You do not have to climb the sycamore bending the thin branches to see the shopping bag beaked and twined into the dark nest.
Just think of the rainwater, held and pooled, that chilled the turquoise eggs; and of the magpies with their cackles, never born.
Kris Spencer has written seven books. He has been published in Acumen, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Orchards Poetry Journal, Fenlands Poetry Journal, The Balloon Literary Journal, Nailpolish Stories, Bluepepper. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is a Head teacher living and working in West London.
I barred the windows and the doors Yet, so, I feel exposed by the roof – As though the east wind stirs & sings like a hummingbird to The house and makes it move.
It rains outside & the dotted sands, Like poets, interchange syllables & rhythms with the skies – Slights of waves & gestures.
The air smells of period clouds; Pieces of raindrops turn the street Into an earthly river and the streetlights Dance to the rainy screams.
Najeeb Yusuf Ubandiya is a young poet from Nigeria. He is a loner who writes to find out what he thinks and feels – about himself and the world around him – and to keep his purpose awake and breathing. His work has appeared in Ngiga Review, Blue Marble Review, Riveting Rants and is forthcoming in other literary magazines. You can find him tweeting (@najeeb___X).
When I was a boy and I saw that man beating his dog
right on his front steps under the sun and its vivid light
I was that dog when I saw it
and I was that man the moment I looked away.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals in the last dozen years. See his website for links to his published poetry online.
labhrann strainséir liom bloghanna dá chuid dánta (focal nó líne) ní bheadsa im’ bhean chabhrach cad a theastaíonn uaidh a rá
strangers speak to me pathetic fragments of poems (the first word or line) i’m no midwife for their poems what is it they wish to say
Gabriel Rosenstock is a bilingual poet, tankaist, haikuist, playwright, novelist, essayist, translator and short story writer. His sixth bilingual volume of tanka isSecret of Secrets. See more on his website.
that shrine, it is still there – evenings we spent there everyday, the three of us, walking.
Do you remember? – oh, you must! One’s been long dead now,
his grave dried, why then this new headstone?
Let’s go dust some altars again, just once! – we haven’t touched those cold feet for long.
Loss’s Ghazal
Six years after home, in my distant longing, there is no sense of loss. When for days you’d said nothing, there had to be no inference of loss.
I left everywhere you were meant to be, even in the memories we shared; I left the country you loved when it echoed merely an assonance of loss.
In the bleak whiteness of an airport, they asked of me my identity, I held, respectfully, my heart, said there isn’t and is only an essence of loss.
They let me go, those harbingers of peace; I knock at the doors of an un- named asylum, they measure my words, my pain of its resonance of loss.
Now the door will open, they’ll let me in, and I’ll think of that long night, the damp discomfort of the dark room; its stiff, quiet inhabitance of loss.
That long night, when in silence you could but you said nothing, I knew then that your words, and Elise, my name, were my inheritance of loss.
Jayant Kashyap is a Pushcart Prize-nominee and was shortlisted for the 2021 New Poets Prize. He is the author of two pamphlets, Survival (Clare Songbirds, 2019) and Unaccomplished Cities (Ghost City Press, 2020), and co-founded Bold + Italic back in 2018.
and boiling water, I have scrubbed your face off. I have scoured your photograph from devices: his, mine and everyone else’s – the clouds are clean. I am prepared to storm my sketchbooks, to pull out, tear, to flame up a barrel, watch you depart, a moonstone, a monsoon, a monster gone for good. I do not owe you an explanation. I do not owe you a handshake. The five syllables of your name recalled: as a plainsong, a plague, a bunion, a bad bout of food poisoning. And that is it.
Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is a person, a poet, queer, multi-, living in Asia. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram (@lorelei.bacht.writer) and Twitter (@bachtlorelei).
Briefly Write 