Poetry from Don Bormon

Young South Asian teen with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a white collared shirt with a school emblem on the breast.
Don Bormon

The Beauty of Monsoon

The skies grow dark with a velvet grace,

Clouds gathering in a soft embrace.

A whisper stirs the sleeping trees,

And dances gently with the breeze.

First drops kiss the thirsty land,

Painting gold where dust once ran.

The earth exhales a musky sigh,

As peacocks call beneath the sky.

Fields awaken, lush and green,

Bathed in nature’s silver sheen.

Raindrops tap on roofs and glass,

A lullaby as moments pass.

Children splash in puddled lanes,

Their laughter rising with the rains.

Leaves glisten with jeweled light,

And frogs croak songs into the night.

Streams that slept begin to sing,

Revived by monsoon’s magic wing.

Each droplet writes a tale anew—

Of life, of hope, in shades of blue.

Don  Bormon is a student of grade ten in Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh.

Poetry from Sayani Mukherjee

Family

I live among the trees

The lush greenery of global earth

Moonstone of glowing night

Monsoon is spreading its wings

The Mayflower of seasonal changes

God is among us

Watching the children grow

The Godspeed of everything

Poetry music nature of dappled earth

Family of flora and fauna.

As I sip my morning June

With coveted rain and blessing.

There’s burden in the smiling

Like raindrops it flinches

Like yesterday the ghosts come true

My flickering plastic summer days

The yellow bird is near me

The shortness of the very minute

The roses of short summer afternoon

Afterwards it was the darling summer

The garlands of birdsong days

My glory of new edged sorrow

A pink promise of cut throat spring

As the memories cut open the morning sun

Poetry from John Dorsey

All Afternoon Long

past wordless fields

of music

& ruined barns

a tattered necktie

& a drawing of young trees

he knew every crazy road

from his favorite chair.

My Father’s God

blotted out the sun

the wind was perfect

the autumn world

marveled at me

in my one good suit.

A Desperate Neighborhood

at heart

america

is long mornings

with obvious motives

alone & delicate

silent hillsides of red poppies

poor sons & dreadful movies.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023) and Dead Photographs, (Stubborn Mule Press, 2024). He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Poetry from Svetlana Rostova

Writing

Words

Carved holes into

The walls, sunk

Their teeth

Into angry stares,

Peeled them off

Of faces and onto

My skin.

Wrapped themselves

Around me, too tightly

 to breathe.

My pen unwrapped my secrets

Turned their knives into my secret weapons

Saved me

Saved us

They made this house a home again.

slut-shaming+diets

isn’t it funny,

being a woman,

how all the sweet things

are sinful?

violence

screaming like the sea

falling like the sky

soaring as the eagles

violent as the waves.

rebirths

salt water

in my lungs,

waves reviving the sea.

ghosts

rewrite and rewrite

ghosts can become real

if you feed them

dipping my hand in the jar of memories

At first I don’t remember everything.

Just flashes

I am at the bottom of a cliff, my fingernails digging

desperately to stay afloat.

I have my head thrown back against the rocky wall,

 my hands limp at my sides.

I am sinking.

  But I just couldn’t stay down

I am running, jumping, leaping and feeling like I’m flying

Just to fall down to earth again.

All my useless tricks and shortcuts

 but I would do anything it took to STAY AFLOAT

Because i had to.

I am clinging to a rope, climbing higher and higher, my house of hards looking further away, knowing I could fall.

I did fall.

I fell and flew and jumped

but I kept swimming. I kept looking for the sunshine between cracks.

And it still wasn’t enough.

I don’t want to lie I don’t want to beg

And i don’t want to see myself

In my nightmares.

Poetry from John Thomas Allen

Ode To An Orgone Instructor At Mute Noon

Her hair braids in the hallucinatory hour, 

through night’s numinous negativa, 

the nocturne of Novalis’ flower. Her syllabus

is papyri in a second skin rising in coptic 

numbers in her slumber. There is a new form 

in her stanzaic hair toss, tones of lexical marigold, 

of holofoilhydrangea? Hair a sensory brushfire? 

Amen, announce the birdcall 

of her oratory. In torn patches 

of evening light, she is interpreter

to Plato’s star, scrunchie sewn 

to the circadian coordinates 

of her compact sound mirror. 

Orgone instructor at mute noon,

her mind on the pitching mound, 

baseball’s borderlands her first life. 

in the outfield’s scattered glory,

sky spattered like a fresh Pollock, 

blown like his sifting static sands

in i grovigli dell’anima. Amen, announce 

her birdcall in kairos, white jacket, her 

second skin read casually. I know that here 

is Woman made manifest, marigold 

maeanad, incorporeal; face blazed 

on a C-note, sinking in a sleepy jukebox.

her lucid lyric one of sight through 

one shock’s refractory tempest. 

John Thomas Allen is a 41 year old poet who is interested in experimental poems and particularly speculative ficton and poetry.  He lives in Upstate NY, and writes almost every day. Some things he sits back and laughs at.

Poetry from Saiprakash Kuntamukkala

Middle aged South Asian man with glasses, a mustache, and a dark suit and blue tie.

ON A RAINY DAY 

I sit near the window with a coffee cup

Looking at the rain

Each pearl 

Inviting me to hold

I offer my resistance 

The  rain beginning to sing 

A rhythmic tune

Tempting my soul

Memories of my childhood and youth 

Interlaced 

I can no longer resist 

As soon as I open the front door 

The first scent of petrichor

The first splash of showers

Leaving many pearls on my cheeks

Those pitter patter raindrops 

Whispering many secrets 

I too whisper back my moments of pain ,joy and bliss 

Those rainy days 

Where I used to sit alone 

My warm tears mixed with drops of rain

A perfect camouflage 

Those of my tears of joy too well disguised

The long winding paths 

Wave after wave of rain and memories entwined

A rainy day is a day of memories 

Not a few but many

Poetry from Turkia Loucif

Central Asian woman standing in front of a large red and white and black sign and a brown vase. She's got a microphone, headscarf, and purple coat.

WHEN EVENING COMES

When evening comes,

My morning revolution subsides

I live in my mother’s lap.

My scattered tresses arrange it

In a spring braid

Swim in her eyes and read the boat

And the lifetime oars

I accepted it and I repeat it for her ten

Scatter it on the hands and the corner

When evening comes,

I love my mother and her survivors.

The words of a poet taking her first steps

In words and prose whenever evening falls.

***

Poem (judgment in a rejected case)

Algerian poet Turkia Loussif

The lawyer collected my case papers

And he said: your case is rejected.

The judge will reject it

And the offender rejects it

And the violinist rejects it

Your crime, Ma’am, is that you dropped the victim.

Your crime ma’am what happened to him

Crazy singing

Crazy writes love words

I said, “I’m innocent, sir.”

And the rain showers are witness

And my broken rain

And my short skirt

And my hair flowing

Witnesses, sir.

We didn’t see the victim.

The lawyer returns and checks the papers.

He found a poem he read.

She shivered and shouted, “I’m accused!”

The lawyer read …

She dragged my killer and her broken emollient

I got wet and squeezed the skirt

Slim figure, wet butterfly

Jana Haha trembling and eulogizing

I dried it and gave it my perfume

I perfumed and strutted and left

My perfume draws me to it

The thief of my heart shivered wet

And I shivered in hope

And my perfume is a witness to it

___

DON’T LEAVE…

Don’t leave

The soul accompanies you

And you slip from me

I’m the dead woman.

After counting the steps of departure

Don’t leave…

The Miqat is October

Leaf I was flowering

Until

Don’t leave.

All the seasons you were with me

And leave

In my last chapters

After inhaling all the winds

Console me now, don’t you fool around?

My tears dried up

My soul is burned

You made me a graveyard for my sorrows

And to whine

Don’t leave.

WITH A DRY OLIVE BRANCH CARVED A SPEAR

With a dry olive branch carved my spear

And I call Nidal and Basil and Marai

I am the sculptor, spears and conquerors

And I am the shooter and I am the one who is right with my spear

Shrapnel and shrapnel in Gazaya

And the three of us were in a holy wrath.

Guys and guys and they are like me

Spears and spears in the breasts of Moshe

The spears fell and they fell,

And the three of us fell with the coffin.

And the dry olive branch remains in my palm.

_________________

Delightful butterfly 

I ask her, why are you hovering around me!?

Her eyes speak green. 

You land on the dry branch!! It is affected 

She sheds dew from her eyes on yellowish paper

I see you my mother and the world remembers me and more

You look like a big butterfly, even more. 

She was delightful and you were the youngest cheerful 

Did I answer your question? 

Tell me how were you 

And where are the butterflies in the flowering field? 

 Showed the cheerful great influence  

And she moved her wings. 

  The weight of her wings    

And her eyeballs were teary

I’m no longer the cheerful butterfly. 

Be the cheerful butterfly. 

The field is green 

And the cast is red 

And the dew is dripping 

Stay away from my dry branch and more 

 Threads weave and multiply 

And wrap you around like me. She was looking.

More of Turkia Loucif’s work here.

Loucif is an Algerian writer who grew up in a family of many members and lived in a house left over from the houses of French centenarians in the neighborhood of arches. Her passion began with telling oral stories to her two sisters before bed, her mother realized her talent and she loved nature, flowers and squirrels, she frequented the school library and read novels in French. She dreamed of becoming a journalist and used to take this profession as a child, she used to make her notebook a microphone and talk to some of her family members. Her writing style caught the attention of her teacher, who registered her in a literary competition and won first place at the age of 12.  

She published the novel “The Legend of the Squirrel” in 2016. Another novel “Virginia Park” was published in 2018. She published her first short story collection “Aboud Cannot Endure the Whip” in 2021. Her play “Dance of the Puppets” was adapted from her story “The Puppeteer Moussa and the Others.”   

The Squirrel was a bestseller with Golden Jerusalem House, which accompanied the author over nine years of participation in book fairs. This novel was selected in the literature of young people through a competition in which the participants of the Ajlana Library participated and in which a boy and two girls won. As for her collection of short stories, she presented critical readings by critics from Algeria and the Arab world. Among her global achievements is the book Together All of America by the American principled writer Kogetim Hadjari, which she considers Turkish in her honor.

Currently, she is a writer and has a fictional novel The Legend of a Squirrel published in 2016 and signed in front of readers at the International Book Fair in 2017, then presented a romantic novel entitled Virginia Park, then presented her collection of stories Abboud does not bear the whip. Currently she works in the field of cultural journalism in Al-Masar Al-Arabi newspaper.

She won second place in the Arabic Story Competition by the “Narrators Sing” club. Her story “The Squirrel” won first place in the “Tell, Scheherazade” story competition. She received honors on Press Day from the Governor of the state of Médéa. She was honored in children’s literature with a squirrel statue for her novel “The Legend of the Squirrel” in June 2024 by Dar Kuds.