dispels black thought; fear slips away–wisps of cloud dissolving into azure silk. I look south for solace, search for sun’s fire in my waning inner life, seek to rekindle a clear path to spirit.
Threads are still there– frayed from trying too hard or not at all. Confusion has been woven in my outer fabric yet I know there’s a clarity that shines from the heart, so close, so luminous, it is easy to overlook– to look elsewhere.
Opening past habits of dead wood, the voice complaining like lazy wind blows this way and that without saying anything. I find space to breathe, take flight with geese in endless lemon sky, soar blissfully back into my self, knowing that I never lost anything.
Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Four Bright Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A Hurricane Press Publications have accepted her work. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four Best of the Net nominations.
Tapping in his Tony Lamas
Wiggling in his Wranglers
Stimulating in his Stetson
The wind propels him
Twisting and spinning
As the guitar strums
He is a centrifuge
Defying gravity
Never succumbing
To earthly limitations
This cowboy soars
Grabbing his belt buckle
As if launching himself
Into the atmosphere
Propelled in alignment
Embraced by acoustics
Born in the USA
Stature of the
Colossus of Rhodes
Love child of deities
Product of divinity birthed
As if Icarus and Terpsichore
Conceived him
As he glides across dancefloors
He could make himself
Levitate in midair
Knowing full well
He was born to fly
Linda M. Crate’s works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies. She’s the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She’s also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears
(Czykmate Books, June 2018). She has published three full-length poetry collections: Vampire Daughter (Dark Gatekeeper Gaming,
February 2020), The Sweetest Blood (Cyberwit, February 2020), and Mythology of My Bones (Cyberwit, August 2020).
A writer and photographer, Claire Loader was born in New Zealand and spent several years in China before moving to County Galway, Ireland. Recently published in Pidgeonholes, The Bangor Literary Journal and Crossways, she spends her days seeking enchantment in ruins. You can find her work here: www.allthefallingstones.com
“we wait for something beautiful then we destroy it”
Stuart Buck
lying in the inch of fairy floss snowfall in the car park of the abandoned hardware store but we don’t feel the cold oh no, we are boiling mercury in our veins and the beautiful thing is that the sky isn’t falling, we are soaring up to meet it so I kiss your hand as we hit the screaming brilliance head on becomingfractured perfection for those endless seconds but oh god,we wake as only dust on the pavement and your frostbitten fingers curl up as a dying plant in a desert of unanswered prayers
Akif Kichloo is a poet of Indian origin currently alternating residence between Saginaw, Michigan (USA) and Kashmir, J & K (India). With a bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery, he has been eating shoelaces for the past year because he gave up everything to write poetry.
with a sheath of golden
feathers guarding its underbelly
and a feared reputation
the golden eagle soared over
the dusty dry lands
perhaps my family looked
up once in a while and
saw it circling overhead,
a blessing, a curse, or a spell in reverse
but they must not have seen it
my father would have had his head
swirling with stress over the paperwork
for his family to journey to the New World
my mother was in another neighborhood
studying, working at a smaller office
my aunts were
too tired and dehydrated
from the long walk from school to home
passed bazaars with the aroma of turmeric and kabob
scarves dangling around their shoulders
as they fought for the chance to learn
my grandfather
had much anxiety
over whether or not he
could travel to the office for work
if he was caught…
my grandmother was
worried, raising her kids in such a world
knowing she wasn’t able to get up to help
her youngest as they stood on a stepstool to
make dinner when they should have been out
playing
no, my family was chained to the
ground, souls bound to the duties
they had to themselves, to their family
their only hope of flying was when they
occasionally passed the kite flyers
for in all that sorrow,
one thing
let them soar above their worries:
the Afghan art of kite flying
my father was a champion.
when he wasn’t studying,
he was kite flying, kite rising
he took his place among the golden eagles,
soared to infinity and forevermore
it would be many years after
my family would fly
to the New World, leaving behind their home
in hopes of a better one
a new beginning
and then I was born.
and for them,
for my father who worked
from the morning sun to the evening moon,
for my mother who came to this
harsh New World with a pocket full
of English words,
for my aunts and uncles,
who defied everything in order to study
and catch their dreams,
for my grandfather
who sacrificed everything,
and for my beloved grandmother,
who dared to do the
difficult, the dangerous, the impossible
in the name of love,
Joan McNerney
Linda M. Crate
Claire Loader
Akif Kichloo