Poetry from Pat Doyne (one of two)

THERE IS NO JOY IN MUDVILLE

            This sad election—Damn! What can we say?

            I’d like to scribble words to heal the gash,

            blunt the axe that hacks away at roots

            of law, equality, free speech, free press;

            shreds decency and truth, ends founders’ hopes.

            Yes, some of these ideals are purely bilge–

            all men created equal, high-toned words

            that never matched the acts of men and courts:

            tribal treaties broken; Jim Crow laws;

            subject territories stripped of rights.

            But who’d foresee our people would acclaim

            a fat old man who led an insurrection;

            a rapist, fraudster– jury-tried, convicted;

            a leader who pooh-poohed a deadly plague

            that took millions of lives; a sycophant

            of Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Hitler’s Reich;

            a racist who hates immigrants of color.

            Once Epstein’s bosom buddy, now a pal

            of Elon Musk. A man who owes big bucks

            for court fines, so his favor can be bought.

            The voting public hails this man their hero.

            Gives him power, approves immunity

            from oversight. His cronies make the laws.

            His judges make him king, with unchecked rule.

            He said we’ll never vote again. He means it.

            These lines have gotten dark, depressing, grim.

            No joy in Mudville- our democracy

            swung again and missed—and that’s strike three.

            All I see ahead is blighted, bleak.

            Some say, “Shut up!” It’s dangerous to speak.

            Copyright 11/2024               Patricia Doyne

Vignette from Peter Cherches

At the Diner

The two extraterrestrials went to a diner near the entrance to Manhattan’s Lincoln Tunnel to try classic earth food. They took a booth. The waitress, whose name was Florence, and who would refuse service to anybody who called her Flo, gave them a couple of menus and said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Hons.”

“Does she think we’re Hons?” one extraterrestrial asked the other, in their own language, of course.

“I don’t know why she would,” the other replied. “We don’t have scales or wings.”

They perused the menus, and soon Florence returned to take their order.

“So, what can I get you?” Florence asked.

“I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich,” one said.

“I’ll have a hamburger,” the other said.

“How would you like your burger?”

“Probably very much,” the extraterrestrial said.

“No, how would you like it cooked. Rare? Medium? Well?”

“Rare sounds expensive, so I guess well sounds good.”

“All right, one grilled cheese, and one burger, well. I’ll be back shortly with your orders.”

The two extraterrestrials looked around the diner and commented on how funny all the diner diners looked. Then Florence returned with their food.

“Thanks,” both extraterrestrials said in unison.

“Can I ask you folks something?” Florence asked.

“Sure,” the grilled cheese extraterrestrial said.

“Where are you folks from?”

The burger extraterrestrial told her the name of their planet.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

Burger extraterrestrial repeated the name of their planet. It was nothing like Florence had ever heard before.

“Don’t know it,” Florence said. “Must be in Jersey.”

Peter Cherches’ latest book is Everything Happens to Me, an episodic novel about the misadventures of a Brooklyn writer named Peter Cherches.

Excerpt from Peter J. Dellolio’s novel The Confession

Gray book cover for Peter J. Dellolio's The Confession. Two images, one of a gray lizard on a black background, and another of a door with a smiling face drawn on it, next to each other.

At the end I lived in rented rooms.  Desolate side streets.  No elevator.  Creaking steps.  Paint chips in the water glass.  Cockroaches in the bathtub.  Bed by the wall.  Dark convoluted mattress stains like an inkblot ghost.  No hot water.  Smell of old blood in the closet.  Home for a week, home for a month.  Then another city.  Another room.  Another name on the newspaper.  Another set of identification letters for the television stations.

If he was in the South, I traveled south.  When he ventured West, I followed west.  The moonlight shines behind his fingers as he picks up the knife.  The shadows unfold as I raise my hand.  I wipe my forehead.  I close my eyes.  

I feel the wounds.  I hear the screams.

Is this the room where the pregnant girl perspired during the hasty abortion that ruined the cheap bedspread?  Is this the closet where the old watchman hanged himself, unable to hear the sound of his own voice?  Maybe it is the place where the weary salesman raised the revolver to his temple.  At that moment, a child sitting in a train on the elevated platform just beyond the salesman’s window put into his mouth a hard candy shaped like a bullet.  Or could this be the last room for a killer?  A deranged man?  A monster unable to refrain from the dark urge, deliriously craving the final peace of his own destruction?  Every room has a death story.  Every room is another museum filled with the irremovable or unnoticed traces of someone’s fatal moments.

There was the vigorously applied razor blade left imbedded in the chunky soap bar.  Dark flakes of hemoglobin were scattered across the white rectangle.  They blew away as I raised the bathroom window with a bang.  Three greasy fingerprints on the dull grey fuse box panel prefaced an outline of feet scorched on the shabby wood floor.  Shards of a broken iodine bottle in the hallway leading to the toilet.  Soiled grasp marks on the matrix of jaundiced damp sewage pipes.  Nylons twisted into a noose lying like a coiled snake in a heap by the fire escape.  An iridescent scabrous square of rat poison in the center of the loop.  Crusts of rancid vomit in the Bible drawer. Maggots pinching through the Revelations.  

A symbolic image, no doubt.  The kind of thing that might appear in some controversial film about damnation, or the dissolution of religious belief.  Dearest father, I did not forget your lessons.  Everything I have seen throughout my life has been viewed within my own personal frame.  Without really knowing why, the importance of a thing always depended on its visual content.  I never understood the world, or its people, or its objects, unless I was making some kind of visual conclusion about the relationships between things.  I could never resist what I must call a supreme demand, from somewhere within my nature, to establish and construe elaborate connections between all that my senses digested.  It is as though my subconscious was engaged in some kind of esoteric archaeology, as though everything that could be depicted and suggested, especially all things that seemed destined to have a relationship, that somehow all this was already so, had been so, and now it was the duty of my mind’s divination to uncover what was, to reconstruct and display it, like a great structure or artifacts uncovered in a dig.  It was as though my imagination had inherited some kind of perverted obligation from the teachings of my father, or perhaps my imperfect soul had made it perverse.  Now I feel a great shame in all this, I can see the great reluctance that prevented me from true communion with others, yet I cannot deny the great understanding that depended on the power of the imagination, the interiority of consciousness, the relativity of perception and cognition. Did I unwittingly turn your wisdom into a comedy of errors, dear father?  Did I somehow turn your spiritual warnings about the dangers of illusion into a rationale for the processes of illusion?  I know you were genuine in your heart.  You never gave me a stone when I asked you for bread.  You never gave me a serpent when I asked you for a fish.  Somehow the light of my body depended upon an evil eye, the false camera eye that filled my body with light that is darkness.  

         Shotgun blast blood outline, contours like a hologram fixed upon the wall after the trigger was pulled.  Here the body remained too long, and there was too much heat, too little maid service.  Gas mask swinging on the knob of the cellar door, hollow eyes sunken deep like a desert bone animal face.  Cracked plastic tube of the hair blower in the empty stained fish tank once filled with water.  Eyelashes brittle next to the coral house on the bottom, evidence of a successful electrocution long ago.  Hysterical suicide confessions scrawled in lipstick across the large pages of the telephone book still in place atop the decrepit wooden stand by the lobby desk.  Stench of the manager’s fingers as he flips through the book in search of a clean page.  Monotony of his practiced gestures as he hands me the key, looks over the desk to be sure I have luggage, places the pen in the center of the decaying registration log, sits back on his stool, lighting another cigarette as he watches me ascend the stairs, wondering if I will become another suicide, another body carried out on the red rubber stretcher.  A large cockroach does not escape the trained assault of his shoe.  Its inner matter bursts with a gush as I turn the key to my room.  Slowly the bent dusty blades of a fan turn about.  The cockroach antennae twist a few times.  I shut the door.

Older light skinned man with a serious expression and a dark colored coat and gray sweater in front of a canvas of projected lights.
Peter J. Dellolio

The Confession is available here from Barnes and Noble.

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 Skeleton of Nobody

The spring weeps

Tears come from the mountains 

The fountains are dry

All the flowers are in sad mode

The hearts are burning

Everything is empty

Where is the sea of happiness? 

It died in the first World War.

Where is peace? 

It died in the second World War. 

Where is present?

It is in pain, sufferings and curse.

Where is love?

It is in the womb.

Where is civilization?

It is in the tomb.

Where is humanity?

It is only fossil. 

Where is men and women ? 

They are absent

Who are you?

A skeleton of nobody.

Poetry from O’tkir Mulikboyev

Central Asian middle aged man in a collared and buttoned gray top and black dress pants and shoes crouches down in front of a statue of Santa Claus and a decorated Christmas tree.

Homeland, I Sing of You

In the white and black passageway,  

I am stepping one by one.  

With words in my hand… a single tune,  

Homeland, I sing of you.

The path of my life is long thread,  

I do not know where it will end.  

If they say, “Love,” I will be filled,  

Homeland, I love you deeply.

Is it a tree, one branch,  

Even if I’m alone, I will rejoice.  

If they set me ablaze,  

I will burn as “Homeland.”

The spring water is oh so sweet,  

I will drink it to my heart’s content.  

What is value, they may ask?  

Homeland, I understand you.

To my father and mother,  

I will open my arms wide.  

To my most sacred phrase,  

Homeland, I will write of you.

O’tkir Mulikboyev Qo’chqor o’g’li  

Teacher of Primary Education  

75th School, Qo’shrabot District,  

Samarkand Region, Uzbekistan

SNOW WITNESS, LIGHT WITNESS

A lonely wanderer sits in the silence,  

The heavens do not spread the grievances of yesterday.  

A feeble message asking for forgiveness.  

On the evening when the moon sets, my thoughts linger.

Cold winter brings sparks in the snow,  

Autumn has gathered the wanderer’s blanket early.  

The hunter will not give up his warm place,  

Longing torments, trust is fading away.

Days and weeks remain in the past,  

Pride does not allow remembrance of the greetings.  

Perhaps it will rise, self-concealing,  

The wretched love has captured the heart.

On the dark night, he heads back home,  

Who knocks behind the window?  

The vision of the girl comes to mind,  

He hurriedly looks at the window, silent.

He returns again, he gazes once more.  

Snow falls, hearts melt in its warmth.  

Today is a symbol of the happiness he’s received,  

The girl appears, preserving the ring in her palm.

Wrapped in a passionate smile, the world unfolds.  

Clouds disperse, and the moon captures the light.  

Two youthful hearts that have forgotten grievances.  

Snow witness, light witness, sorrow dissipates.

Snow is Falling

Snow is falling, wishes abound,  

Like silk draping in golden hands.  

Children run eagerly from behind,  

Hurry up, dear Snowman, to our land.

Let sparkles scatter across the ground,  

Whoever enters the path of joy.  

Some will turn into gnomes, it’s profound,  

Holding sweet cotton in each little boy.

The fir trees sway, showing their height,  

While little hearts spin with delight.  

If the lights flicker and fade away,  

Joy ignites on faces, bright as day.

The forest becomes a lively scene,  

The grand show begins, it’s quite a dream.  

As the forest shadows come out to play,  

Fox, rabbit, bear, and wolf display.

A moment of awe gleams from the eyes,  

It wraps the heart in tender ties.  

The snowy peaks, cloaked in white’s embrace,  

Even the elders feel thrilled in this space.

Shaking off worries, carefree we stand,  

Hopes of children join hand in hand.  

Feelings of youth come rushing back,  

A sense of happiness, filling the crack.

The sound of hooves rings throughout the air,  

“Snowman!” cries the little ones in flair.  

With a long beard resting on his chest,  

A sack of gifts sprawled on his quest.

All of existence lends itself to song,  

The snow melts away the heart’s frozen throng.  

As I peek from the window at dawn,  

A wondrous world waits, brightly drawn.

Believing in fairytales, I feel so right,  

In this moment, I’m a child of delight.

Poetry from Lan Qyqalla

Older middle aged man with grey hair, reading glasses, and a small black bird on his hand. He's got a blue collared shirt and is standing in front of an open window.

AUTUMN LOVE IN PRISTINA

We met in the fall,

in the amphitheater you tweet…

the streets of Pristina,

in the cold night,

shoot me like a mountain fairy.

the stars were aligned

that summer evening in your tear,

we were both lost in the untouched oasis

and the lips stopped at the sounds FlokArtë.

Why did we travel, tell me why

in the cold winter and snow,

the beaming sun gave us a gift,

you ray of sunshine lit me siashra.

Why did we run to the meadows, why

in the early spring fragrance of love

we pray to the flowers of the green field,

embraced we felt exotic intoxication.

Valentine’s Day

Lora

embroidered Valentine’s Day

on the map of love

Egnatia-Naisus street

and in passing I also took

the honey flavor

from the hot ashes

of the estinguished fire.

Lora

like a blonde ladybug in the meteorite

nobody whispers

on the map of love

and the star twister out of exhausted longing

in the timeless feeling

brought the freshness of age

the kiss of the mountain like Hera from Olympus

departed in the endless today

night.

Lora

frozen in heat

slightly heated to the bosom of love

“I’m very cold

Lan takes me with him

tonight

I do not want flowers

a white rose

to have for Valentine’s Day! “

CV / LAN QYQALLA 

Lan graduated from the Faculty of Philology in the branch of Albanian language and literature in Prishtina, from Republika of Kosovo. He is a professor of the Albanian language in the Gymnasium. Lani is the Editor-in Chief of the international cultural and artistic magazine ORFEU, which is published in many languages in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. He is also the editor of the cultural show ORFEU on TV Jupiteri7 channel on YouTube. He wrote poems, stories, drama, novels in Pristina. He has written in many newspapers, portals, Radio, TV, and Magazines in the Albanian language and in English, bangu, Romanian, Francophone, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Hindu, Spanish, Korean etc.