows, we might discover The stolen moon in some other sky Before a star skewered night Descends in a crumpled heap On the stiff shoulders of time...
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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Poetry by Dmitry Blizniuk, translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov
Dmitry Blizniuk
Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Five Points, Rattle, Los Angeles Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Plume, The London Magazine and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). His poems have been awarded RHINO 2022 Translation Prize and his folio had been selected as a runner-up in the Gregory O’Donoghue Competition and the 2025 Gabo Prize finalist.
The sky above the highway is low like a cunning dog's muzzle above a steaming saucepan. A one-winged angel of advertising stands by the roadside: Aquafresh, perfect water of gods. And I'm an imperfect verb, just someone in a windbreaker, with pieces of canvas on my head that flap like a pterodactyl. Here's my garden, set back some distance from history, a prehistoric place for ancient bugs, and one of them stands on its hind legs in depression, while the gloomy autumn stares from above.
We've run away from the simmering house like milk that is boiling over. Now I'm single again. The sun hangs behind a ruffled up shed, like a bloody yolk on a cold frying pan until the nightfall dumps it in the garbage, while I'm looking for clean socks, sniffing noisily like a dog with a mallard in its jaws. I've had to leave the city and women behind, make friends with the blissful world of sticks, Like Lorca, I managed to avoid a firing squad. He's grown old, he looks like a grey parrot with an earring, keeps a rapier in his summer kitchen, grows grapes and cucumbers, and something sparkles in his eyes when blood pressure squeezes him like a tube of Aquafresh. If not for the Internet, I wouldn't exist.
A cat called Nostalgia licks his balls on the windowsill. The lampshade is a temple of flies, priestesses of summer schizophrenia. I'm still destined to return, I feel the power of a boomerang within me. It's going to bend my way and carry me back to my youth, otherwise, I don't care where. An eyelid with long lashes has fallen away from the face of a garden doll. The blue eye is unprotected now, and the rubber body under the rain feels so at home in the garden. For how many years will I decompose in the humus in the garden of gods, lie in the ground and see the black earth, black caviar in the eyes of dawn, then stretch up to the sky as a green needle of grass? The smell of the rain that has just stopped is like spilled glue. It's so fresh that I want to run up to the sky, but I can't. A poet in exile is more than just a poet. And a man? -- There is no man anymore.
Sergey Gerasimov is a Ukraine-based writer, poet, and translator of poetry. Among other things, he has studied psychology. He is the author of several academic articles on cognitive activity. His stories and poems written in English have appeared in Adbusters, Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, J Journal, The Bitter Oleander, and Acumen, among many others. The poetry he translated has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. His books include Feuerpanorama: Ein ukrainisches Kriegstagebuch (dtv Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2022) and Oasis (Gypsy Shadow, 2018).
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In a mobile home, where the commute to and from jobs idles at any curb, the resident resides in a bucket seat addressing a dashboard between shifts.
Lucky to have somewhere to go, lucky to have shelter, the citizen without a mailbox steers away from parking meters until nightfall.
The drive-thru diner stretches out adjustables and then legs to perform safety checks around the rusted and plastic vehicle after supper.
Each tire gets kicked again because sidewalls bounce back.
Bathroom breaks behind bushes, clean ups for face, pits, and crotch alternate among public libraries, grocery stores, and fast-food joints.
The sacred space with a windshield and wipers that rarely work, lets in the light each morning on the room housing every belonging owned.
GAMP CAMP
Under a social umbrella, the momentary refugees shelter from a heavy reign where connections take advantage for a team effort.
Daytime tenting under stars and stipes while canvassing and with evening prayers that soldiers join forces at the center post powder dry, tender-foot-citizens reach out into a continental climate.
A thunderhead seams the sky and plains in the Southwest.
Sharing insights and vision with a runner and trusting the resources stretching, the cooperation canopy counts on ribs, heads, and feet to go the distance for democracy in a country.
Rich Murphy’s latest collections, Elephant by Bass Clef Books, Storage Shed and Inside Stories by Resource Publications and Mind of Europe: A Genealogy to The Fat Man and Susan Constant by Cyberwit were published 2024-2025, following First Aid and Footholds (2023). His poetry won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice for Americana (2013), The Left Behind (2021), and Gival Press Poetry Prize for Voyeur (2008).
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Food and shelter make things right— they’re useful—
truths are takers not givers and ask way more of you
than they ever cough up in exchange. So, a bit like cats.
POETRY, ONE POSSIBLE DEFINITION
Intent and Expectation— both masochists— meet up, find they have nothing to say to each other and struggle to hide their disappointment.
Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years for which he blames Larkin, who probably blamed Hardy. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.
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I look at an aging chart – It ends at 80 – I’m off the charts. I think of my parents, They didn’t make it this far. I’m off their charts, too. I have aged ancestors. Well over 90 – I’m not off their charts! Yet. I feel more comfortable. I see another chart – It ends at 85 – I’m off the charts again! Where does it go? Straight up? Horizontal? Off the cliff! I go for a walk. I feel wonderful, The sun is shining. It’s cool and damp. I love it. Health-span! Joy span! Finally, a chart that I’m on! I’ll keep it!
From Public Domain
Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator. His 90-plus articles have appeared in various publications. He has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away With It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, 60 Odd Short Stories, and Empaths. Ron has had his poems published in Scarlet Leaf, Borderless Journal, and other periodicals.
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Now the changes have stopped and what it’s come to has settled in a curtain masking as it spreads so what was at one time discernible is painted in thicker darkness. At this point I see it will not reverse another day weathered another string of moments shaded by insistence—soundless sketches of how real objects appear bloodless stripped of their depth blended with their variances.
It’s not the daylight I miss but the touch of what once stood before me the comfort seeing it knowing it was there in the light now both unreachable. It’s the darkness that seems to hold the more natural light among the new air that’s turned cold shifting between two selves: one that knows what the daylight once gave and the other that knows when the light returns each day will be different.
SR (Salvatore Richard) Inciardi was born in New York City and attended Brooklyn College and New York University. His poetry has appeared in USA and Europe in various online and print magazines including Green Ink Poetry, Harrow House Journal, Grey-Sparrow Journal, Written Tales,among others. He was a contributor to Green Ink Poetry’s Kennings: Equinox Collections: Autumn (2024, Amazon)
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Borderless 