birds, opening act
Caroline Grand-Clement
Poetry Contributor
Poetry Contributor
Poetry and Photography Contributor
Charlotte Hamrick’s poetry, prose, and photography has been published in The Rumpus, Literary Orphans, Connotation Press, Eunoia Review, and numerous other journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and was a Finalist for the 15th Glass Woman Prize for her creative nonfiction. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for Barren Magazine. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets. Follow her on Twitter @charlotteAsh.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Wingless (flight)
Morning Moon (renaissance)
Hidden Magnolia (renaissance)
Fantasia (renaissance)
Spring Rain (renaissance)
Brilliance (renaissance)
Poetry Contributor
Arlene Antoinette is a writer who enjoys dabbling in poetry, flash fiction and song lyrics. Additional poetry by Arlene may be found @ Foxglove Journal, Cagibi Lit, Better Than Starbucks, With Painted Words, London Grip, Literary Heist and Your Daily Poem.
Poetry Contributor
Glenn Bach lives and works in Southern California, with brief stints in Milwaukee and Brooklyn. His long poem, Atlas, has been excerpted in Dusie, jubilat, Otoliths, and others. Glenn publishes an interview blog, Imprintable.org, and documents his other activities at glennbach.com.
Poetry Contributor
Justine Akbari
Through the noise I hear it
the string of words floating towards me
formulating before me—
slowly, methodically, categorically, sporadically
with pause
to test out each pitch, each decibel, each tenor
and resonance
on the tongue, in a thought, against another word
or an absence of one.
Melodies and mania surround the
delicate, dynamic, demonstrative
words that exist despite the
chaos and crescendo.
A thought disrupts the stillness of the mind
the way the mind disrupts the enchantment
of a thought.
Reading music
listening to words
reading words
listening to music;
A melody of notes to an orchestration of words;
an arrangement of words to a composition of music.
I cling to these words
to make sense of the world,
to give voice to the world,
to communicate with the world.
Humanity’s babble mixed with the city’s grumble
and a grandparent’s garble
enhanced with life’s elixirs
swath the sky in a synchronous symphony.
Joan McNerney
Shy autumnal bird
did you brush against the moon
to get that pale down?
A tree waves wooing
birds who fly from branch to branch
looking for a home.
Congregations of wrens
winging off to choral practice
stop at bird feeders first.
An outdoor concert.
Which is sweeter, the flute
or bird song in woods?
Sparrows recite litanies
in wood. Trees
greener every rainfall
their leaves growing longer.
Megha Sood
Silence is neatly tucked
between the layered wings of the soaring eagle
the shifting angle of his wings
holds the distance between
the spoken and the untold
Silence has its own semantics
the lexicon of the unspoken
I can carry the debilitating
pain in my marred soul for eons
before you see the
tears trickling from my eyes
Silence, a deep soliloquy with time
you press ears to the
throbbing heart
else would miss the pain
Silence is neatly tucked
in the palm of a stillborn
dissolved in its muted stench
Silence is the only conversation
for the reticent mind
as the moon brushes across my face
dripping the verses
picked neatly by the time
Silence is a lost art
so sublime.