Kodirova Barchinoy Shavkatovna was born on September 15, 2008. She is a 9th grade student of the 15th general secondary school in the city of Karshi Kashkadarya region and is 16 years old.
Euphoria with every breath? He’s underwater waiting for his lungs to fill.
Four of five are men But she’s the one they cry for.
Men’s corpses sink. From weights that couldn’t be lifted.
Men, too embarrassed to ask for help, too hurt to live.
“Those weren’t real men.” “It’s their fault!” “They weren’t strong enough.” The men drowned And the bodies rotted. While the passersby held their breath.
Part 2: The Cycle
The boy was taught to treat girls kindly. Because he was born into a man’s role. While the girls were taught what to expect from men. And the women made the boy apologize for being born.
So the boy drank at the bar, cowering from his son who needed to cry Like his father had before him. But he drank his tears away, Like his father had before him. And right before him lay his father’s corpse.
The boy repeated his father’s last words in his head. “I see you.” Tears dripped onto the father’s blank face.
“ICU,” the boy repeated. The boy’s gaze shifted from his father’s face To the direction his father faced. He drowned in his tears. Matching a shade of the oceanic sign
which read, “ICU,” “Intensive Care Unit, section five, room two.”
Gabriel Kang is a ninth grade writer and aspires to become a professional rock climber. At Ruth Asawa SOTA, (currently majoring in creative writing), the lesson plans are currently covering poetry. Through this group, he’s learned to create and grow his own writing voice and has been actively getting stronger as a writer. While in rock climbing, he attends nationals every year, competes in open categories, and is always challenging himself. Through rock climbing, he relieves his stress and takes action towards his goals, while also further enhancing his writing skills from the creativity and growth mindset the sport provides.
You are Unlacing my heart’s matrix You are Brittle lacunae in my bones You are Baffled buffoon in my box You are My balatron from Barnum and Bailey Sputtering Inflected infected lexemes and locutions Morphological languid linguistics Brought down to ex haus tion… Having ab sconded from your flagRant lips All flags are waVinG wAr nings in wailing w inds Like a mal adJusted jester you jUst sit there Barely jEsting Like a Therapist on Theraflu So what am I to do?
Trounced goaded by your giant girth
Inside I am screaming!
Like a trapped Slattern to a pillory
Sh irking fictitious flames stolen from Zeus! You are an onus to my sanity
And an anchor to my vanity So the answer is NO! I don’t want to marry you! You are a bawdy brawny bozo! As we say in French: “Un grivois sans voix…”
Yet still you are MY burly brethren boor…
Giving fit formidable dry thumps… ˈyəummy- Come here…you BIG dumb c*m dump!
On dine ensemble ce soir, chéri?
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American poet, educator, author of four books and a literary arts student at Harvard University Online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, the University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon and elsewhere. He has been published in prestigious publications such as Muddy River Poetry Review, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.
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, and Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023). He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.
I once stood at the edge of a rusty, old bridge, looming over the abandoned train station below. To this day, I still wonder why I was drawn to that station, and why I wanted to end my life there. I come from a refugee family, a family that knew nothing about life in exile except how to eat, make money, drink, and work until you’d smoked through an entire pack of cigarettes. My parents were too old to work but too young to truly enjoy life. I had a twin brother who died just seconds after we were born. Maybe that’s why my mother always saw me as “the special one”—though never in a way that felt special to me.
My father cared about my health, but he cared more about the money I gave him from whatever jobs I could manage. Sometimes, he’d spend it on lottery tickets or buy my mother expensive gifts for no reason at all. On my birthday, all they talked about was my dead twin brother. I never felt their presence, their support. Eventually, I stopped going to school because I had no friends, and I lacked the knowledge I so desperately needed. Everyone from my high school moved on to successful lives. Even Linda—the only girl I ever truly loved.
It was love at first sight with her, but life dealt us both terrible hands. She survived a horrific car crash that left her with brain damage, but her parents weren’t so lucky. Afterward, Linda moved in with her blind, widowed grandmother and dropped out of school. She ended up working as a stripper at a well-known club, lying about her age with a fake ID.
I’d go there sometimes, buy an ordinary beer, and sit pretending I was waiting for a friend. I avoided making eye contact with anyone except the bartender, a divorced woman who seemed as lost as I was. She and I would have fun together occasionally when her kids were with their father in another city. My life was never important; I felt like an unwanted child in God’s land. My days were dull, each one bleeding into the next unless I was too drunk or too depressed to notice.
Then one day, the bartender took her own life. They found her hanging in her living room. No one knew why or how it had come to that. Her children were oblivious, but her ex-husband heard the news and eventually sent them to an orphanage. They were too young to understand that their mother’s death was linked to her battle with alcoholism.
After that, I developed a new habit—going to the abandoned train station to think about ending it all. I felt like there was no one left for me. Who did I have to live for? I wasn’t old, but the grey hairs were already creeping in, along with endless negative thoughts. The bartender had been the only one who knew about my visits to that station. After she died, I felt more alone than ever. Sometimes, I would stay at her house, and she’d treat me like a boyfriend, a lover, even if it was just for a few hours. But after she was gone, the silence became unbearable.
Linda noticed the change in me. I became quieter, more withdrawn. She started talking to me again, trying to reach out. One night, I told her everything that had been weighing on me. I even told her that it would be my last night at the club. When I said that, she started to cry, and so did I. I ran out, not wanting her to see me break down, and I ended up at the train station again, ready to end it all.
But then Linda appeared, wearing a man’s autumn jacket. She screamed my name, ran toward me, and hugged me so tight I could barely breathe.
She whispered, “I love you. Hug me tight and let the world fade away. Your embrace is my refuge, where I feel truly alive.”
With a broken smile, I replied, “When I see you or talk to you, I don’t have to work so hard to be happy. It just happens.”
We kissed under the night sky and took an Uber back to the club, where Linda handed in her resignation. For good.
