Walter William Safar

LONELY NIGHTS Against the old oak I cling my cheek to hear a lost voice inside; The voice of a lost friend, the voice of my lost father and mother, the voice of lost love. And in this lonely night the voices inside the old oak are quiet and inaudible, as if dying along with my spirit. The night has turned its beautiful lonely face to the sky, and I, I call out my own name in this lonely night. which became perfectly strange to me – with some desperate hope that I shall hear the echo Read more [...]

Halflings

We used to be small, with many a great care taking cover from comrades, waiting to give chase Seeking the monsters of our youth attics, closets, beds, basements - better we find them, than they us Rain's worms and snow's angels, the business of those quarters Feared only were the fatherly scold the playground rebuke and the motherly palm in a time when the doubts of giants trickled down to our crowns like raindrops upon ants   Now we roam as giants much Read more [...]

O Capricious Heart

O capricious heart

Make me the miracle

That in choir of love’s opus knells deeply

Sharp as piercing awe

Like eyes perched in windows of a face

Gleaming with the hymn of sharing candles

Kindled in a liturgical flicker of the other

—Remi’el Ki

 

Changming Yuan

Winterscape: Crow vs Snow Like billions of dark butterflies Beating their wings Against nightmares, rather Like myriads of Spirited coal-flakes Spread from the sky Of another world A heavy black snow Falls, falling, fallen Down towards the horizon Of my mind, where a little crow White as a lost patch Of autumn fog Is trying hard to flap, flying From bough to bough Zeugmatic America: A Parallel Poem Every time you stage a play or an election in your own Read more [...]

studying bare walls

His shrinking humiliation blistered in the sun. You raise your nose at him but I’ve seen you, I’ve seen you digging trough the dumpsters, hissing at spectators as they laugh at your misfortune. Lean in close and listen to the clicking of the kitchen clock. Maddening, isn’t it? All of your mental calculations are letting you down, aren’t they? These are nights of love and laughter followed by days of unapologetic loneliness. You stare at the dirty wine glasses filling Read more [...]

Memory Of Hurricane Hazel, 1954 for J. R. McK

Week or so after Hurricane Hazel, Me, just out of the Navy, no job. Mac, one year out of Walter Reed.   My dad (looking out for us) Bunch Of trees down at Curtis Arboretum, Township needs help cleaning up.   Couple of axes. hatchet, sharpening stone, file and coffee thermos. A two-man bucking saw, Mac and me   We waded into tangled branch mess Hatchet, axes swing, bite, chips fly Branches slap -- sweat stings eyes   Sun, leaves, Read more [...]

Marija Stajic

#1 He walks On the road made of nothingness Paved with bodies of dead wishes He walks tacitly Invisibly   I’m pretending to be a Star On his sky To be the Sun and the Moon   He walks Not looking up… Marija Stajic is a writer and journalist who has been published by The New Yorker and many other online and print publications, and who has published three books of poetry. She has a B.A. in Linguistics from Faculty of Philosophy, University of Nis (Serbia) Read more [...]