I started writing at the age of 52. I was influenced and inspired by my poets and journalists’ friends.
We had a cultural forum back then in 2012 and there we would gather around every day at eight o’clock in the evening to listen to our friends recite their writings of poems, literature essays and short stories and after the reading is all finished another session would start to discuss and critics their poetry works, all that had a great positive impact on me to write poetry, short stories and to be involved in other literary works.
2. What is the message you want to give through your poems?
As a poet I want to communicate various messages, from expressing personal emotions and life experiences to exploring universal aspects of nature, beauty, hope, peace, love, harmony and social justice and to convey a profound message about life and human values. I want to emphasize the importance of kindness, empathy, and living with honesty and integrity.
Plus, I want to encourage the readers to appreciate the beauty around them and to remain hopeful and positive even in difficult times.
3. Do you believe that the new generation is reading and caring about literature?
Young people may not always read long novels or traditional sonnet poetry, but yes, they do read and care about literature in shorter format such as e-books on their “smart” devices and from seeing them participating and mingling in different social media online and from the number of people I learn of annually who do attend books fairs and buy books.
4. How do you feel when you see your poems published in several foreign sites?
In my own thoughts and perspectives, poetry is an expression of the incomparable meditation and contemplation of the human minds.
Seeing my poems published on foreign websites gives me a combination of feelings of broader reach, validations and significant connections with wider international audiences, making my voice heard by different people of different cultures and nations and successful transmission of my poetry and literature works beyond borders.
5. Do you want to share with our readers a phrase that changed your life?
Yes, definitely, I do, here it is: “Today is the opportunity to build the tomorrow you want”
6. What is your next project?
Well, I am happy to announce a book I have been working on with poet Kristy Raines from the USA, which will be published soon on Amazon, titled “Echoes Across the Oceans”. It is an anthology of some of our favorite poems.
NASSER ALSHAIKHAHMED, SAUDI POET AND WRITER, SAUDI ARABIA
Nasser Alshaikhahmed is a Saudi Arabian bilingual poet and writer. He writes poetry and short stories in Arabic and English. He attended college at Sonoma State University in California, USA. Although his field of study is far from literature, his soul is immersed in poetry and writing.
Nasser Alshaikhahmed has translated pieces from English to Arabic for several poets from USA, Japan and Australia, and published his translations in local journals.
He has published a poetry book in Arabic,” “العرافة ara’fa”, in 2013 through Arabian House for Science. He has published an English poetry book titled “Whispered Vows”, August 2023 by publisher Jeanette Tiburcio Marquez through the Stockholm Project.
He came in second place at the Zheng Nian Cup China Literary Award in 2023. He was awarded on October 14, 2023, by the L.A. Seneca International Academic Literary Award, the Italian Academy of Philosophical Arts and Sciences, Bari-Italy. He participated in the international children’s literature forum in Dhaka, Bangladesh in December 2023. Participated in Oman international poetry and cultural festival, April 2024. Participated in an Indian international literary meeting forum in November 2024. Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Poem in Which an Eclipse Passes, but You Still Don’t Love Me
That day, I watch two dancing fish
in our campus garden’s pond. I call
the pale one Moon and red one Sun
and imagine they are us.
Empty-bellied, light-deprived,
Moon brushes Sun’s face with their tail
until the dance stops.
Moon swims away,
alone.
That’s how I know Moon is me—
queer fish in a straight pond—
and you are just another Sun.
That day, you watch the real eclipse
somewhere else on campus,
staying far from my orbit.
I sit with the fish and plead:
Can we at least love each other
in Eclipse Time?
That transient, mystical minute when
moon and sun can embrace?
But the moon strays from the sun again,
and you don’t come to dance with me.
We are still who we are, and
even an eclipse can’t change us.
Sea in Me
“But [my love] is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much.”
—Twelfth Night
What’s inside me isn’t sad.
It leaks not just from my eyes.
It’s soaked my insides all
this time. Those who’ve waded by
never dared to dive
into the depths of
desperation
gurgling in my guts.
But you have whetted the sea
in me: waters I swallowed
for so long.
Ink in your hair has
dissolved in my skin.
Now my body aches to regurgitate
you in floods of liquid love
I’ve never shared on paper.
You see them in their sea-green glory:
saliva-waves of love,
acid-waves of love,
sweat-waves of love,
milk-waves of love,
blood-waves of love!
You baptize yourself in it all.
I will let it lap you up.
Ollie Sikes (they/them) is a young queer writer based in Dallas, TX. They hold a double BA in Creative Writing and Theatre from Butler University. Currently, they’re interning with Copper Canyon Press and EJL Editing and serving as Editorial Assistant for Broad Ripple Review. Though they were published multiple times in Butler’s undergrad lit mag, this would be their first professional publication.
Furnace heat billows up from the summertime streets of the vicious valley. The doom-light of the impending dawn unleashes the earth’s phantom frenzy that buzzes before the shine sears our souls. I splash my face with sink water, and simultaneously, slurp hydration, strait off the faucet – my facial reflection is haggard & hungover.
The day’s suck gets accepted without debate. I’m behind time, my blurry eyes see trios of things, in the house, that I only have one of – grab light essentials and go. My shambles, leftover from last night, blunder out the door (might be walkin’ over the limit?); I manage to lock the front door, and instantly my system goes wrong – I rip a hard projectile vomit, right off the porch.
Never felt worse…if lucks on my side, my truck will explode…then, I won’t endure the work-day’s suicide.
Inside the driver side of the truck door, I get a damn grip, because that was a seriously heinous notion that rolled my brainwaves. Probably an indication that I should have the frequency of my noggin’ examined.
The heavy thought ramrods my basic motor functions, and self-appraisal pauses my robotic, get-up-and-go functions that allow desperate souls to survive the work-day toil.
Shit…guess I separate till sundown…and, if I open this acknowledged door of horror…then, there’s no tellin’ how many more I gotta enter…which would split the fraility of my psyche like an auger-bit, smoothly pierces soft dirt…to hell with that! At least boozed-out-bravery feels grand and gratifies instantly – last thing I need is to know all my fuckin’ problems.
“Eh,” I mutter. Can’t solve that long-term shit, anyway, right now, and I’d still have to go to work. I turn the key in the ignition of the dilapidated truck, of this depraved desperado, it sputters well enough to get me down the highway, the grim prospects in the windshield.
Quick thoughts, moments ignored, and I’ve always been inclined to put off the suffering of my own decisions for later. I got to go to work. When you dwell on existential plights for too long, you begin to clarify things that aren’t healthy for commerce.
Third-eye nourishment, eternity and the preparation of the soul for the flat-line existence would seem like perfectly reasonable things to address, but they don’t make money, and neither will I, especially, if I start gettin’ to the real truths in this nap & no chance lifestyle.
I mean, there’s a fuckin’ business that needs to be run. Goods have been sold, there’s a stack that requires the break of my back, the dexterity of my fingers, after my ass is seated in the forklift – it’s got terrible lumbar support that exacerbates my spine where it’s gonna break.
I nimbly fidget with just the right-touch…utilizing the lifts handle functions to place loads, an endless stream, on 18-Wheeler Mack-Trucks. So, the guy making the money, makes the guy happy that will yell at him if it’s not more money than last time, and if that scenario happens, then the first guy yells at me.
It seems critical that he gets paid, so I can get my comparatively scantier sum. It’s a five-day (usually, with a sixth) grind. I’m tired, and I drink to forget that I’m overworked, worn-out, and a blown opportunity of a heart-beat – but hey, there’s bills to be paid, and breathin’ ain’t free, and human’s like to earn the bitchin’ they do each day.
I don’t want to get on the highway.
It all feels wrong…the sun’s comin’ up and the shine side of it, ain’t workin’ like it should…we’re enemies for the next ten hours….yes, sure, I get ya, there’s a pay-check in it for me…but, I’m pretty sure, I’ll die on this fork-lift, and booze kills thoughts. I always thought that my existence was enough, but life demands more, and if you want to matter…well, I don’t know…get more money, it always seems to be the answer.
Apparently, when an interest in present-focused, savor the joy now because later’s aren’t promised, and seeking a good-time feels human. Even thought, it neglects engagement with those demands, so, you get relegated to cog-work in some industrious wheel – you become a machine and slowly go insane.
I see the sun is higher than it should be, for the cruise in my routine on Biz-80, slicin’ out of Sac-Town. I holler obscenities at the slow, dumb, (basically any) vehicle that’s ahead of me. They’re obvious idiots because they are like me; on a highway, at an hour when even God takes a snooze, drivin’ to places we don’t want to be, to bitch about being there, makin’ claims – the type that say, needs to change, or we’re outta here, which would require the hard-work of us implementing the changes requested. So, instead, you just cuss a lot and hope the labor offsets pulmonary issues.
Rationality’s quadrant of my lobe’s kicks in. I flood it with 2 Lime-Green Red bulls, straight electric juice, and cut through my groggy displeasure – maybe, if we all didn’t have to wake-up so early, on time, like fuckin’ robots that start at the press of a button, we wouldn’t be so bitchy in our decay.
Fuck it, fuck worry, and fuck punctuality. I’m habitually late, and as bothered as the boss and manager are about a character flaw, which I consider more of a fun, lovable quirk of loyalty, ingrain in my bizarre brand of work-ethic, they never send me home.
All those suspensions in high school, learned-me-up the wrong way – there’s no free-days off when you make a mistake! In fact, they want you to stay longer or come in on a day-off to fix some fuck-up you did or didn’t cause – hell, they know they got a trump card and wield validated anger like the only guy with a gun in an un-armed tribe.
I ain’t slept in two-days, with thoughts, like: shit, let it go, bro, I only had three beers at lunch, and I work in yard, operatin’ a fork-lift, no cop is gonna pull me over. Pussies.
The old woman next to my vehicle nearly runs, head-first, into the cement divider, I recklessly changed lanes – of course, it’s all done for the sake of being on-time. I rip queasy loose, and affirm my tardiness, with orange Gatorade streaks, down my truck door.
“You fuckin’ idiot! Why don’t you watch where you’re going!?!!” Is what I imagine the old-broad yells at me – I watch her pull a mean drag on a Virgina Slim and her indignant eyes, scream at me.
It reminds me of a crazy chica, I used to know – say what you will about the disrespect that comes with chaotic, unhinged behavior – those chica’s will knock every orgasm outta your ball-sack with a single bang.
“Onery, ole hag!” I holler, but there’s no way her dumb earpiece can pick up my barf-bag frequency.
More sun is up, and I’m less punched-in than I should be, and rampin’ up speed won’t matter now, so I pull into the AMPM –nuke the finest break-fast sandwich in the joint. The waves of microscopic heat make me wait, so, I scroll Apps for ladies to love.
I’m a single hogg on the midtown slog. I’m at the high point of the species, the apex-wreck, and I find a joint in my center console – after a few minutes, the hazy fray of pressure and the heinously uncontrollable problems, the world descends on us, evaporate from the chill gleam in my third-eye – gotta fade what you can’t fight back on.
I hit my punch code, so the computer knows my number is here – productive systems care about operational efficient data, not operational employee well-being. Just like I expected, I get chewed-out like a bone, picked clean, and the rant finishes on another expected note: “get out there and get to work!”
Ain’t nothin’ these corporate turds hate more than finding new people to do shit jobs – most chudz with sense end up behind computers to pay rent.
The boss-man unwraps his second sausage egg-McMuffin and gets to chompin’ so the grave can arrive faster than the realization of lost time. He’s always churning out a better performance because he was smart enough to be born at a time when companies didn’t hire based on resumes and drug-checks. We gotta work faster, like the yard-hoggs back in his day, but he insists: “don’t break your backs.”
He ain’t dyin’ for a while, so upward mobility is kinda at a stand-still, and the prices are goin’ up, and, I guess God, the Universe, or the Great Spirit are impressed with the fortitude in my grit, even though, my mind might snap, and I’m feelin’ the itch to quit – I’m a brief flicker that never blazed.
I crawl on my forklift, and find a corner in the big yard, to lounge and burn another joint, or three. Honestly, I’ll puff as much weed as I can smoke to perform these hurried tasks and not wake up to the fact that the walls of the rut have gotten taller than the ladder I was given to get to my ambitions.
Sup, single-mom-sluts, because fuck takin’ the work-day lumps and the lack of pay-bumps – man, right about now, I reckon, I could use the stiff energy of a key-bump.
When, I finally get confirmation – this thick mama-cita, she’s equipped with double-handed booty hunks, the burned life mentality of abandoned dreams, seeking promiscuity to make up for what she can’t get – life ain’t been nice to her; lots of love lost and heart-break, and myriad let downs, the type of dissatisfaction that makes her poon a lagoon.
Lucky me…she hits me with a face-time jangle, and she’s wearin’next-to-nothin’ (trust me, that cameras catchin’ every angle). Pretty as the lust that stokes our sin – all she’s got on is skin, kitten heels and a thong.
I take an early lunch, put an end to my day that didn’t care about me, anyway. What’s the point of humanity’s plight, unless you’re gettin’ laid. I gotta hunch, though…sure as hell, my drive to easy thighs, gets interrupted with a furious call. Answer and don’t absorb, I’m enroute to a healing fling of temporality.
The ole boss-man blabbered on about things incomplete, the importance of it handled commitments (those load orders are heavy and change, instance to instance), it dampens the vibe, but ain’t affectin’ the direction of my pipe, and sure enough, it ends…he understands, and everything has been worked out, so tomorrow should flow smoothly, if everything goes according to plan.
Nicholas Viglietti is a writer from Sacramento, CA. After Katrina ravaged the gulf coast, he rebuilt homes there for 2 years. Up in Mon-tucky, he cut trails in the wilderness. He pedaled from Sac-town to S.D. He’s a seventh-life party-hack, attempting to rip chill lines in the madness.
