Chris Mikesell: Driven

Just another day 

in a long chain

like Love’s Travel Stops

along the interstate:

get past one 

just to get to the next 

and the next, 

to the one, two, ten, 

a month’s-worth after that, 

chasing horizons 

you set high for yourself

when you were younger.

The impulse, though, 

to just stop, 

give in to sleep 

(or something deeper)

perforates, permeates

your thoughts,

so you listen 

for a baying at the moon, 

a righteous chorus—

oh, so much grander

than your grinding reality—

to join, but 

there are no howls 

to be heard

beneath tonight’s sky,

only good bone-dogs 

(like myself) 

gnawing silently 

toward Tuesday, 

Wednesday, the weekend,

and you realise

at this moment 

(or one not long after) 

it’s not the love of life 

with its troubles and toils 

that empowers your persistence 

but, rather, of its possibilities 

far beyond the certainties 

of the unwinnable alternative.

Chris Mikesell grew up in San Jose, Calif., and currently lives near Dallas, Texas, where he teaches high-school English and occasionally appears at open mikes and other events. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in GRIFFEL, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Carolina Muse, Honeyguide, and elsewhere. Read more at chrismikesell.com.

Ralph Culver: The Misunderstanding

I did not say: You are nothing to me;

I said the hummingbird, the anglerfish

are not amazed at themselves.

I did not say: I have forgotten you;

but that every day a man

finds more things that trouble him.

Not You are not beautiful,

but that, often, when I lie in the grass,

a lute sings in the earth beneath me.

Not: I regret—

but that I stare at these keys

I carry in my pocket

and think of the narrow bones

I once turned over in the garden.

Not I never loved you,

but You are all you have.

As for the rest, yes,

it is as you say, the words

are mine, but all the rooms of the world

we have lived in close now

over the words of others.

Earth, keys, man—

when will you seek out

that lamp, that light,

under which they were written?

[First appeared in Albatross. From 'A Passable Man', MadHat Press, 2021]

Ralph Culver has work recently published in Plume, The High Window (UK), and Roi Fainéant Press, and forthcoming soon in Queen's Quarterly (Canada). His latest collection is A Passable Man (2021); his new book of poems, This to This, is coming out in 2024. 

https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/ralph_culver

Edward Lee: Storm

I asked,

a lifetime ago,

for electricity to be flooded

through my brain,

to erase the oil-black dullness

that whispered sluggishly

of blood and wounded skin.

But I was refused,

for reasons I can no longer recall,

and now the dullness

has spread,

and the whispers

have become bone-breaking shouts,

and I stare at the sky

praying for a storm

full of light and roar.

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales.

Chandra Gurung: Prosperity

Three basic human needs:

Bread, rags, and roof.

Bread—

The bread I eat these days tastes different.

I have forgotten the grim face of hunger.

Rags—

I dress better than I did long ago

But the greed in my heart still goes naked.

Roof—

I live in a grand and high building these days

From where people appear stunted.

Chandra Gurung is a Nepalese poet and translator. His works have been featured in many international anthologies including. He has three poetry collections in this credit. Two of his poems were selected for The Best Asian Poetry 2021 anthology published by Kitaab, Singapore. He was longlisted for Medieval Poetry Contest 2021.

C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎): The Son of A Political Dissident

You've missed my first baseball game

You've missed my birthday party

You've missed my graduation ceremony

I was angry, then disappointed

but Mom and my older sister didn't say anything

Their silence meant that something had gone wrong

Mom decided that we should move

after I asked what does “treason” mean, and

one day my sister came home from school with

a black eye and skinned knuckles

What if Dad comes home and can't find us?

I wished to ask but I did not, afraid to

get an answer I did not want to hear, until

I realized Mom and sis have been talking about you with

past tense, so I knew you were killed

by the state pledging to protect its people

with disciplines and orders, and

awe to the authority 

We can be sad, but never feel ashamed

Mom said during praying before dinner

in a whisper

Dad, I dreamed you giving away your body

to the tree roots stretching for nutrients

They grab your head, your neck, your arms and legs

and your heart, your will, your personal history

in the depraved earth 

So they will be able to resist 

the coming storms

C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's past dictatorship: Impossible to Swallow and The Surveillance. Currently she is working on Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, and she won the Strands Lit Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

Alex Barr: No Escape

There it was, on the face

of the last log I lifted into the burner

crawling across the rings

wondering where to go.

I would have pulled the log out

but it was already flaming, and

I didn’t have the raku pottery tongs.

The woodlouse fell into the fiery embers.

Oh yes, I would have laughed

if I was like the pilot

heading for home, delighted

with a successful mission,

leaving a child writhing

in white phosphorus.

Alex Barr’s recent poetry is in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Quagmire Magazine, Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Scintilla, The Dark Horse, Orbis, Silver Birch Press, BlueHouse Journal, Hole in the Head Review, Acumen, and Third Wednesday Magazine. His collections are Letting in the Carnival from Peterloo and Henry’s Bridge from Starborn. 

Christopher Woods: The Road

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show, Twelve from Texas, was performed recently in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. Gallery: https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

PBJ: untitled

Something told me 

This was it

Like the way a teacher would shout 

Last lap boys 

And you sprint for your life 

Like my uncle seeing the end 

With a nail gun to his head 

But you don’t wanna go out like that 

Even he knew that when he set it down 

You wanna finish at the end 

Totally exhausted 

Not caring what position you’re in 

Just knowing you gave out 

So much fucking love 

That even the gods 

Want to see you 

Live one more day 

PBJ has poems published in Ireland, the UK and Canada. His first story was published by the BBC at 19 years old. His first film was screened at The Playhouse in Derry, and he wrote a column for the International Times called Street Writer. 

CL Bledsoe: That High Lonesome House

It almost snowed. So close to winter, my feet

perpetually cold. My daughter screamed awake

with a spider crawling down the wall above her bed,

she’d just gotten to sleep in spite of a nasty cough.

There’s so much to do before spring. I have to find

love. I have to clean the bathroom. The kitchen. My soul.

I can sell books to pay someone. Does that make me

a class traitor or just tired? But I’m grateful

for the books, grateful for the updates on my father,

dying. Coming home to someone else’s noise.

We used to roll down the ridge, trying to flush

snakes. One of them chased me up a fence one

time. My sister swears she remembers carrying

me through the snow after a seizure, but I didn’t have

those until my preteens. Once, my sister called

to ask if the lake was frozen. I ran to the barbed wire

fence in my underwear and climbed up to look,

but got caught in the barbs and called to mom

to help, afraid the neighbours would hear down the hill

and look up to catch me, so I climbed out of them,

left them on the fence, and ran back to the TV. 

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels If You Love Me, You’ll Kill Eric Pelkey and The Devil and Ricky Dan. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Edilson Afonso Ferreira: Silent Witnesses

It is common our disputes about this and that.

Really, almost daily, we are at opposite sides.

Friends say we are not well-settled a couple,

and so misjudgement, I know, hurts us equally.

In the deeps of night, standing awake in bed,

I look at you asleep and feel all friends’ error.

Who would bear testimony of us, I ask myself.

Walls and roofs surely know our inmost life

but they do not speak, are invalid witnesses.

I ask them if just to me would they say of us. 

They say of our confronts, furies, rough words

and revilements but also remember our hugs

and hot kisses. Also, remember having heard  

some words like it is cold out, dear, wear your

coat or don’t be late, darling, some little things

only beloved ones are capable to.

They say we are at hard and arduous a battle,  

on pursuing, although scarce, a bit of true love. 

They also say to keep the route and fear nothing.

Tiles and bricks, indeed, they are, but perceive

unlike my best friends, the very plot of the play.

First published in TWJ Magazine, October 2014.

A Brazilian poet, Edilson Afonso Ferreira, 80, lives in a small town (Formiga-MG) with wife, three sons and a granddaughter and writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Largely published in literary journals, he began writing at age 64.  Has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is the author of 2 Poetry Collections, Lonely Sailor and Joie de Vivre.