TRAITS OF LIFE

A specific story is found in them.

Wrinkles are scars

Of many disappointments and pain.

They are marks of memories.

Of a difficult moment.

Of a past deeply damaged

By the passage of time.

A scar is a mark

That holds no beauty.

Scars that have the power

of a memory are there.

But they no longer hurt.

They are a reminder of a healing process.

It is the way time finds

to repair every wound that sadness has caused.

Nidia Amelia García, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a writer and an active member of Juntos por las Letras (Together for Letters). She has participated in numerous virtual events in Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Spain, Colombia, Portugal, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and elsewhere. She has also contributed to literary anthologies such as “Books of the Immortals” and “Anthology of the 50 Poets of the World 2022.”

BUILDING PEACE 

How many great and small wars

does human history record!

So much bloodshed,

so much violence.

In the age of communication,

we live increasingly isolated,

and peace is a slogan

of advertising.

We have emptied the word of meaning,

and it is offered as a refuge

to the disoriented

of man

by drugs, sex, mysticism,

technology, or political ideology.

But true PEACE

that unites us in diversity,

that integrates us in solidarity,

that impels us

to understand and forgive,

and invites us to brotherhood,

is the peace that is built day by day

in the heart of the home,

in schools, at work,

in art and recreation.

Peace of joined hands.

Peace of love and truth.

Peace to choose freely.

Peace to grow old with dignity.

Let us pray for a humanity at peace.

Born in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, Argentina, she is a National Normal Teacher. Professor of Literature and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Arts at the University of Rosario, Argentina. Writer: narrator, poet, and essayist. She has participated in numerous national and international anthologies. She belongs to the cultural collectives Juntos por las Letras (Together for Letters), chaired by Mirta Ramírez (Chaco, Argentina); Puente de Palabras del Mercosur (Bridge of Words of Mercosur), directed by Gladys López Pianesi (Rosario, Argentina); Mosaicos y Letras (Mosaics and Letters), directed by Teresa Ávila (Córdoba, Argentina); and Cien poetas por la Paz (One Hundred Poets for Peace), whose mentor, Verónica Bianchi, resides in Córdoba, Argentina. She has received national and international awards for her work and career: Estrella del SUR (Uruguay), Gaviota de Plata (Silver Seagull), and Obelisco de Oro (Alexandra Foundation, Buenos Aires). First Prize for Fiction. Ediciones Anka, Buenos Aires 2024. Alfonsina Storni Award for her novel RUFINA by Mercedes SADE, Buenos Aires. She participated in all the virtual book fairs with various national and international cultural groups, presenting books, reading her own poems, and giving presentations on authors from each region. And she participated in person at the Book Fairs of Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Córdoba. Her poems were included in all the LIBROS INMORTALES (Immortal Books) published by Mirta Ramírez, which feature national and international poetry and visual artists, as well as in the magazine published by Juntos por las Letras: TOTHEM. She has published: A TIME TO LIVE (short stories and poems) RUFINA (novel), now in its second edition. Selected by the Córdoba Legislature for its 2025 Reading Plan LIKE WATER (poetry collection)

I loved you…

I loved you…

I loved you madly and passionately…

You drank my kisses

With your malicious mouth

You broke my bones

With embraces disguised as passion…

You took my heart in your hands

You wounded it, you dressed it in betrayal…

You buried my corpse

In absolute darkness

Of lies and depression…

I loved you

I gave you everything

You couldn’t hold back

You know nothing of love…

Your lies

Your entanglements

Will only bring you loneliness,

regret and pain…

Mirta Liliana Ramírez has been a poet and writer since she was 12 years old. She has been a Cultural Manager for more than 35 years. Creator and Director of the Groups of Writers and Artists: Together for the Letters, Artescritores, MultiArt, JPL world youth, Together for the letters Uzbekistan 1 and 2. She firmly defends that culture is the key to unite all the countries of the world. She works only with his own, free and integrating projects at a world cultural level. She has created the Cultural Movement with Rastrillaje Cultural and Forming the New Cultural Belts at the local level and also from Argentina to the world.

A Poem About War

War doesn’t come with a song

nor with the steps of a parade.

It slips in quietly,

like a shadow behind a closed door.

The land becomes a number.

A man becomes a dot.

A name disappears in a report.

In the evening, the wind brings smoke

and sounds that don’t belong to the night.

It’s not only the child who cries—

the house cries, the river cries,

the walls cry, trained to remember.

The sky watches,

but does not intervene.

In the trenches, there is no justice,

no questions.

Only orders,

and silence after the explosion.

Some write history,

others lie beneath it.

War does not ask who you are,

nor what you dreamed of.

It erases everything that resembles a human,

and leaves an empty space

where a heart used to be.

Maja Milojković was born in Zaječar and divides her life between Serbia and Denmark. In Serbia, she serves as the deputy editor-in-chief at the publishing house Sfairos in Belgrade. She is also the founder and vice president of the Rtanj and Mesečev Poets’ Circle, which counts 800 members, and the editor-in-chief of the international e-magazine Area Felix, a bilingual Serbian-English publication. She writes literary reviews, and as a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and international literary magazines, anthologies, and electronic media. Some of her poems are also available on the YouTube platform. Maja Milojković has won many international awards. She is an active member of various associations and organizations advocating for peace in the world, animal protection, and the fight against racism. She is the author of two books: Mesečev krug (Moon Circle) and Drveće Želje (Trees of Desire). She is one of the founders of the first mixed-gender club Area Felix from Zaječar, Serbia, and is currently a member of the same club. She is a member of the literary club Zlatno Pero from Knjaževac, and the association of writers and artists Gorski Vidici from Podgorica, Montenegro.

Resurrecting in My Letters 

In the arid desert of my soul,

where the sun burned away the last hope,

and thirst carved deep wounds,

lay an echo of my former calm.

The shadows were night crows,

pecking at frayed dreams,

and the heart, a broken clock,

ticking away hours of a time long gone.

But in the secret crucible of my mind,

where ideas are smoldering embers,

I found the alchemy of the word,

the pure gold that my being reverses.

Each letter, a star seed,

germinating in the garden of silence,

each verse, a river flowing intensely,

washing away debris, healing the wound.

My letters are beacons in the dense fog,

maps to a treasure I thought was lost,

the master key to an ancient labyrinth,

the compass that guides my existence.

In each stanza, a phoenix in flight,

in each line, a constant rebirth,

the broken chrysalis, the being ahead,

I resurrect in my letters, I am persistence.

I am no longer the shadow of a gloomy yesterday,

but the rainbow after the storm,

the melody that defies silence,

the soul that blooms in the depths of summer.

My words are my shield and my spear,

the battle cry against apathy,

the irrefutable proof of my daring,

the life that resurfaces, dances, and advances.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.

The Glorious Youth

The youth is like a raging river

It overflows the boundaries the old like to hold tight

It plays on the beauty of the lovely flowers in the garden

The flowers smile over, smile over

The glowing softness in the morning

The youth is like the rising sun

It blooms with new charms and attractions

We like to live under this shade

Youth invokes to win the world

Youth calls to pray to God

Youth is ready to receive the challenges

Youth is like to get free from all the hazards arround us

A struggle for turning into a serene beautiful world

Struggle for something better

Like going through the crystal water

Under which the colorful rocks

The blue sky with the meteors over there

Floating on the hilly wonderful green areas

And what not?

Though the time is too short

Like the drops of the morning dews

Glittering in the sunrise and vanishes too quick at a glance

We all are twinkling stars

We all are sparking in the dark night

The power of the sun

The enchanting calls of the morning birds

We are so lovely

We have our hands to love, to raise up

We have our hearts to feel, to step forward

Youth is like the green carpet of the large paddy field

Youth is like the healing touch to the wounded

A touch of a dear loving friend, not foe

Every second, the waves are echoing the victory the world welcomes.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Happy 250th Birthday

Into the city streets

strutted the Brownshirts,

locked and loaded

and wearing steel-toed

jackboots and masks.

D.C. and Los Angeles

will never ever be the 

same again. They pulled 

people from automobiles 

and out of lines at car 

washes and big box 

stores and tamale vendors.

The thick-witted goons

flung their victims

to the pavement and

shackled them with

chains in front of their

young children. They 

didn’t identify themselves

but to brandish weapons.

Those they seized

were all guilty:

of being brown-skinned

and wanting a

better life for themselves

and their families.

The answer was to

send them to countries

where they don’t

speak the language

and to rip their

children from their

breasts and imprison

them in cages.

Perhaps, I thought,

this is not

what Americans

signed up for 250

years ago.