A Poem by Iftekhar Sayeed

Ferryboat on the Chengi

you can't walk across
the Chengi river
in monsoon

the ferryman
finds his coin
this season

a shuttling black
hyphen
in the second
bend
of the river

connecting
the disconnect

conveying his cargo
from paradise to
paradise

Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English. He was born and lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has contributed to The Danforth Review, Axis of Logic, Enter Text, Postcolonial Text, Southern Cross Review, Opednews.com, Left Curve, Mobius, Erbacce, Down In The Dirt, The Fear of Monkeys and other publications. He is also a freelance journalist. He and his wife love to tour Bangladesh.

A Poem by Cherise Wyneken

Hawaiian Parable   

 

Fogged in

muddling through the mountains

we wiper through wet mists

struggling to the summit.

 

Inexplicably

the clouds may lift.

Wait – you might achieve your goal

   grand view of Grand Canyon

Kokee Park, Kauai.

 

Below the puff of breeze

deep cliffs appear like magic

   saddle-backed and red.

A gold-green frieze of velvet

slopes the sides.

 

Fogged in

muddling through the mountains

we press with patience

for a glimpse of heaven’s crest.

 

 

 

Cherise Wyneken is a freelance writer whose prose & poetry have appeared in a variety of publications.  Her book publications include:  prose:  Round Trip, Freddie, Spaceship Lands in Africa, Stir—Fried Memories/ poetry:  Touchstones, Seeded Puffs, Old Haunts, Things Behind Things.  Plus a children’s cassette.  Her poem, “Borne Again,” was nominated for the 2013 Pushcart Prize.

A Poem by Richard King Perkins II

No Hour

Droplets of water on petal and sheaf
so clear that this may be the winter of ancient winters.
The air is frozen,
tree limbs so cold they cannot shiver.

Night is antediluvian--
a pomelo frog is slightly warm,
buried and nearly impossible to find,
so quiet I can hear him breathe, know his dreams.

I captured him months ago,
until he became a tadpole,
undoing time and the clasp of my fingers--
no hour will be like this again.



Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities.  He has a wife, Vickie and a daughter, Sage.  He is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications including Poetry Salzburg Review, Bluestem, Sheepshead Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Two Thirds North, The Red Cedar Review and The William and Mary Review.  He has poems forthcoming in Broad River Review, Emrys Journal and December Magazine.

A Poem by ayaz daryl nielsen

Where are you going?

 

Assess the density

of rising mist

as sunrise

embraces

early morning’s 

dampness 

once more?

 

The wild blueberries 

and toadstools,

their moment

 

A crow stretching 

stiff wings in 

first light,

his, too

 

Cawing

 

the sound

is canny 

and 

everlasting.

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs) and x-hospice nurse, is editor of bear creek haiku (24+ years/116+ issues), his poetry’s homes include Lilliput Review, Yellow Mama, Verse Wisconsin, Shamrock, High Coupe and Shemom, he has earned some cherished awards and participated in worthy anthologies - his poetry ensembles include Concentric Penumbra’s of the Heart and Tumbleweeds Still Tumbling, and, in 2013, released an anthology of poetry titled The Poet’s of Bear Creek - beloved wife/poet Judith Partin-Nielsen, assistant Frosty, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)

A Poem by Sy Roth

It Comes Like That

Like fat crystalline flakes
It skitters across the darkling sky
like staccato flatulence
it melts the red dawn that comes to greet it

it is a petrified sun
broadcasting wolfish yelps
it crackles in the harbors of men
where odoriferous igloo men reside

it bends its head to peek at itself
amenless
burying angst in the budding branches of long-dead lilacs
floats like corn flakes
in a bowl of almond milk

they genuflect and wait
peep out at the ones who take out the garbage
scoff at the tepidity of the crocuses snuffed out
interred beneath to await resurrection

in the melting deluge of feather-down snow falls
daffodil satyrs prepare to stand erect,
born in yellow lakes of a drowning world
it comes like that.

 

 

Sy Roth comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, head is bowed by reality; other times, he proud to have said something noteworthy. cRetired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace.   He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest,  Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), Em Dash and Kerouac’s Dog. 

A Poem by Zach Fechter

Morning

I walk in the wilderness of a morning undone,

As whispering wind through wheat;

The cawing of seagulls over gently cresting waves are

Coming to rest against fields of rye.

Zach Fechter lives and writes in Wilton, Connecticut. He has been published in Poetry Quarterly Magazine and Kind of a Hurrican Press. He is a graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. 

Three Poems by B.T. Joy

Mountain Walk

You climbed here 

to make a mark on things. 

Now making your way down 

to river-tumble and low sequential hills,

grey chains in rock 

snake under floodplains, 

monoliths push, at earth-speed, 

chalky mole-snouts from black depths of clay. 

Somewhere above a kestrel turns; 

producing sound, 

whole-pitched, planet-round, vibrating 

in a treeless sky. 

Meant not to echo. Meaning never 

to stop; to snag on the world. 

Grampians

The hills spill with light

interminably along the landscape’s endless lines.

Standing in these highlands: their enormity, 

and their rivered roots rolling in gentle tides, 

give you the impression of being 

very weak and very small.

On each extremity  

the furthest mountains in the range 

are blue clouds wilting, partially-unseen, 

against the blue sky. 

You have no idea where the river is flowing 

or where the mountain raven will perch 

among the upper-stones. 

Sometimes it seems 

not even to matter. 

So you cried with joy in the silence above the town. 

So the electric burn of your constant mental questioning 

died away in the tireless answer of terrain that steeped 

its forested body in geological time.

What does any of that matter?

The wide Grampians are still as impassable to you.  

Nowhere did you solve the puzzle of your life.  

Ablutions

We were not simply washing 

but conducting ablutions.

The tumbling pool was deep and green 

under gold flowering cassias 

and tracks were muddy where rain 

had raced down from the hilly paths.

We dipped the limbs in water 

that had dipped the punters’ poles 

into the Chiang Mai’s soft, brown flow; 

and remembering the hot journey

we tossed cold light into the muggy air 

horsing around at wading depth.

We were not simply washing 

but conducting ablutions.

How the water stored outside a mosque 

cleans the face and arms, the head and feet. 

Or those water fights in April’s joy 

that scud their cleanness into the inner body. 

How after the coolness and the beating falls

we rose and wandered out of water; 

our clean feet greeting the undergrowth 

as though entering a holy place. 

B.T. Joy is a Scottish poet and fiction writer living and working in Glasgow. He has published poetry and short fiction in journals, magazines, anthologies and podcasts worldwide; including poetry in Forward Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Presence, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond and The Newtowner and horror stories in Static Movement, Surreal Grotesque, James Ward Kirk Fiction, Human Echoes, MicroHorror, Flashes In The Dark, SQ Magazine and Forgotten Tomb Press. After receiving his honours degree in Creative Writing and Film Studies in 2009 he went on, in 2012, to receive a PGDE from Strathclyde University and has since taught as a High School English teacher. He is also the author of two volumes of haiku In The Arms Of The Wind (2010) and The Reeds That Tilt The Sky (2011). His haiga have appeared with the World Haiku Association, Haiga Online and Daily Haiga. He was one of six writers nominated for The Ravenglass Poetry Press Competition of 2012; judged by Don Paterson. For further information on writing and publications please visit the writer’s website: http://btj0005uk.wix.com/btjoypoet