2025

 

 

JANUARY

 

 

 

Fizza Abbas, Edward Alport, C. J. Anderson-Wu, John Bartlett, Melissa A. Chappell,

 Daniel Dahlquist, Tim Deere-Jones, William Ogden Haynes, Maren O. Mitchell,

J. R. Solonche, Rodney Wood.

 

 

 

 

 

FIZZA ABBAS

 

The Fractal Rainbow

 

Rainbow^rainbow vs rainbow,
Divided by rainbow, multiplied by rainbow—
Power rainbow times ten.
The power x of a rainbow is a rainbow
because a rainbow has colors, and if you multiply those colors by x,
you might see them fading out,
turning into black and white—
which are also technically colors
and also light.

 

Imagine light passing through the rainbow of rainbows,
like a woman in pink, transparent lingerie,
looking at herself in the mirror,
talking to herself, thinking it’s her—
but it’s really not her, only a reflection
of the images she sees in the mirror,
looking back at her like a woman in stilettos,
proudly wearing a crimson crown
with blood spilling like red rivulets
or a fractal pattern of red-tipped thumb pins
on a green thumb board in the classroom.

 

She stands,
& zhe walks,
& xhe eats,
& she finds herself
in the shadows created by reflections,
which she calls images because they don’t talk, see, or feel—
like a Good Friday that just comes and goes,
or a hamburger served piping hot.
& the harshness of truth,
both black & white.

 

Fizza Abbas is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her work has appeared in more than 100 journals, both online and in print. Her work has also been nominated for Best of The Net and shortlisted for Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021. 

 

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EDWARD ALPORT

 

Small Sacrifices

 

I have been walking these woods too long.

I have seen trees grow, die, fall and

crumble into dust beneath my feet.

 

I have seen the ground level rise a hand’s breadth

under fallen leaves. Dens and hideaways have ambered

into archaeology, and paths have changed.

 

Old ways overgrown. New ways beaten impatiently,

looking for the shortest route. I have done my share of beating,

but new ways have evolved without my say-so.

 

Years have fluttered by with the leaves.

There are new dogs to greet

and news to mourn of old friends’ passing.

 

I know the place where a muntjac lies,

on its way to skeletondom, and brittle

snailshell skulls of birds litter the ground.

 

They are small sacrifices to the wood gods but not enough,

I think, to keep them sweet. The wood gods have put their heads together.

I have been walking in these woods too long and I

have come to their attention.

 

The Oak and the Swallow

 

The oak tree said, This is the place to be.

I have my roots and they stretch down.

I subscribe to the air and read it as it passes by.

I have my interests, they come and go each winter tide,

when I close my eyes and close my doors.

In all the world, this is the place I am.

 

The swallow said, How can you know the world

if you don’t taste everywhere there is to be?

Roots are a millstone, and the air

is a pathway, a road to new places. And beside,

what is this winter? What are closed eyes and doors.

If you don’t look around, how will you see?

 

I said, I’d fly with the swallow, if the earth flew with me.

I said I’d stand with the oak and push my roots

into the air. I said, I will let the earth lead me, and the air

Blow me where it wants to take me.

To go, as long as I can come back here.

 

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. Currently a poet, writer and gardener. He has had poetry, articles and stories published various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. He used to post snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.

 

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C. J. ANDERSON-WU

 

Nahuy People from the Cloud

 

1.

Our history is stored in the cloud

Here I offer you the passwords for the access

 

Colonialism

Assimilation

Bloody Battles

Land Deprivation

Forced Relocation, and

Diaspora

 

Stored in the memories, our past is only

Retrievable from the cloud

 

2. 

Past the landmark of a sky-pointing rock

Standing in the river Nahuy Kahuw

Breaking the rushing water in storms

Is the beginning of our hometown

Resisting centuries of erosion

 

Tracing upward, over the steep hills

Deep inside the layered-maze of canopied forest is

Where we gathered food, celebrated the blessing of gods

Where ramie and bamboo thrived to be

The materials for weaving and building

 

Today we are left with nothing but our buried lifeline

 

3.

Leaves of Formosan maples flutter

Wind gusts whisper messages

Warning the colonial army's advance

To seize the mountain ridges that once 

Defined, yet never divided, our territories

 

Repeatedly attacked by cannons and rifles

Our counter-offensives of archery and arrows 

Evolve into decades of guerrilla fights

 

Camouflaged by the clouds

We breathe in the mountain mist

Singing aloud the language of Siliq birds

The only tongue we remember

 

If we fail to defend our homeland

May it become the graveyard of the enemy

 

4.

We are the people of clouds

Where our stories are preserved

Here I offer you the passwords

For the access of our identity

 

laxi si’sa yubing mamu pincsalan na bnkis

Do not put the words of our ancestors into your pocket

 

Yagu wal ta’ inhqan qu zywaw, wal ta’ sbiru’ rwa

What once fell into oblivion has been written down now

 

Shall it be our best defense 

against the dissolution of time

Like a sky-pointing rock

Withstanding the torrential flows 

of forgetting

Nahuy, or called Sky-Pointing Rock, is a tribal community of indigenous Atayal people from Taiwan, where the people bravely defended their lands, culture, language, and traditions under decades of oppressive colonial rule by Japan (1895~1945). Up to this day, the struggle becomes the preservation of historical memory.

 

C.J. Andersonwu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer and a member of Taiwan Indigenous PEN, who has published two fiction collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2021). She is currently working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the 2024 Flying Island Poetry Manuscript Competition. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

 

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JOHN BARTLETT

 

dragonflies draw flame *

 

who of us

can love this world so

full of gnashing

nations their shrills and

sklatch

                

love is easy in air

slashed

then restitched with

the diaphanous wings

of dragonflies

 

is this how prayer is

and song

and loving

flying up around in sudden

dancing on legs tremulous

settling in sky’s cloudscapes

 

is this how to live

                   in this world

without judgement

anger or sorrow

 

to fly through air

learning sunshine

as  dragonflies do

 

* Title from ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

John Bartlett is the author of twelve books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He was winner of the 2020 Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and his latest poetry pamphlet is In the Spaces Between Stars Lie Shadows (Walleah Press)

 

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MELISSA A. CHAPPELL

 

The Preacher

 

The ether hangs heavy with the salt of tears and sweat

as the Preacher heaves his Bible in the air,

calling down the red-eyed angels.

His voice flies like a departing soul to the cedar rafters.

Come to Jesus, ye sinner, turn from your transgression!

Turn! Turn! Lest the fires of hell await you!

She sits alone with her family, with each pounding

of the pulpit, hellfire rising in her, her fair face now crimson.

And all you pretty girls out there who haven’t

been down to the River! The Lord knows what you do!

He sweeps a damning skeletal finger across an assembly

of girls, who sit on a straight-backed pew, eyes down.

Fornicators, all of you! Get ye to the Lord and

confess on your knees what you’ve done! Get ye to the

River! A butterfly smile dances across the blushing girl’s lips,

for in the red clay behind the town’s peeling white church

a Georgia boy has taught her to sing hallelujahs

on her knees

The Preacher’s eyes burn brimstone,

the stench of lightning,

 he looks her way, mopping his brow, thin

lips wet as a kiss. The River would not be troubled

on that day. Alone, the Preacher, in white shirt drenched

with agonies, drops to his knees, redemption, now reclusive,

forgiveness, caught in some brush on a riverbank,

can never reach him

here, singing his contrite confessions, kissing the silver chalice

that holds the tasteless wine.

 

Melissa A. Chappell is an ordained minister of the ELCA. She writes prolifically, and her poetry has appeared in Dreich Magazine, The Adelaide Literary Magazine, BlazeVox and the Orchards Poetry Review. Chappell has published several books, the latest being Remnant Day (Transcendent zEro Press, 2023).

 

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DANIEL DAHLQUIST

Ballerinas on the Front Lines

The ballerina’s feet

are prone to injuries.

If the First Position

is not executed with care,

toes pointed forward,

she risks meniscal tears

and dislocations

at the knees.

 

A ballerina may possess

natural balloon, soaring

like a bird in columns

of air.

 

Should she land incorrectly,

muscle and bone

may separate, an ankle

splinter.

 

The ballerina’s upper body

is often in pain,

sending as it does

tremendous energy

to back and hips.

Likewise

the ballerina’s spine

is vulnerable.

 

Today a ballerina

holding an assault rifle

spoke from the front lines

of Ukraine.

 

“Ballet teaches you

to have a strong spirit,”

she said.

 

Daniel Dahlquist is a retired speech communication professor and a very active, prolific poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, including Speech to the Dead and Slow Dancing in Carbondale, and he is an editor for the poetry collection Geneseo Days by Marvin Kleinau. You can read more about Daniel at https://www.galenapoetryfestival.org/daniel-dalquist, and you can find more of Daniel’s poetry at https://www.dahlquistcycleworks.com/about.html. Daniel lives in Galena, IL with his wife Jeanette. 

 

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TIM DEERE-JONES

 

Building the Roof.

 

Groundwork is done,

deep trenches push concrete roots into ancient soil,

mesh, raft and DPC suffocate the earth where things once lived

and history may have trod.

 

Now the roof is a cage in the air,

enclosing final aspirations with its timber bars,

and fencing out the sky.

It’s the last chance for wind and light,

lamb call, ravens yell, gorse smell,

To visit the space below.

 

Seen from below it’s a web

made by men for their own capture,

who clamber carefully across it, clinging against blue

where beneath them buzzards wheel and seagulls’ cry.

 

Slowly we close it with battens and felt.

Hammer blows ring in the space below.

Strip by strip we darken the space,

until at last, the grey slates, the blues and the purples,

seal the tomb that was live,

where now lives only an echo, which they will kill,

when they bring in possessions from what is now

the out-of-doors

 

Tim Deere-Jones is 75, wrote his first poem when he was 7 years old. He’s written ever since, but parenthood and environmental campaigning stole the time he would have used to "work" on his output. Now retired, recovering from a heart attack and allowing himself to pursue a lifelong aspiration.

 

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WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES

 

Swinging

How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do!

From “The Swing” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

 

There is a small town in Ohio that has its streets named for trees.

And at the corner of Maple and Birch is a park where a mother can

 

sit on a bench and listen to the rustle of sycamores as she reads a

book and watches her daughter play. The playground equipment is

 

old and shopworn, and beneath each swing there is a grassless indentation

where countless children have pushed off, some barefooted and others

 

with gym shoes, to begin their journey to the sky. They pump high into

the sunshine, eyes on the clouds, flying and falling, kicking the dirt to start,

 

rhythmically pulling back on the chains, kicking out their legs at the

apogee and folding them under as they fall back. The mother watches her

 

little girl, tight braids waving behind with each swing, as she tries to fly

parallel with the top bar, so she can look down on rooftops, trees and

 

cars in the parking lot. Hugged by the rubber seat, filled with excitement,

she wants to go higher and higher until it borders on scariness. And the

 

mother sitting on the bench thinks about the old swing seat ripping, a

weak link in a chain, a bolt slowly coming undone from its nut with

 

each successive arc. She’s on a swing of her own, flying between a wreck

of frightening emotions, and a tenderness almost too sweet to behold.

 

 

William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan. He has published several collections of poetry and many of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. http://www.williamogdenhaynes.com

 

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MAREN O. MITCHELL

 

Yesterday I Fell. This Morning I'm Getting Up.

 

You poems that I want to be writing, hover near,

a dozen of you just out of decipherable reach,

 

touchable, but not graspable.

You that would cause

 

my peers to keel over with envy,

my enemies to turn face and run away,

 

my friends to find their needed comfort

and me to re-blossom into a poet,

 

I know you're shy right now,

but please don't tease me any longer

 

(I am embarrassingly fragile)

my eyes only look into unknown,

 

forgetting the known,

my tongue, devoid of variety, pants to taste you,

 

my ears are deafened with foreign sounds,

not your sweet murmurs,

 

so, maybe if I take my face

(frozen in fear of losing my loved one)

 

up out of its morning wash, dry my fear

and face my face, you will come:

 

I will walk to the back door, open it

and you will be there, hummingbirds

 

to bless my downhill, bring me back

to love and loving. 

 

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems appear in The Antigonish Review, Poetry East, The Lake and Tar River Poetry. Three poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Her chapbook is In my next life I plan... (dancing girl press). She lives with her husband in the mountains of Georgia, USA.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Haircut

 

I watch her work in the mirror,

Julie from Slovenia.

How deft she is with scissors and fingers,

and then how artful with blow dryer and brush.

The other one comes with the broom to sweep the hair,

all the hair that has fallen in cascades from my head to the floor.

I wonder what will happen to it.

I do not ask.

“All done, you’re all beautified,” she says.

And so I am, so I am.

All beautified and lighter,

I walk out into brightness,

all the beatitude of all the afternoon light brightified upon all of me.

  

 Chinese Poems

 

I love looking at Chinese poems.

I love looking at Chinese poems more

than at any other poems.

I cannot read Chinese, so I have to say

that I look at them.

I love them because they are beautiful to look at

and since they all look the same to me,

they are all beautiful.

That they do not mean the same doesn’t matter at all,

for they are all beautiful the same way,

like a strange and wonderful world inhabited only by roses.

  

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 40 books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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RODNEY WOOD​

 

Day 55: The Sea Will Rise—What About Us?

 

To be honest, I’ve been insensitive—
like the Prince Regent at Brighton, staring at the sea,
and asking after a few minutes, "Does it do anything else?"
But maybe I’ve missed something in that gaze,
something the ORCA people and naturalists catch
as they lean into the wind, binoculars raised,
jackets snapping like flags.

 

They speak of the ocean unravelling—
a vast weave loosening, threads frayed
by countries and corporations dumping their waste,
forgetting that tomorrow will still come.
The sea, they say, is a mirror stained
with our neglect, pollution is creeping
through its veins like slow venom.
And no, the waves won’t clean themselves.

 

I stare at the endless blue expanse—
majestic, sure, but my mind’s fixed
on dinner plans, misplaced playing cards,
and other petty clutter that drowns out the world's pulse.

 

Meanwhile, the whale-watchers wait—
poised for a breach, a tail slap, something miraculous.
They see grace in every swell,
while I see only a turmoil of water.

 

Maybe it’s time to let go of this heavy indifference,
to see the ocean not as background
but as a body, alive and breathing.
Maybe the ecologists are right—
the sea deserves more than a passing glance,
more than this shrug of apathy.

 

The ocean rises, falls—
it always has, but me? I’m tired
of pretending I can drift through life.
If the sea deserves saving,
maybe I do too—
maybe in learning to care for it,
I’ll figure out how to care for myself.

 

To celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, Rodney Wood and his wife, Frances, embarked on a 101-night world cruise. Each day, Rodney drafted a new poem while both took watercolour classes, creating a fresh piece for each port. Rodney’s work has appeared in various magazines, he has self-published two poetry pamphlets, and he co-hosts an open mic in Woking.

 

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