OUR PLACE IN SPACE


Our egg and our girdle – from our toelines to stars’ beyonds,

edgeless sky occupies. Continents and constellations

indicate sky’s compass points in all directions.

Here, and there, it corrals our air. Sky’s only brake is our imagination:

We house our deities in this infinite bubble, map every manifestation

of this cosmic envelope. We extract our character and extort destinies

through constant observation, keen ingenuity, endless speculation

as we contemplate wonderingly at sky’s progress and creation.


AMERICSSON


Whores parade their hymens

and diplomats their swords.

Priests display their diamonds.


With confusion since birth

futures ignore their pasts.


Cowards hang their medals

and gluttons wear their fasts.


The sugar tastes bitter

from the sweat of the slaves.


All the stones and banners

can't cover all the graves.


The lame think they're dancers.

The blind behave like seers.

The deaf play musician.


Hiding behind paved mirrors,

the meek show ambition.


Our clear insight is blurred.



O NIGHT, THE DOMAIN OF OUR DREAMS


The full world by day

is a speckled shade,

but colors at night

all coordinate.


Our humanity

claims its sanity’s

enshrined in marble

but held together

by spirit and breath,

yet we live in dust

and we choose to starve

amidst much rich stock.


Only dark’s tattoo

clears checkered shadows.


THE SINS OF POETS AND PASTORS


When preachers and poets exercise

our metaphorical rhetoric

we much prefer the dramatic

--the pitchfork of lightning--

above the anticlimactic

--a blanket of sunshine.

The wrinkled and crippled shall arise

sooner than the smooth and the spry.

The salve is shadowed by the sting,

and Found, by Wandering.

The tornado and the torrent

and the volcano’s ring

are prized beyond plastic ornaments.

We tend to the tortured and the tried.


TELL ME. ARE YOU SURE?


I wonder if once half our limbs were wings, like a fowl,

or if they all had thumbs once. Or is that only now?

The asker wants to know.

Do we see us in mirrors, or need a fluoroscope?

Are lovers on the level or are they on a slope?

This doubter wants to know.

Was Tigris always Tigris or once was it Paradise?

Was Jesus a carpenter or always just a christ?

This skeptic wants to know.

Are the answers on the internet? Or in ourselves?

Or should I communicate with oracles and elves?

This searcher wants to know.

We learn through maturity? But ages are cages….

Or from these ancient books of fingered, faded pages?

Don’t we all want to know?



QUANDARY



Flatter me – Do I receive or repeat?

With contempt or reciprocity?


THE PROCESS


My appetite

is my engine.


I transubstantiate

the wine of night

to morning wind,

body to pulsed headache state.

And I might write

undisciplined

doggerel to celebrate.


I eat that shite.

I take it in

and digest it. I translate

rails into kites

and doubt to djinn;

vomit; and hope it pulsates.

The hardest day

I was young then. The sky was full of stars, the yard was full of dust, the water was flowing from the ponds, it was as if the darkness of the sky was disturbing me. I was in sweet sleep; at one point, a sad, quiet sound was heard from under my ear. When I slowly opened my eyes, my mother was standing in front of me, pale as if she was afraid of something. It was already late. Outside, the dogs were barking and the wind was blowing. 

My mother said in a sad voice: my daughter is not feeling well, my blood pressure is rising for some reason. I ignored my mother's words and continued to sleep. Even then, my poor mother would not wake me up, saying that she is tired, let my daughter sleep. When I wake up in the morning, our yard is dirty. Before, when I woke up, my mother would prepare breakfast and greet me with a sweet smile. 

And I didn't ask anyone where my mother was, and I wasn't even interested. I wonder why I did that. If those times were to come back again, I would not smile even a step from my mother's side. Later I found out that my mother was in the hospital. Once I found out that my mother was in the hospital; I didn't hear from mom saying how are you? One day when we were sitting with my brothers, eadam came; They said, "Go, I will take you to your mother." We were very upset by what my father said. Even though my mother was in the hospital, my father became a mother instead of my mother. 

They didn't say they were missing my mother and we went to the hospital. My mother was sleeping. There were many medicines on my mother's table. I started to get scared seeing these and said mother in a low voice. Then my mother opened her eyes and started stroking my head. "Mom, go, let's go home," I said, crying. At that moment, my mother closed her eyes and took her hands from my head. Then the doctors came and begged us to come out, and I said to my father; I asked if my mother would not return home. 

My dad; They read that your mother will definitely come home and my daughter will cook sweet food for you. In my life, I thought that my mother will not come home anymore, she will not cook us sweet food, and every day I asked God to heal my mother. Even if I stood or walked, my mother would not leave my mind. The world seems dark to my eyes. Even my mother entered and exited my dreams. 

One day when I came home from school, there were too many people in our house. I was scared to see them. It was as if my heart stopped, and when I ran into the house, my mother was in front of me; they said happy birthday my daughter. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was very happy to see my mother. Then I forgot that it was my birthday. After that day, I did not want to take a single step in front of my mother. These events were the hardest day of my life. I was very afraid of losing my mother. Mother means the closest friend, the best confidant. So let's protect our mothers. We should give them more love than before. Our mothers are our heaven.

Boronova Sevinch was born on November 4, 2006 in Dehkanabad district of Kashkadarya region. Currently, she is a student of the 1st stage of the Academic Lyceum of Karshi State University.

After Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

          For things they did not tell us:
        “Life is our teacher, & our tears,
          sighs and sweats; the levies.”

Mother told me that father was a good man
& I should tread the path he led. & because
she was my mother, saying no was a metaphor
for calling myself unfilial.
I echoed the songs of his footprints, hoping
to reach the shore, but yonder was his
footprints echoing some faded tunes that
reeked of rusty bones. There the stamps
on the sand became broad & heavy; my feet,
swollen. I folded my hopes into a talisman,
hung it on my suprasternal notch–to drag
this broken body to the shore. Yesterday,
mother called me a gentle man (like
father's mother had done) & I smiled.
I smiled, shrouding my cries & pangs under
a fake face. I knew father, too, was a hostage
like me for there were tears and sweats
in the wake of his footprints & yet, he died.
He died like a contused chameleon,
shredded off of his color to look for another
at the shore, but couldn't reach the shore.
But because she's my mother, I couldn't teach her
that we all had sketches of our destinations.
For here, we grew up, we grew up to brook
the path on which life put our feet.
And the courses to our own shores
were the roads not taken.

Arikewusola Abdul Awal writes from Oyo state. His poems have appeared on ila magazine, willi wash, Teen Lit journals, Literary Yard, The Yellow House, Eboquills, Afrihill Press, Spillwords magazine, Thirty Shades of Roses Anthology, Broken chunks of hearts, World Voice Magazine and elsewhere.

When he is not writing, he is found reading or watching movies.

Seeing Desperate Lives

The photos make me feel a hundred years old:

Schoolroom made rubble, skeletal steel frames

of desks somehow standing, withstanding the blast;

exhausted fireman sitting in the living room

of a burning house, admitting defeat; woman

with concerned face dappled by sun through leaves

of her yard's beautiful trees leaving her village house,

one forearm holding a fluffy white kitten, its face

buried in her shoulder.



They are desperate, and I tire of mainlining

their anxiety, so I look up from the phone

into my rearview, at the sun-scorched asphalt --

the road beyond my yard's tree cover

is molten with summer sun.  I wheeled in

and looked up Ukraine, like I do at least once a day,

and it makes me feel a hundred years old.  So,

I do the only thing I can think of to forget:

step out of my pick-up, take shoes off toe to heel,

pull off socks, walk my pine straw and oak leaf drive

onto the sizzle heat of road, and its sudden tactile feel

in the flesh of my feet consumes me.



And I am here, now, away from war, and soon

I am young again, walking barefoot

the hot paved parking lot to the state park spring

that began a river in Florida, that mine

and two other families caravanned to in summers,

the hours of swimming, the picnics in a blanket of grass

by sedges, herbs, and wildflowers at river's edge.

Until -- the burn's ministry becomes too much,

and I walk back onto the cool of pine straw, open

the truck door for the phone, look again

at the places I will never go to anymore.



After Russia invaded, I talked with my Iraq vet friend

David who told me of two acquaintances

who went into Ukraine to rescue the in-laws

of one of them, native Ukrainians, and I said

I could no longer handle war psychologically:

my mind hearing the ominous thump

of helicopter rotors, distant artillery, pounding

"danger close" seconds later, high flying planes,

birds of prey dropping dots of bombs that ride

gravity's slipstream to earth, plowing earthquakes

that reverberate, spit heat and flame

against everything natural.



He tells me of the healing power of yoga,

how he's started yoga teacher training.

Next time we talk, I'll have to tell of walking

a hot street.  I look again at one of the photos.

I'm well removed now, twice, through the lens

of the camera, through the lens of the phone,

but I remember the pain of watching starving dogs

being shot by laughing Iraqi soldiers, and I wonder

where the woman will take her cat.




Year 2, Ukraine



It was last year that the shelling first disturbed

the deep time of an old village, hub for farmers

and beekeepers



Now tanks roll into the square again, one crushing

the stone walls of a central fountain, old coins

fall with the water from its heavy treads



In the corner of the square, from the alley by

the Armenian church, a shadow strides, moves

into the square



Pacing here and there erratically, palm to temple,

this walking wound gathering breath to force insults

in growing gasps



This man whose family was killed in last year's shelling

The Polish radio says his government is winning,

at 10:00 and 5:00 daily



He thinks the war has already gone on forever  Bitterly,

he thinks the war has already killed him  A soldier shouts

"Khokhol!" in the language of bears



Waving him closer from the height of his round, iron hatch,

the soldier points a pistol  This dead man loads his mouth

with more insults and rushes forward



Into the loop of everlasting war  In the sky's drizzle on his face

are tears that were once salty seas




Prayer for a Savior




Come for your gentle people

who shudder in this darkness



bring your sovereign brightness

unbreakable shield of goodness



let misfortune, famine, disease,

war, become faraway sounds



make them gray at the temples,

let them fade away



give us a spell of warm sun, soft

winds, clear rain over green valleys



we know death is stronger than

suffering -- may you open its horizon



of strength in this living season and

forgive our fragile clay, wounded



hearts, that for heaven's peace

can't wait.

A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Misfit Magazine, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Mother

I get it when it's full of flowers scent
I can't find a single scent
I can't distinguish my mother
From a thousand tosser

Mercy is a river, my pure-hearted mother
I have only one value
To be alive for my child
Eat our sorrow day and night

He gave me a white wash
Until adulthood
I will see my child's happiness 
Give us a lifetime.