Olusegun Ajayi: New Year’s Resolution

Today, I choose to plant words

    that will bloom tomorrow.

Not just the soothing–fleeting feeling

     of a new season. 

I want it slow & steady,

    the stubborn glow of healing 

                                             in my brittle body.

Say, season greetings. But I’m not interested

    in this thundering noise

        of fake promises, prophecies & fanfares.

I’m not impressed by these fireworks;

    I want the fire that works

        its way through my blood,

        through my bones, marrows & joints,

    to re-baptize my firelit tongue

        & write repair on these bruises.

It’s January again—& What Is New

    About The New Year?  Say, sizzling greetings! I mean;

    It's still a sizzling season instead of harmattan. I mean;

    somebody somewhere is smiling in suffering. I mean;

    somebody somewhere is renaming an old wound, here,

        in the city of open fractures. A child & his bandage

                   are learning the grammar of false hope

  & we call it New Year’s Resolution?

Olusegun Ajayi is a Nigerian bilingual poet. Shortlisted for the 2026 Kalanithi Writing Awards & Poetry Mine (2026), longlisted for the 2026 Verse & Voice Competition, & 2025 JAY Lit Awards. His work has appeared/forthcoming in Radon Journal, Book of Matches, AUIS Journal, Journal of Africa Youth Literature & elsewhere.

Jason Ryberg : Juanita

The moon, tonight, is                      

a bright street light, shining down

on a blanket made

of blue snow, and the

wind is a flurry of black

wings, one minute, and

a hushed whisper of

feathers, the next, and none of

the clocks in the house

can agree on the

time, and the radio is

hissing with the white

noise of the cosmos

(haunted with the sad ghost of

some long-dead Russian

composer), and the

phone has rung three times with three

different people, all

trying to reach some-

one named Juanita, and though

I don’t know any-

one named Juanita,

I sure do hope she’s alright

(wherever she is).

Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

Edilson Afonso Ferreira: Fears, Feelings, and Desires

There are certain weekends and holidays

when I feel somewhat insecure.

I worry if walking ghosts have occupied 

the void of empty streets and closed doors,  

looking at me as an intruder or suspicious

on their walks.

I miss hearing the sound of hammers and

hoes, the strident come and go of saw blades, 

the brushing of pens on paper or keyboards 

being typed, throwing feelings to the world.  

I love the imprecations of painters and artists

when they can’t find the pure art they look for.

I love children screaming through the sidewalk,

running endless races only they are capable of.

I love the noise of people in the streets and alleys,

corners and places,

as they move to destinies only they are aware of,

struggling hard to make their lives a story.

I love hearing someone making something,

even if it is the buzzing of bees.

 

(Originally published in the March/April 2018 issue of Indiana Voice Journal)

A Brazilian poet, Edilson Afonso Ferreira, 82, writes in English rather than Portuguese. Largely published in international literary journals, he began writing at age 64, after he retired from a bank. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of ‘Lonely Sailor’ and ‘Joie de Vivre’. He is always updating his literary blog at www.edilsonmelofereira.com

Beth McDonough: This house has been far out at sea

(after Ted Hughes)

  

Night turns North Sea, flexes obsessive hours

towards an eclipse and its newest moon, glimpsed.

Night rides in wakes, night's waves rear.

 

We try to bale out morning, tidy

night's jetsam, all sheets fret in wind.

We gather our son into a comforting bath.

Night's prelude thrashes on. That coming storm

which he senses first. Lightning rod tall –

he tries to climb – then the convulsions start.

We try to move him, shuddering, then taut,

raise him over the vessel's lip, enact

some living deposition, but there is no

 

Pietà, just a desperate, held attempt

to find a safer place than this.

Carpeted, we wait, wait, wait until he calms,

 

flickering, his focus returns. Night

warned us, night conducted buzzed

currents, pushed us towards dawn's storm.

 

Scaling our way round this,

we form equations we cannot solve.

Outside the House of God, I write this down.

Beth McDonough is a Dundee-based poet and artist. Her pamphlet 'Lamping for Pickled Fish' is published by 4Word. Her shared poetry collection with Nikki Robson, and a hybrid project on outdoor swimming will be published in 2026. She co-hosts Platform Sessions in Fife.

Rebecca Gethin: Framework

Rebecca Gethin has written five poetry publications and two novels. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor.  Her poems are widely published in various magazines and anthologies. She won the first Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages. 

Brid Connolly: Shame Changing Sides

Gisèle Pelicot re-writes the script.  

She inscribes it in full daylight,  

as she walks through the guard of allies,  

garlanded with roses and lilies, 

to sit, upright, asking why so many  

heartlessly, grimly, used her body 

 

She is over seventy years of age.  

She doesn’t wear a sari or a low-cut dress  

or a mini skirt or a hijab or high heels  

or she not jogging along a canal or drinking too much  

or dancing too wildly or not dancing at all 

or doing her partner’s head in or staying out too late 

or neglecting her children or putting down 

their father. She re-wrote the script 

to say, clearly, that it’s not about her.  

It’s about the men who raped her.  

 

He’s a plumber and he’s a teacher  

and he’s a doctor and he’s a father 

and he’s a husband and he’s a drinker 

and he works nights and he drives a truck  

and he’s an MMA fighter and he’s a GAA star 

and he’s a pillar of the community  

and he’s a politician and he’s a trade unionist  

and he’s a businessman and he’s priest  

and h’s a religious brother and he’s a guard 

and he’s a scout leader and he’s an agricultural instructor  

and he’s a school principal and he’s a film producer  

and he’s an actor and he’s a pop singer  

and he’s a rap artist and he’s a president  

and he’s prince and he’s a swimming coach, 

and all together, they are those who  

rape and beat and exploit and murder women 

and girls like Gisèle Pelicot. 

 

Shame has changed sides.  

Not all men of course. So now it’s time 

for you to re-write the script 

in full daylight, to ally with  

all the wonderful women and girls 

in our lives. Mother, sister, daughter,  

friends, neighbours, community, 

strangers, enemies, aliens, foreigners.  

Brid Connolly has had poems published in New Irish Writing;  Flare: Readings from the Sunflower Sessions;  Fire: Brigid and the Sacred Feminine; Eat the Storms IV and Live Encounters: Poetry and Writing.  In addition, she has had poems long- or short-listed in Fish, Anthony Cronin, Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Competitions. 

Trinity McDaniel: The Apparition

Can't you see me?

Standing naked and dissected before you,

my essense spread upon a silver platter,

waiting for you to take even a crumb 

of whatever might spark your hunger.

You applaud the performance, 

yet my name has already faded from you with the curtain's fall.

Perceive me. 

Not as an apparition, drifting through your periphery,

but as something warm and tangible in your hands,

pieced together in flesh and bone.

Love me for the terrible thing that I am,

or cleanse me from your sacred space,

so I may learn to haunt someone

who isn't afraid of ghosts.

Trinity McDaniel is a Tennessee based mother, writer, oddity artist, and model. She’s spent most of her life writing and trying to find her voice, drawing inspiration from the ugly, romantic, parts of being human.