Saturday night
she wears her 
pressed-flower face


which came first
her madness
or her art


behind me
phantom shadow
with a fist


round faces 
 built of cubes
  featured in
   rectangular galleries
    with oval windows


I tell complete strangers
about my pain . . .
climate despair


Swiss-cheese memory . . .
glimpses of past weddings
some of them hers

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, Iowa, USA


Bio: Roberta Beach Jacobson (she/her) is drawn to the magic of words–poetry, song lyrics, flash fiction, puzzles, and stand-up comedy. Her latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).

Moonset

Moonset; dawn dawning
On a silent world; no birds 
Sing in the stillness reigning. 
The wind has closed its mouth
On the tremulous leaves of trees 
Marching across the horizon. 
Moonset; the flowers sleep 
In their silent fragrance, deep 
In the disappearing shadows 
As silver darkness dawning daylight
Reclaims a yawning world, with 
Golden rims in the eastern sky. 
Moonset; golden sun rising 
Greeting a new day; new dreams 
Form as the fading tranquility 
Of the night slips into oblivion. 
The sweetness of night’s beauty 
Softly steals into the gold of day.


For the Long Ago
 
Loving you for the long ago. 
Being with you; forever courting 
Your impeccable character; 
Your intrinsic manner; classic 
Silhouette; perfect form; your 
Incomparable beauty, your 
Mystic capacity for creating 
Memories while showing 
Your undying love for me; 
Loving me each day; each year; 
With a love that never ceases 
But goes on, for the long ago.

Annie Johnson is 84 years old. She is Shawnee Native American. She has published two, six hundred-page novels and six books of poetry. Annie has won several poetry awards from world poetry organizations including; World Union of Poets; she is a member of World Nations Writers Union; has received the World Institute for Peace award; the World Laureate of Literature from World Nations Writers Union and The William Shakespeare Poetry Award. She received a Certificate and Medal in recognition of the highest literature from International Literary Union for the year 2020, from Ayad Al Baldawi, President of the International Literary Union. She has three children, two grandchildren, and two sons-in-law. Annie played a flute in the Butler University Symphony. She still plays her flute.

Exploring Love, Spirituality and the Black Experience in “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, a Book Review

[Excerpt from Fleury’s book: Chain Letter To America: The One Thing You Can Do To End Racism, A Collection of Essays, Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Multiculturalism]

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all the things they don’t want to remember and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

So begins Zora Neal Hurston’s epic story about an emotional and spiritual journey of self-discovery. Through my incessant study of literature and the craft of writing, I have learned that what grabs a reader right from the onset of a story is by having a fully formed voice and vision that prepares us to go along for the ride; that we will be transported elsewhere to another reality.

In honor of Black History Month, the historical inauguration of America’s first Black President and Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided to offer a dichotomous exploration of variant thematic ideologies of love and Black literary contributions to American culture and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” allows me to do just that.

“A graduate of Barnard…, Zora Neal Hurston published seven books—four novels, two books of folklore, and an autobiography—more than fifty shorter works between the middle of the Harlem Renaissance and the end of the Korean War, when she was the dominant Black woman writer in the United States. The dark obscurity in which her career then lapsed reflects her staunchly independent political stances rather than any deficiency of craft and vision,” writes Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the afterward to Their Eyes.

Hurston, whose life spanned between the years 1891 and 1960, was a novelist, folklorist and anthropologist. Her fictional and factual writings of Black Heritage remain unparalleled. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is Hurston’s most highly praised novel and is considered a classic among the best of Black literature.

Their Eyes recounts the story of Janie Crawford’s burgeoning selfhood through three marriages with loving empathy and stinging urgency. Janie, who is described as “fair- skinned, long haired and dreamy as a child” advances in years to anticipate better treatment than she actually receives; that is until she has an unexpected encounter with an amusing, smooth and fast talking younger roustabout named Tea Cake, who entices her into an emotional and spiritual journey that will change her life forever. He proffers to her an opportunity to see herself and life through his eyes without being regrettably adorned with the formerly disparaging labels of being “one man’s mule” or another man’s wallflower through her previous two marriages.

Over the course of the story, the character of Janie unfolds, as she will learn that she does not have to succumb to living a life ripe with rife, acrimony or maladroit romantic dreams. Towards the end of the story, the reader will learn in Janie’s words: “two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh themselves. They got tuh go tuh God and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh themselves,” since her character struggles with the incessant panoptic surveillance and potentially spirit crushing criticism of her neighbors.

Every good writer or story-teller has to have motif and Hurston’s Their Eyes is swimming in a crystal clear blue- eyed sea of symbolism. In Their Eyes she uses an overworked, underfed and tormented mule to illustrate the dire living conditions of her main character Janie, what she endures on her way to spiritual, emotional, and physical freedom and awakening. Her depiction of Janie’s life of strife serves not only to demonstrate essentially the mistreatment of Janie as “one man’s mule and another man’s adornment”, it also attests to the meager living conditions of women, that is to say in terms of oppression and maltreatment, during her time period. Since she died right at the cusp of both the Civil Rights and the Women’s Equal Rights Movements, Hurton’s Their Eyes would go on to achieve greater respect and acknowledgement as an indispensable part of Black literature.

Also in Hurston’s novel, I was particularly enthralled by her use of Black vernacular speech (i.e. go tuh God…livin’ fuh theyselves…) to chronicle her Black female characters’ coming to the best of their being or emerging consciousness. In his afterward, Henry Louis Gates offers a keen observation of some of the most indispensible key elements regarding the deceptively simple trajectory of Hurston’s story. He writes that “The Charting of Janie Crawford’s fulfillment as an autonomous imagination, Their Eyes is a lyrical novel that correlates the needs of her first two husbands for ownership of progressively larger physical space (and the gaudy accoutrements of upward mobility) with the suppression of self awareness in their wife. Only with her third and last lover, a roustabout called Tea Cake whose unstructured frolics center around and about the Florida swamps, does Janie at last blooms…”

In other words, towards the end of the story, Janie did not find love and happiness as presumably defined by her first two husbands by the often superficial veneers of status and ownership of fancy property, ironically she found the bond of love, God and community living by a swamp with a mere unrefined and uneducated vagrant whose only means of sustaining Janie was through a daily dosage of love, laughter and whatever he could muster with his bare hands to put food on the table.

Therefore in honor of Black History Month, you will find that in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” concurrent themes of Hope, love, and an affirmation of Black Heritage are enough to make you want to put Their Eyes on your reading list this February.

Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and 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, University of  Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc… 

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 here.

The heart of the poet

The poet's heart does not want evil
He seems to consider the enemy as a friend
Turns bad into good
 
Best wishes come true
The poet's heart does not want evil
He doesn't chase an elusive dream
A wish becomes a goal
If you live without a purpose your heart does not want separation
So that tears don't flow from these cups

No one should suffer the pain of separation
Let them endure every pain with patience
The heart of the poet advocates goodness
May this bright world become heaven 
May all good intentions be answered.

Madinabonu Bobobekova

Experience

Sometimes I want to touch the clouds
They are white, soft and cute
I feel sleepy looking at the sky
A soft cloud caresses me

I take the pen slowly and slowly
I'm deep in innocent thought
What a paste when inspiration comes
I collect my thoughts on paper

Sometimes I use that pen too
I also like white paper
I wish I didn't have both
I don't know what's going on

Maybe my poems are not good
I can't give orders, it's my heart
At least today there is no inspiration
Desires are a language that cannot be expressed

Why am I so sad?
We live in the life after all
I also wrote a poem like a poet
Being a poet is also difficult

Madinabonu Bobobekova was born on February 2, 2009 in the Gallaorol district of the Jizzakh region.
Her works have been published in several district, regional and republican newspapers. In addition, she is active in foreign newspapers and magazines with creative works and a member of the "Qaqnus" group of the "Barkamol Avlod" boyar school.

Returning 

awash with the temple sea dredged up dignity & the landlocked sure beats in harmony a wheeling caw of blackened doves jettisoned from the backlog into the forefront of your desires the crushing cruising spleen-filled fury where spirits play hide & seek among the whalebone tongue & chipped teeth swallowed whole vantage the next line is porous and permeates across years all embellished the total sum gathering among its skirts & supine boasts that public opinion is best-served by a shove-ha’penny democracy dripping down the coma-inducing throat its useless liberation awash again with talk of vivid cinematics dubbed flying with the tint bespeckled language learnt from half-streets at the feet of the golden piper whose riven authority burns your jamboree turncoat executions/back again.

 Death 

we reach out to grab-hold this burning jewellery society beckoning the charred begotten limbs the pedestal laid before racks of marilyn munroe disc jockeys hazy smoke-filled denseness sealed with your own complicity you shadow-down your own half-truths & the bitterness declined by strangers they leap faith at you beyond clocks this world of ticking witchery fat-blossomed on the vine acreage of laughing highwire spectaculars substituting a weary reappraisal those wasted shells those years the burning empires beyond salvation beyond the freezing fronds of hell time warped and majestied into lightness & being hollowed & hallowed into sacred pits brandishing those complicit stories fired machine gun like epitaphs emblazoned behind such sultry smiles as any can
in the drolling army spread out across the counterpane those rituals to slaughter such mockingbird reprieves festooned & shattered the bleeding scab its discontent slit to the wrists of your wondering carved from the very duplicity girthed in social etiquette & death. 

 Epitaph 

an epitaph festooned brimstone begets trawling through high & mighty scapes your pearled laughter ignites incendiary biblical aftershock at the foot where they buried the very thought of your regime tucked and howled into pockets of protected youth which blossoms the fate previously disenfranchised in the twinkling & roving eye this destiny of rusted idle meanderings counter pained at rest from the birth-light of morning silted & edged in the blackened margins where those conceived conceited into oblivion the language torn & guttural festers in braids of despair rattling cages those who would tally on the fringe of this high & mighty war & attrition expelled from the TV virtue those bleeding soldiers. 


Clive Gresswell is a 65-year-old innovative writer and poet.  As well as appearing in many poetry magazines Clive who has a poetry MA, has authored several poetry books and his work can be found on Amazon.

A Concise Anatomy of the Esotericism between

a Surajmukhi¹ and Madhumakkhi²

for Nashwa Y. Butt and Umme A. Ali

after The Sunflower by Gustav Klimt (Austria), 1906–1907 CE

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.

– Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

   I.

“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”—

such utilitarian dictums can hardly ever qualify

as the koh-e-noor³ (in a queen’s crown) to embellish

the Throne of Esotericism – the omniscient guardian

of the coalescence b/w a surajmukhi and madhumakkhi,

as the subatomic electric charges labour to preserve an atom.

N.B.

The exordium and epitome of the aforesaid hum-nafasi⁴

manifests naturally on the grounds of Bauhausian Minimalism:⁵

each simply gives ‘n takes ≯ one’s ^original/_organic ^desires/_dreams!

   II.

AND the Fruits of Philanthropic Labour:

the ↑ the volume of donation of the floral nectar,

     the ↑ the rate of generation of the extrafloral nectaries;

the honey from the bee’s belly relishes the reputation

     as the universal remedy for all manner of ailments;

the mysterious constituents of God’s formulae

     for the propagation of ^macro/_microcosms are laid bare.

© Saad Ali

______________

^1. Surajmukhi (Sanskrit): Sunflower.

^2. Madhumakkhi (Sanskrit): Honeybee.

^3. Koh-e-Noor (Persian): Mountain of Light.
^4. Hum-nafasi (Persian): Breath-sharing companionship.

^5. Bauhaus (1919–1933 CE): The European Modernist Movement/German Art school – with an emphasis upon:

a) combining crafts and fine arts, b) functionality, and c) minimalism (in architectural design).

Le Souvenir: Clay Spinning Top

for Maimoona & Anwaar

after The Spinning Top Game (Le jeu De Toupies) by Nasreddine Dinet (France), 1924 CE

   The famous Mall Road connects the Cantonment area to almost all the major towns and boulevards of the Metropolitan. (The City still has a long, long journey to complete to be truly known as a ‘Cosmopolitan’.) Thanks for the very dual carriageway – with a lush mixed cluster of Pepal, Amaltas, Mahwa, Ticoma, Gul-e-mohar, and Kachnar trees for a green belt (wide dividing strip) – for, it will also take you to the Old City in < 45 odd minutes – provided you don’t travel during the rush hours; provided the weather, power supply, traffic lights, and traffic wardens behave themselves.

   On the way to the Old City, you find an assortment of classic and (post-)modern iconic buildings – from The British Raj Era, too – on either side of the 8–10 km long stretch: Governor’s House, Alhamra Arts Council, Aitchison College, National College of Arts, Museum, Cathedral Church of Resurrection, Masonic Temple, Bagh-e-Jinnah, et cetera. … The Bagh-e-Jinnah (formerly: Lawrence Gardens) is also a home to a 150-year-old tree – Banyan (a hybrid of Banyan branches + Karnikar branches (Kanaka Champa)). … And, if you happen to be an aficionado of history/architecture/arts, you can easily become overwhelmed by the (colour) schemata of the (post-)colonial portrait that the very route happens to be; you can easily find yourself teleported to the late 19^th–early 20^th century CE—when the iconic (London’s) red double-decker buses were also in service in conjunction with the tonga service. Back in the 1930s–40s, the City of Lavapuri/City of Gardens¹ offered an exemplar landscape of (the British/European) modernity.

   *

   This past Summer of ’23 CE, I had had to make the journey – via the very boulevard – to my grand/parents’ ancestral town called Islampura (formerly: Krishan/Sant Nagar) to re-procure a clay spinning top from an old seller of old clay toys. Reason being: the helper had managed to break one from the pair that sat atop my workstation in the study at my place, while she also left the assortment of my journals, fountain pens, ink pots, poem scribbles, pen pouches/holders, lead/mechanical pencils, pair of mechanical keyboards, marble paperweights, cigarette/case + lighters, metal/wood ashtrays, ceramic incense burner, A3/A5 sticky notes, and books hither and thither.

   The clay toy can be easily classified as a souvenir in today’s IT/AI Age. I doubt, if the contemporary generations – Generation Z & Generation Alpha – are even aware of its existence, let alone being aware of where to acquire one. … The clay toy is even far, far older than the times when my grand/parents used to play with it in the streets – laid with bricks made of clay.

   *

   I’m yet to learn to properly operate it – wrap the thin string around its top, middle, bottom; then, with a flick of the wrist unleash the spinning top so as to induce a hundred or so anti/clockwise rotations to it per release.

   Every now ‘n then, I manually make the souvenir whirl on the palm of my left hand – wrong-hand – with a musical adaptation (remix) of رقص ذرات / “Poem of the Atoms” by Jalal al-Din Balkhi (Rumi) playing in the background via YouTube:

O’ Day, rise! So that the particles begin their dance

…

The souls become mystified and joyfully dance

I whisper in your ear where they will dance

..

Every particle, whether joyful or sad,

is infatuated with the light of the Beloved!²

© Saad Ali

______________

¹ Lavapuri (Sanskrit): According to the Hindu tradition/mythology, the City of Prince Lava/Loh – son of God Rama and Goddess Sita (see the Hindu epic poem Ramayana by Valmiki (Adi Kavi/First Poet). Modern day Lahore – the capital city of the Punjab province in Pakistan.

² English translation by Reza Fattahi.

by the force of space + time

for N. Karfakis, L. Jacobs, E. Rahim & Nashwa Y. Butt

after Metaphysical Triangle by Giorgio de Chirico (Italy), 1958 CE

   i

the dandelion seed-light tips of S’s fingers don’t seem

to be familiar with the hypotheses of a beam of light

as the vessel of hypotheses and/or the theoretical theatrics

of e=mc^2[1] and/or the Einsteinian relativity of space + time^[2]

and/or the laws of motion of Newtonian gravity^[3] and/or

the Galilean invariance^[4] and/or Copernican heliocentrism.^[5]

   ii

the wine cork-light fingers simply cannot match the momentum

of the ripples of the keys on his black + blue + red themed

Keychron K2 Pro Chinese mechanical keyboard.

the buraq-like^[6] keys seem too euphoric to perform an ascension

into the superverse of ars poetica. but like the Icarus’ wax-wings,

S’s sunflower petal-light fingers don’t seem to possess

neither the empathy nor the valiance of one Prometheus’

to meet the singularity and be rendered ashes.

   iii

i know a (prose) poem is seeking a refuge

in the cave of these apophthegms ‘n paronomasias.

i know by the time the rails of verses emerge

from the slumber – of a sleeping gypsy’s;

utterly unaware of the sniffing hungry lioness –

maybe in 300 years or so – like the Seven Sleepers

of the cave – they will only be meeting the light of day

to learn of the obsoleteness of their currency.

   *

and i am rather afraid, too afraid to install an anchor of period

anywhere on the floor of the galley. the vessel is best left

trembling in the wake of the seismic gravity of letters.

© Saad Ali

______________

^[1] e=mc²: Theory of Special Relativity by A. Einstein (1905 CE) – with an emphasis upon: a) ‘inertial frames’ (speed of light is constant), and b) merger of space and time; where, time = 4^th dimension.

^[2] The Theory of General Relativity by A. Einstein (1917 CE): ‘Gravity’ is a result of the shape of space-time/geometry of the universe.

^[3] The Three Laws of Motion by Sir I. Newton (1687 CE): Principle of Inertia, Principle of Momentum, and Principle of Action/Reaction.

^[4] The Theory of Special Relativity proposed by G. Galilei (1632 CE): the laws of motion remain the same in all ‘inertial frames of references’ (objects moving at a constant speed).

^[5] The Sun-centric Astronomical Model proposed by N. Copernicus (1543 CE) – opposed to the 2^nd century CE Geocentric Model (Earth at the centre) by C. Ptolemaeus.

^[6] Buraq (Islamic tradition): Chimera (with a body of horse, head of human, and wings).

Biography

(Wordcount: 153)

Saad Ali (b. 1980 CE in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up and educated in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. He is a bilingual poet-philosopher and literary translator. His new collection of poems is titled Owl Of Pines: Sunyata (AuthorHouse, 2021). He has translated Lorette C. Luzajic’s ekphrastic poetry and micro/flash fictions into Urdu: Lorette C. Luzajic: Selected Ekphrases: Translated into Urdu (2023). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. He has had poems published in Synchronized Chaos. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. He has had ekphrases showcased at an Art Exhibition, Bleeding Borders, curated at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie in Alberta, Canada. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Kafka, and Tagore. He enjoys learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities/towns on foot. To learn further about his work, please visit: www.saadalipoetry.com; www.facebook.com/owlofpines.