Poetry from Gionni Valentin

Way of Origami

I fold

fold paper in

fold into myself

fold my hand

a Royal Flush

folded from me

when I fold into myself

I create these things

and imbue meaning

into them 

through

my writing 

and you believe this

because you finished

reading me

Property of Doctor Yes

A white boat made of wood,

wood refined into something they call paper.

It sits on a wooden river

colored a rich caramel

with a white background.

It has no sail

so isn’t permitted movement

Why is it there?

Because it allowed me to write this

A Game of Sudoku

They speak wrong numbers

a syntax line,

an error column,

a diagnostic fault of reality

warring over my way of thought

moving through my straw head

of full entry and brain matter,

whispers of shape with no end.

Like the quiet, you want nothing

because something is missing.

I Am Content

I eat when hungry,

I drink when thirsty,

I sleep when tired.

What more could I want?

That’s how I know 

I’m trapped.

Mount Olympus

And then boom

a drywall with holes from butterflies

and a leaf with ostrich eggs

the skeleton lay

an ant caught in his joint

looking at Life

her heavenly skin

a green away from him

he explodes into ash

is reborn

a rose bush

with no

thorns

Gionni Valentin is currently is his UD2 year at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, NJ.

Poetry from Graciela Noemi Villaverde

Chronicle of a Rescued World 

The planet’s lungs, once torn, 

now breathe with the rhythm of an ancient oak, 

its branches, veins laden with new sap, 

reaching toward a sky that has forgotten the toxic haze. 

We were blind sculptors, 

carving cracks in the earth’s skin, 

extracting gold from its bones, 

without hearing the lament that rose from the roots. 

The ocean, a shattered mirror of plastic, 

reflected our indifference, 

its creatures, stars drowned in the abyss. 

But one day, 

the echo of a dying hummingbird 

pierced the glass of our deafness. 

We saw the moss wither on the edge of the stones, 

the sun, a pale coin amidst the smoke. 

We were reborn, not from maternal wombs, 

but from urgency, from transparent guilt. 

Each tree planted, a silver thread on a damaged loom, 

each river cleaned, the pupil of an ancient god regaining its sight. 

Now, the bees, tiny goldsmiths of the air, 

dance over fields that don’t smell of chemical lament. 

The mountains, wise guardians of memory, 

rise up, green scars that tell of our redemption. 

Our hands, once weapons of felling, 

are now architects of nests, 

tilling the earth with the respect of those who sow a future. 

Conscience, a beacon lit in the fog of oblivion, 

guides our steps toward the embrace of the wild. 

This is the time of the second chance, 

where the jaguar’s roar is not a legend, 

and the whisper of the wind brings the promise of skies without ash. 

We have learned that life is not a loan, 

but a symphony we must protect, 

each note, each being, 

indispensable. 

We have been the castaways who found their shore, 

not building new ships, 

but repairing the only one we had: 

this blue, vibrant, and fragile home, that breathes with us.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution’s Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet in the Educational and Social Relations Division of the UNACCC South America – Argentina Chapter.

Poetry from Maja Milojkovic

Younger middle aged white woman with long blonde hair, glasses, and a green top and floral scarf and necklace.
Maja Milojkovic

Children in the future 

Children’s laughter 

used to be carried by the wind 

through the street of my childhood. 

today – 

the same street 

he does not remember a single step of the child. 

The past was breathing 

through games, through dust, 

through cheering voices, 

and now 

the silence echoes 

like an empty yard. 

Modern times write new rules: 

social networks, 

non-touch screens, 

instead of a game — 

stickers are sent, 

hearts and hugs 

which do not warm anyone. 

The future of children 

he is already tying a scarf over his eyes. 

Unhealthy weather 

knocks on the door 

and no one asks who it is. 

Villages are disappearing, 

cities grow into concrete, 

and the parks are shrinking as memories. 

Friends become contacts, 

nature — background for the picture. 

More and more steps with the dogs, 

and less and less the beginnings of life. 

And while children follow trends 

staring at small screens, 

parents do the same 

and over humanity 

slowly the crack opens 

and smile 

some cold, 

with an unnatural smile.

Maja Milojković was born in Zaječar, Serbia. She is the deputy editor at “Sfairos” publishing house in Belgrade, Serbia.  She is the vice-president of the association “Rtanj and Mesečev poetski krug”.  She is the author of 2 books: “The Circle of the Moon” and “Trees of Desire” She is the editor of the International Anthology “Rtanjski stihopevi” One of the founders of the poetry club “Area Felix” from Zaječar, Serbia and the editor of an international e-magazine for creative literature and culture “Area Felix”.

Poetry from Mahbub Alam

Middle aged South Asian man with reading glasses, short dark hair, and an orange and green and white collared shirt. He's standing in front of a lake with bushes and grass in the background.
Mahbub Alam

Imperialism 

You engineer ruin 

in endless sequences— 

because power permits you. 

A forest predator, 

all teeth and hunger, 

you erase whole herds 

in a single breath. 

Soft faces dim. 

They turn away from the world, 

learning too early 

that the earth does not claim them.

They leave behind 

a quiet, exhausted sigh— 

for you. 

But beneath the silence, 

something ancient stirs: 

a volcano,

red-eyed, no longer asleep. 

When it exhales, 

the air itself becomes flame. 

Lives—small, unnamed, countless— 

collapse into ash. 

Life begins 

to answer life. 

And when that day arrives— 

tell me, 

what language 

will your eyes speak?

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

10 April, 2026.

The Ruined Flower

A broken flower rests on the table. 

Some flowers, even in death,

remember how to breathe 

fragrance— 

but this one 

has learned fire instead. 

Its petals burn. 

Its thorns speak louder

than any beauty it once held. 

It trembles— 

and something unseen 

detonates across the room. 

People come close, 

drawn by love. 

They bleed. 

They fall. 

They rise again 

with raised hands, 

learning resistance 

too late. 

Still, they return— 

to the same flower, 

the same mistake. 

Some errors 

do not remain small. 

They ripple outward,

shaking the architecture of the world. 

A crooked table 

never truly stands straight. 

And some of our mistakes 

bend time itself— 

until generations inherit the ache. 

Generation after generation.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

10 April, 2026.

The Strait of Hormuz

A narrow strait— 

yet it carries the weight 

of entire histories. 

It maps routes, 

spins dreams, 

tilts the sky 

on its axis. 

It sharpens minds— 

and ignites wars. 

Cities burn in its shadow. 

Ports rise and fall 

by its permission. 

For a passage this small, 

your dreams and mine

are undone— 

then rebuilt 

in some uncertain future. 

It is a bridge. 

It is a wound. 

It speaks in opposites: 

fire, then rain. 

famine, then peace. 

And if we could look away 

from the imperialism of Hormuz

that surrounds it—

perhaps something quieter, 

something untouched, 

would still be flowing— 

clear, 

beautiful, 

unafraid.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

11 April, 2026.

Apiculture

The world—
a vast apiculture.

So why does a planet built on honey
taste of poison?

Why do we return
again and again,
with bitterness
coating the tongue?

Why does life itself
stand on the brink?

Why do humans
turn against humans—
with reason,
without reason—
as if destruction were instinct?

Bees do not forget their order.
They gather,
they build,
they sustain.

But we—
creatures of thought,
of language,
of sky-reaching dreams—
fall beneath them.

We grieve
for an ant crushed underfoot,
yet raise our hands
against each other.

We were meant
for something gentler—
to sit side by side,
soul beside soul,
in a world that could have worked.

Since the first dawn,
the stars have poured out light.
They have never
rained fire.

Then why do we?

At the summit of civilization,
why do our faces
still bend in shame?

Why does war return
like a habit
we refuse to break—
border after border,
generation after generation?

What kind of progress
carries this depth of ruin
in its shadow?

And in the end—
this careful hive we have built,
this architecture of survival—

may be the very thing
that calls forth
our collapse.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

11 April, 2026.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Once when he was in grade ten in 1990, his Bangla letter was selected as the best one from Deutsche Welle, Germany Radio that broadcast Bangla news for the Banglalee people. And he was given 50 Dutch Mark as his award. They would ask letters from the listeners to the news in Bangla and select one letter for the best one in every month.     

From 17 to 30 September, in 2018 he received a higher training in teaching English language in Kasetsart University of Thailand for secondary level students through a government order from education ministry. 

On 06 November 2015 he achieved Amjad Ali Mondal Medal for his contribution in education field by a development organization in the conference and felicitation function for the honorable personalities at Rajshahi College Auditorium. 

On 30 December 2017 from West Bengal in India he was declared a ‘Literary Charioteer’ in Bangobandhu Literary and World Bango Conference and they awarded him with a Gold Medal in their International Literary Conference and Prize Giving Ceremony.

In 2018, he achieved Prodipto Lirerary Award in Prodipto Literary Conference at Kesorhat, Rajshahi for poems in Bangla literature. He received honorary crest from the administration of Chapainawabganj District Literary Conference and Cultural Function in 2021 and 2022 consecutively. 

His poems have been published in many international online magazines such as Juntos Por las L Raven Cage Zine, and Area Felix.  His poems have been translated and published in Argentine and Serbian, and he participated in many international online cultural meetings. 

Essay and poem from Kandy Fontaine


Post‑Beat Poetics: Breath, Lineage, and the Ethics of Community By Kandy Fontaine aka Alex S. Johnson

Post‑Beat poetics begins where institutional Beat revival ends. It is not concerned with titles, laureateships, or the pageantry of literary inheritance. Instead, it returns to the first principles that animated the original movement: breath, embodiment, community, and the sanctity of the outsider voice.

The Beats were never a monolith. They were a constellation of seekers, queers, mystics, addicts, pacifists, anarchists, and wanderers. Their lineage was never meant to be curated by committees or guarded by gatekeepers. It was meant to be lived.

Post‑Beat poetics recognizes that the breath that animated Ginsberg’s long lines and Whitman’s yawp now moves through bodies historically excluded from the center of literary culture. Disabled bodies. Fat bodies. Queer bodies. Neurodivergent bodies. Bodies marked by trauma, poverty, and social disadvantage. These bodies are not deviations from the lineage—they are the lineage.

To write in a post‑Beat mode is to reject the stale rooms where trophies gather dust. It is to open the windows, to let the air in, to remember that poetry is not a competition but a communion. It is to stand with the ancestors—not as icons, but as kindreds whose breath still moves through us.

Post‑Beat poetics is not a return. It is an expansion. It is the recognition that the movement’s future lies not in institutional validation but in the lived experience of those who continue to write from the margins, from the body, from the breath.

It is a poetics of presence, resistance, and remembrance.

It is a poetics of community over hierarchy, lineage over branding, breath over bureaucracy.

It is, simply, a poetics of the living.

"You don't need a weatherman to tell you where the wind is blowing"-Bob Dylan

How quickly we
pivot
From
ethical foundation to
foundations
without them
So we must remember
the breath
It has been carried by
lungs of
generations
The bellows of
lineage
The great in
spir
a
tion
of
Legions
Before
During
and
To come
The heart: the core
beating
alive
open
Tremendous seeking for
true
kindreds
The heart
a muscle of memory as much as
circulation
The ring of the ancestors
their eyes, their
hair, their fingernails
Their nostrils
their
Scents
Sometimes a little
funky
Carried on the breeze
snuffled
snorted
Carried on shoulders
backs
limbs of post mechanics
Disabled
socially disadvantaged
fat
maligned
Queer
Gatekept
Out of the
region
The stale rooms where
trophies are
kept must be
Aired
the
Fuck
Out the
Rigid
enclosures
Where a handful of
anonymous judges
Decide who to
validate
Flung apart with a
tornado of
Just indignation
The skin
is
Holy the
Cells are
holy the
microbes that
crawl in our
Dust are
Holy and I stand with'
Blake and Ginzie I stand
with the
lineage of
kindreds and with the eye of
On
History condemn
The small minded
sacrilege that
Sets arbitrarily
apart that
Poisons
community
The water of
bodies the
Massive up
swelling of
Uncontrolled
anger
Bitterness
BIG MY GATE ENERGY
BIG MEAN GIRL ENERGY
BIG REGINA GEORGE VIBES
MY MY MY MY
PRECIOUS
Awards
ME ME ME
egotism masquerading
As
Whitmanesque
Sovereignty and
Cosmic
Bray
This is not right
I
Speak not for the moment
not for
This time but for
Times
Before
Present and accounted for
For the exiles and the humble of spirit
within the tradition
Feet planted
firmly in the turf of
Consensual
Reality
Breathe
stand and
In that breath and breadth
Command
yourself.

Poetry from Mesfakus Salahin

South Asian man with reading glasses and red shoulder length hair. He's got a red collared shirt on.
Mesfakus Salahin

‎The Silence of Multiplicity

‎Mesfakus Salahin, Bangladesh

‎I stay up all night

‎I tie my mind’s  horse

‎In an invisible thread

‎The horse flies away into solitude

‎The thread is weak

‎The earthly mind

‎Floating in the mysterious water

‎The self is always deceived

‎in the midst of the trance

‎The new-fashioned arrogance plays

‎Written in the dew of a leaf of grass

‎Returning again and again

‎The horse blows away the dust

‎Leaving everything behind, its own circle

‎In the circle of greed, in the crowd;

‎In the story of life, in the prose of wealth;

‎Only searching for oneself in the depths

‎In the deluge that pierces the veil of night

‎The intention of touching a straight line

‎Wakes up in the estuary

‎I cut the blood line

‎I cut the dark mountain and catch the guest

‎The sky descends with the color of the sky

‎The guest is lost in the unknown

‎All darkness becomes light through discussion

‎The soul enters the grave of the night and moves

‎The night does not remain in the grave

‎The greedy hand does not remain

‎Day does not remain

‎Whatever is colorful becomes bare

‎There remain deeds and lamentations

‎The dead river of boundless time have crossed

‎In the living grave, night remains, the illusion of night;

‎The shadow of day on the back of day

‎The multiplicity of self

‎The silence of multiplicity