A Poem by Bam Dev Sharma

Meeting

The silken ferry
Proceeds to shore
When gentle breeze
Plays jovial patter
With the mast.

Anxious horizon
Unfolds arms
To clasp his coy
Companion bidding afar.

On the aisle of sea
The silken ferry heads
As if it were bride
Lost into boisterous enthusiasm.

She, too, steadies
To meet her companion--
The beloved horizon
In the threshold of setting sun.

The play of meeting
Is put in the camera . . .
The eyes of the sky
In shower:
An expression of happiness
In happy tears.

Bam Dev Sharma, resident of Dang Hekuli Village Development Committee, Nepal, started writing poetry in the year 1996.  He has published a collection of poetry jointly with American poetess Marine Reis Newberry entitled "Bunyan and the Alder" in 2007.  Besied, his poems have been published in several national and international poetry journals across the glove.  By Profession, Mr. Sharma is teaching at Campus of International Languages and currently is Head of English Department.

Three Poems by Stefanie Bennett

Lucidity

Look, the marigold (quite rightly),
Seized the doorpost's
Seasonal tenure
No chameleon
Commandeers:

Next, the centipede -- as soon as
It learned
To walk
And talk
With salubrious giants

Understood . . . how amid
An enriched
Peat propagation,
Holding
Hands

Demystified
The Odyssey.



Seagull

Devoid of abstraction --
It settles like a hush
On the sagging jetty rail.
Several aged fishermen
Make jokes
To the tune
Of the very first catch . . .

Probably, the morning is silver
With spring rain misting the air;
And the largest of coins
                                                    -- The sun
Extends her sash
About the land.

This moment, like any other,
Must pass.
There is
Sadness.  Wonder.
Hold it there . . .



Aspects = 'Carnac' for Guillevic

Covered in white lichen
The inner circle
Registers

The consecrated jaws
Of an Azilian
Megalith tomb;

(Seismic drag-nets,
Erstwhile angel wings,
Priests, Initiates --).

A deft breeze shuttles
Past the Stone Army's
Home of the fallen
                                       Where

At a pinch, you could say,
God's preferred
Creatures

Rules the breakers, wormwood,
Red fungi
-- And then some.

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry and poems online; Boston Poetry, The New Verse News, Poetry24 and others.  Of mixed ancestry (Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee) she was born in Townsville, Qld., Australia in 1945.  Stefanie's new poetry title "The Vanishing" is due at year's end.  Publisher:  Walleah Press.

Three Poems by David Subacchi

Horse Frightened by a Lion

  -- from a painting of the same name
by George Stubbs

Every sinew strained
Every muscle stretched
Every hair on end
Hooves scraping the rock
Striving to reverse

The silent lion
Calmly confident
Taking in the scene
Knows you run faster
But that you may fall

Your white coat stands out
His colour blends in
With the brown landscape
He is a hunter
You are a victim

Dull trees and pale sky
Complete the background
All eyes are on you
Willing you to escape
From this encounter.



Mist

Between lamb's wool and lion's claw
A grey mist attaches
To the air in every meadow
Winter lies in frozen ditches
Its life almost drained
But spring trapped in a bramble bush
Continues to be restrained

Fingers outstretched each ragged tree
Beckons as we tear past
Urging us south desperately
Neither first journey nor the last
But just another
Each farm fence post appearing
Like a fox breaking cover

Between cockcrow and owl screeching
A feeble sun breaks through
London's busy highways reaching
That once darker denser fog knew
Weary heads turning
We head north from railway stations
To our own lands returning.



The Long Branch

Today I cut the long branch
That stretches from the silver birch
On my land across the fence
Into my neighbour's garden
Like a scrawny arm straining
To escape the saw's sharpness
Clutching for a saviour
A helping hand to hold tight
Beyond the boundary line
But it was never to be
With a whine the timber fell
Severed by my glinting blade
Amputated easily
A single crack then a thud
Onto the manicured lawn
To await dismemberment
Into logs for winter stoves

The fruit of sun kissed summers
Of rainfall never ending
Not strong enough to survive
To grow up with the leaders
Doomed to bend and lean across
Attracting critical eyes
Where another has the right
To terminate intrusions
Always to sway drunkenly
In the slightest of breezes
Upsetting TV signals
Shedding leaves throughout autumn
Today I cut the long branch
With a tear in each eye
A heavy heart and a sigh
And my neighbour standing by.

David Subacchi lives in Wrexham (UK) and studied at the University of Liverpool.  He was born in Aberystwyth of Italian roots and writes in both English and Welsh.  Cestrian Press has published two collections of his poems.  "First Cut" (2012) and "Hiding in Shadows" (2014).

Two Poems by ayaz daryl nielsen

The days, so cold
The nights, so long
Another tundra
wind from
above timberline
Wild geese and
blue heron
gone
months ago,
black bear, deep
asleep
Mule deer and elk
hiding
among pine and
leafless aspen.
The clock ticks
toward midnight,
the year,
about to end.
Here, beside this
glowing hearth,
you gently
place your lips
upon mine.



Alpenglow

Even the broken apple tree branch
has blossoms, the Front Range forest,
an evening alpenglow.  All we are, here,
upon this meadow, beside the Great Divide.



ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs), hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Writing the Whirlwind, Shamrock, and bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre).

A Poem by John W. Sexton

World Without Bees Amen

On the sills the bees are dying.  Bumbles
fuzzing in their humming.  Their furred knitwear
losing lustre; their breathing visible,
their wings crisply stopped.  The dustpan will share
them to the hedged garden.  I fling them out
against the wind, and they fly one last time,
but just the flight of falling.  Who will shout
to stop the dying?
                                   There just isn't time,
so watch them die in their furry troubles,
fuzzed in their humming, the dying bumbles.

John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent being The Offspring of the Moon, (Salmon Poetry, 2013).  He also created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTI radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episodes from 1999 to 2002.  Two novels based on the characters from this series have been published by the O'Brien Press:  The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed, which have been translated into both Italian and Serbian.  He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem "The Green Owl" won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007.  Also in 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

A Poem by Bill Jansen

An Element of Blank

In the fictive state of Oregon
in the Louisiana parish of my body
in the transparent Jaguar
in green frost on a bottle of Belgian beer
my soul in a German subway
I induce an Amherst cop
to sleep with me in solitary confinement,
hoping she would test the citizenship of my breath
which I already knew might not be heaven,
but my memory may have been stupendous
because she let me go,
her pretty frown of bewilderment,
and I said:  I am at the front,
advising her to watch out for magnetized owls
they can hear me under the leaves,
smoking my radials out of town
Stuttgart flew by,
Frank Zappa & Emily Dickinson
in a coffee shop
his elegant hand touching her knee,
Adak, Alaska flew by,
San Francisco & northern Nigeria flew by
like U-pick gooseberry signs,
then, as I hoped it would,
chapters of Nebraska are falling on Paris
(40% words)
I swerved, grayed out,
yellow light big as Colorado,
put a dent in first responder,
apologized to a Coca-Cola machine,
but still no sign of the bejeezus
they say I scared out of a bobcat
in the Los Angeles river.
Not just any bobcat,
the bobcat I now worship.




Bill Jansen lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Dawn Breaks

through remnants of midnight’s rain,

illuminates the residual gray

clinging to nature’s morning.  Eyes

search for disruptive streak of lingering

silver, refusing to relinquish

the slick elegance of moonlight’s glow.

Failure:  the abysmal haze holds,

complete.  I shrivel

deeper into my own

skin, an automatic escape

attempt, focus on following a

now less discernible path home.

Winter’s Tree

Stripped and left

unbreathing.  Green life

of sun cannot stand

weight of white robe,

brushed on then brushed off

by the wind.  Fickle

coat of wilting, of remaining,

cover’s coma holding.  Pattern

waiting for first crack,

a spring shoot.

Alone Among the Pines

a tiny sprig fights for light.

Its monstrous mothers stand vigil,

but unacquiescing.  They will not part

their branches in empathy of survival’s fight.

Instead they wait in silent observation,

understanding the toughest barks are built

on fleeting rays, those warming moments

when wind shifts, when shade and shadows part.

A.J. Huffman has published nine solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  She also has two new full-length poetry collections forthcoming: Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing).  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, haiku and photography have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com 

A Poem by Kushal Poddar

Autumn

The crows are murder
this autumn, the finches
nowhere to be seen.
Just when we gave up
on the wind fallen
in the well of rot,
it rescues itself
and knocks on the door.
We brace silence
even harder.
The shadows of the crows
devour the crows.

A native of Kolkata, India, Kushal Poddar writes poetry, scripts and prose and is published world-wide.  He authored "All Our Fictional Dreams" published in several anthologies in the Continent and in America.  The forthcoming book is "A Place For Your Ghost Animals."  Find more at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kushal-The-Poet/166552613396144

A Poem by Cristine A. Gruber

Echo

Distant
coyote on
the mountain answers their
soulful cries, calling into the
night air.



Cristine A. Gruber has had work featured in numerous magazines, including:  North American Review, Writer's Digest, Writers' Journal, Ascent Aspirations, California Quarterly, Dead Snakes Online Journal, The Endicott Review, Garbanzo Literary Journal, The Homestead Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, Kind of a Hurricane Press's:  Something's Brewing Anthology, Miller's Pond Poetry Magazine, The Penwood Review, Poem, Thema, The Tule Review, and Westward Quarterly.  Her first full-length collection of poetry, Lifeline, was released by Infinity Publishing and is available from amazon.com.