This month’s issue addresses the Unfinished Business of Living.

The Talmud states: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” This quote emphasizes the importance of taking action and doing good, even in the face of overwhelming challenges. No one can do everything that should be done, but we can all do something.

We look at different types of human ventures, including literal business and entrepreneurship, but expanding out to art, literature, cultural preservation, maintaining relationships, living within nature, peacebuilding, and just figuring out whom to be, how to exist in the world. Perhaps the deepest work of a human life is learning how to belong, to land, to history, to one another, to the difficult truths we carry, and to the dreams we still have the courage to pursue.

First, an announcement: our regular contributor Rui Carvalho invites readers and contributors to submit poetry to the next annual Nature Writing Contest.

Our contest, Nature 2025-2026, is a new opportunity that we, as organizers, create to reach the rest of the world. Every Contest is a challenge for authors participating and to people that make it happen. This year we invite all authors to write poetry about:
(i) Flowers;
(ii) Trees and wind;
(iii) Water;
(iv) Nature Conservation;
(v) Turtles;
(vi) Love for people and nature;
(vii) Hope and Happiness.

Rules and submission information here.

Now for The Unfinished Business of Living.

Ismoilova Madinabonu Jaloliddin qizi reminds us of our need for and connection to the rest of nature, and this single insight threads through nearly every voice gathered here. We are not isolated atoms; we are woven into a living world.

Business leader Safwan Ahmed outlines mind-shifts that can assist entrepreneurs in his upcoming titles The Solo Founder’s Kite and the Maverick Strategy, suggesting that how we orient our thinking determines what we can build. Dr. Jerry Olivas reflects on how, like sports, life sometimes doesn’t allow do-overs—a bracing reminder that presence and intention matter now, not later. Shah Jehan Asrafi reimagines silence not as absence, but as a latent, creative force, pushing back against the modern terror of quiet. Ananya Guha loves the difficult, noisy, demanding parts of life, even barking restlessness, insisting that vitality lives in the friction, not the ease. Umida Sayfulloyeva encourages society to look at stress and social pressure as we would any other epidemic. Elmaya Jabbarova captures the spark between people when love could have started, and the feeling after the moment passes. Amonboyeva Shahnoza reminds us to notice and reach out to lonely people around us—a small, radical act of repair in a disconnected age.

Mark Young playfully alters the color and texture of Australian geography to craft unique landscapes, showing that the ground beneath us can be reimagined, not just endured. Priyanka Neogi relates a trip to colorful Guayaquil, celebrating the beauty and culture of the developing Ecuadorean city. Su Yun’s Chinese elementary school students’ poetry, which he translated into English, focus in on ordinary, relatable experiences. Abdukarimova Farangiz discusses strategies for helping Uzbek students learn English as a foreign language, bridging worlds through language. Timothee Bordenave finds Jesus Christ within his ordinary life: in legends, in his craft, in his quiet room, not as a doctrine to be believed, but as a reality to be lived—a spirituality of the everyday, not the cathedral. Amina Sunnatullayeva underscores the importance of remembering and teaching history to maintain one’s cultural identity, a thread that runs through several contributors here. Dr. Reda Abdul Rahim traces the history of Palestinian political and military uprisings, grounding memory in the specific, contested weight of lived experience. Lan Xin acknowledges the long and rich history of the Dongba culture in China and her partnership with Dongba elders to preserve the culture through education. Rushana Shomurodova pays poetic homage to Uzbekistan’s scientific, medical, and literary history with her tribute to the works of historical writer Abdulla Oripov.

Saymurodova Madinakhon Zokhidjon kizi discusses the cultural associations given to the sound of various languages, revealing how hearing itself is shaped by belonging. Gulyor Matchonova highlights the importance of reading for personal education, the quiet technology of becoming. Maftuna Rustamova encourages steady work towards our goals and consistent study in order to learn, in a manifesto that attempts to empower ordinary people to achieve aspirations. Elmurodova Charos also notes the importance of history and national memory to Uzbekistan’s young people, so that they can appreciate the sacrifices of their ancestors and the value of hard-won peace—a generational chain of gratitude and awareness.

Silke Heiss reviews Abigail George’s novella Did You Get Married To Her While I Was In the Mental Hospital? which is a fierce, boundaryless fusion of mental illness, womanhood, and political rage, where survival lies not in being a “writer” but in being a woman who lives, acts, and cares for others. Abigail George’s new poem relates the experience of family life shaped by addiction, illness, and the commandment of silence, the things we are told not to say, and the cost of keeping them buried. J.J. Campbell writes from the trench of a life lived hard, with no romanticism, no filter, and no apology. Yet his poems are acts of resistance: he’s still here, still writing. 

Mahbub Alam’s poem reminds us of the power of a simple word or bit of attention from a friend or loved one. Nidia Amelia García reflects on a love that has healed her, not through rescuing, but through consistent and tender presence. Maja Milojkovic draws on elements in nature that balance and complete each other as metaphors for romantic love. Sumana Bhattacharjee describes love as both otherworldly and grounded in reality, a spiritually grounded physical journey. Gaurav Ojha’s essay brings a philosophical perspective to the experience of falling into romantic love as Milena Pčinjski evokes a quiet, tender, and sacred rhythm of romance unfolding away from the world’s eyes.

Christina Chin’s haiga presents a simple, yet tender, image of departure and separation, the ache of distance rendered in few strokes. Tanja Ajtic portrays the anguish of intimate loss and grief. Milka J. Šolaja acknowledges the grief intertwined with the beauty of aging, losing physical and mental prowess even as we develop wisdom.

Duane Vorhees’ work explores false promises and hidden costs: sometimes we don’t get what we expect or bargain for in life. Rehaan Khan’s piece is a plea and prayer for a visit from the divine, or from a departed loved one—the hunger for presence beyond the veil. Joseph Ogbonna’s simple yet profound piece reminds us that life and death are paths traveled by all. Graciela Noemi Villaverde weaves a vision of loss incorporated into future life, transformed into future growth. Dr. Debabrata Maji’s poem shows that togetherness transforms losses that would break you into something you can carry. Bahtiyar Hidayet mourns the devastation of war and longs to return to the days when people and animals were cared for and respected—a vision of peace that includes the whole created order. Danijela Ćuk insists that peace is not a distant ideal but something we give each other, moment by moment.

Alan Catlin’s poetic portrait illuminates the humanity of school shooting survivors. Stephen Jarrell Williams suggests that humanity has a last chance to wake up, speak up, and choose sanity over destruction, both personally and globally. Christopher Bernard’s story portrays young children caught between idealism and the betrayal of national institutions.

Saeed Koushan’s work illuminates love that arrives and departs in the same wet night, leaving nothing behind but the memory of something that briefly, impossibly, shone. Noah Berlatsky’s piece speaks to the gap between spiritual ambition and clumsy, human reality—the comedy and tragedy of trying to be better than we are. Hassan Ismail Adekunle shows how one doesn’t build a bridge only by laying steel, but through asking, listening, leaving room for mystery, and honoring the ones who cross with courage and return with compassion.

Jacques Fleury’s poem brings humanity together in solidarity against injustice: it’s always a fresh new morning for someone on the planet. Marjorie Thelen’s short story “The Alien Jazz Band” is about found family, identity, and escape from a broken system, while also serving as a cautionary tale about AI, surveillance, and the loss of human agency, a warning that the technologies we build can sever the connections we need. Bill Tope’s short story is about the gap between what people see and what a person is really like, and how, for some, allowing the gap to remain is a refuge, strategy, and quiet form of grace. Saymurodova Madinaxon Zohidjon qizi points out how ownership of the English language has shifted from a small group of native-speaking nations to the global community of users, a democratization of voice that mirrors the broader themes here. 

Chidimma Ewelukma illustrates what it means to be there for someone: to witness their difficult moments even when you can’t solve their problems, and to stay with them through the different seasons and versions of themselves over time. Srijani Dutta’s collection of poems and paintings embrace questioning, resilience, and self-discovery as a way of living, through recurring images of light, water, wind, dawn, journeys, circles, and flames. In Patrick Sweeney’s monostich poems ordinary moments, memory, faith, and imagination constantly intersect, revealing how people search for meaning amid imperfection, mystery, and everyday life. J.K. Durick’s poetry captures the feeling of being a tourist in one’s own life: perpetually out of place, unable to change situations, and curious about the mysterious lives of the locals around you.

Photini Karamouzis Chalkias’ work reflects a journey through deprivation, survival, and a desperate attempt to find meaning and connection in a world where truth is veiled by blood and silence. Cyril Etchev’s work highlights the power of the dreaming, loving, creative spirit to rise from the grounded, the silent, the ordinary and transform both self and world into light. Mykyta Ryzhykh depicts a reality in which time melts, language fragments, bodies decay, love becomes entangled with violence, nature becomes contaminated by human suffering, and death seems to be the only stability—a counterpoint that makes the acts of connection elsewhere in this gathering all the more urgent. Türkan Ergör expresses a nostalgic wish to return home where she feels she belongs, although life has inevitably changed her. Alex S. Johnson’s interview with musician Militia Vox highlights how for her, authentic artistry is forged in the stubborn refusal to abandon the raw, relational reasons you started, and reclaiming that impulse is itself an act of rebellion. 

Dr. Jernail Singh’s piece argues for ethical action on a broader timescale, regardless of visible consequences in our lives. Sayani Mukherjee’s speaker seems to ask: What truly makes a nation? The answer is not simply borders or governments, but the memories, emotions, songs, cultures, and stories shared by its people. Shlok Pandey explores the weight of generational trauma and impossible social expectations through a mother-daughter story, the inheritance of wounds and the possibility of healing. Thi Lan Anh Tran’s piece suggests that childhood is often happy because then we know how to be fully present, wonder at small things, and love without condition.

Brian Barbeito offers a meditation on authenticity, simplicity, and the harmony that exists when humans, animals, and land live in honest relation to one another, circling back to the opening note from Ismoilova Madinabonu Jaloliddin qizi.

Shannon Scoates speculates through a tone poem on a decaying piano on what remains of our art and creation as natural cycles and time pass.

Finally, Madina Shodmonova encourages us to summon up all our courage and live our dreams with gusto.

What emerges from this constellation is a single, insistent truth: we are beings whose survival and meaning depend on the quality of our connections—to nature, to history, to language, to the divine, to the lonely, to the difficult, to the departed, to the dreams we have not yet lived. The work of being human is not to transcend these ties, but to deepen them, to show up for them, to carry what breaks us together, and to keep writing, making, and loving through the wreckage and the wonder alike.

Militia Vox’s story opens with a kid staring at a piano and deciding she wants in because her best friend is doing it.

“My best friend was playing piano, and I was like, ‘Oh well, I want to play piano too,’” she says. They started together; the friend drifted away. Militia didn’t.

Very quickly, piano stopped being an activity and became a relationship. “Music became a thing that was my best friend,” she remembers. “This is something that I can carry with me forever.”

Her teacher enrolled her in competitive piano guilds without really explaining what that meant. Every year she had to take guild exams, playing for judges who measured everything: dynamics, posture, interpretation.

She accelerated fast. “Next thing I know, I’m winning regional and state competitions, and then like was considered one of the best young pianists in the country,” she says.

But the more she tried to bring herself into the music, the more the classical world pushed back. “Some of the powers that be in the classical circles would say things like, ‘She plays too loudly,’ ‘She bangs on the piano,’” she recalls.

She even got criticized for how she sat: “Sometimes I would side saddle, and they didn’t like that.”

She was already chafing against the idea that her job was to be a polite conduit for “dead composers’ music.”

“I got tired of playing dead composers’ music and not being able to create more,” she says. “When I was trying to bring more of myself to the performance, I was getting marked for it.”

By the time she reached the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, the faculty basically admitted she’d outgrown them. “They were like, we have nothing left to teach you, like your art’s already way above what we’re doing here,” she says. So she decided: if they couldn’t teach her, she’d use what she had and make something of her own.

Even before that, she was already staging rebellions. In eighth grade, she put together a performance‑art piece for a talent show, recruiting friends, painting their faces black and white, dressing them in shredded tuxedo jackets, and choreographing a routine to the industrial‑leaning song “Oh Industry” from the movie Beaches.

“I choreographed this piece to it, and I sang, and everybody was like, ‘This is so weird. It’s really good, but it’s so weird,’” she says. That was the moment she started to feel the split: the world wanted her to fit, and she couldn’t.

“I always felt like I was having to fight and rebel,” she says. “This was like my villain arc because I started a strong sense of like, I can’t fit in here, so I’m just gonna go in the other direction. If you guys are gonna make me feel like I’m doing things wrong, I’m just gonna go for it.”

Her childhood environment didn’t offer much in the way of a scene. She grew up in Maryland, “in the middle of like what was a horse farm,” with no musicians around.

Her father, an avid record collector, became her unofficial curator. “He would like send me to my room and be like, ‘You’re Potter, and you’re gonna listen to King Crimson,’” she says. She’d lie on the floor, listening, trying to decode how those songs existed at all. “I’d just try to figure out like how did these people meet each other? How did they write this stuff? How are they putting this? How do they know what sounds to choose? What notes to choose?” she says.

She watched the Grammys and saw a room full of musicians on TV, wondering, “Where are you? Like, I need to be there. How do I do this?”

Her first rock concert was Duran Duran. She was a kid, her parents had to take her, and she spent the show standing on her chair, screaming at the band. “I was screaming at them and embarrassing the hell out of my parents, just screaming at the band, ‘I’m one of you. Take me with you,’” she says.

Her parents tried to make her sit down. “I was like, ‘No, no, no! I need to be where they are,’” she remembers. It felt like the old fantasy of running away to join the circus—only her circus was rock. “Same thing,” she says. “Different circus.”

The bridge from classical to rock came through a boyfriend who was putting a band together.

He knew she was an actor and asked, “Can you cry on command?” Then he handed her a line to sing: “It’s kind of like ‘Red Water’ by Type O Negative.” She didn’t know Type O Negative yet. “What’s Type O Negative?” she asked—and then went down the rabbit hole. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is awesome,’” she says.

The band asked her to join. “They were like, ‘Oh, do you want to come be in the band?’ I was like, ‘Be in the band?’ I was like, ‘Yes, you want me to be in your band?’” It blew her mind.

That band became Disciples of Astaroth, a name steeped in occult resonance. They played Boston and sold out every night. “We used to sell out. We played in Boston, and we’d sell out every night that we played,” she says. They played New York once, at the Batcave. The sound was dark, gothic, heavy, and theatrical. It was also deeply intertwined with drag and queer performance.

Disciples of Astaroth was a co‑singer band: Militia and Britt the Other Bully. Britt did drag—specifically “dark drag,” long before the RuPaul era made that aesthetic mainstream. “He did drag. He did like dark drag,” she says. “Way before Sharon Needles and these drag queens from like the RuPaul era.” He performed to Ministry and other industrial and extreme bands. “Belinda Davenport would do her performances to like Deicide,” Militia recalls of another drag queen from Beverly, near Salem.

The beauty‑queen drag performers didn’t always appreciate it. “All the other drag queens were kind of uncomfortable because it was pretty wicked,” she says.

Militia marched in Gay Pride with Britt, did drag performances with him, and shared dressing rooms with trans performers.

“I basically was raised by drag queens when I started,” she says. They taught her the importance of aesthetic and presence. “They showed me like, you know, you have to have a look, you have to have an aesthetic, you have to have something to offer in the performance,” she says. “This is how you do your makeup, like show makeup. This is how you get your glitter to stay on. You should up your look or magnify who you are.”

For her, drag queens and trans people were part of the band ecosystem. “I was so used to incorporating drag queens and trans people into our band situation,” she says. “It was weird for me to find people that didn’t find that normal. Like I was like, why wouldn’t that be normal? They have the most to say.”

After Disciples of Astaroth, she moved to New York and joined a shock‑rock band whose singer was a performance artist.

“We were featured on Real Sex on HBO,” she says. Her mother saw the episode and called her, crying. “She’s like, ‘Oh my God, you guys are on Real Sex, and you guys are like doing all this crazy stuff on stage,’” Militia recalls. Her response was pure: “I was like, ‘Well, what are you doing watching Real Sex, Mom?’”

New York’s underground felt like an extension of the world she already knew. “Performance artists are like, they have something to say,” she says. “In New York, performance art and music is also like sister friends. There’s a lot of performance artists here that are also in bands.”

Drag performers, performance artists, musicians, and trans people overlapped constantly. “They’re like the twinsies,” she says. “A lot of drag performers are also performance artists here.”

Her original band Vulgaris eventually caught the attention of Cleopatra Records. “We made an album and then we got noticed by Cleopatra Records,” she says.

They signed a deal to contribute a song to a Dead Can Dance tribute album. “We have the last track on the Dead Can Dance tribute album,” she says. But the label cut their elaborate intro without asking.

“We had done this very elaborate, like moody intro. They cut the whole thing without asking us,” she says. “We were just like, their mind was blown, and then they like shelved our record.”

The full‑length, Embrace the Empty, was a dark, Type O Negative meets My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult‑style record. “It was very Type O meets like My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult,” she says. It never got the release it deserved.

That experience fed into a strategic shift. Militia is now widely known for her cover work—especially fronting Judas Priestess, the all‑female Judas Priest tribute band—but she’s blunt about why she started doing covers. “I only started doing cover songs because my original music wasn’t getting the attention that I wanted it to,” she says.

Her first original band, Disciples of Astaroth, did get attention and sold out shows, but it was localized. The wider industry didn’t know what to do with her. Covers became a way to get heard, to leverage the power of familiar songs while still bringing her own ferocity and theatricality to the stage.

Her range—four octaves, with a taste for drama—made her a natural fit for Judas Priestess. She’s done Bowie covers, Tina Turner, Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades,” and more, moving across genres with the same intensity she once brought to Chopin and Liszt. She’s also collaborated with figures like Dee Snider and sang a duet with Rob Halford, the metal god himself, inhabiting the lineage of metal while refusing to be confined by it.

Identity and representation are central to her story. Militia talks openly about being a Black woman in heavy metal, a genre that has long been saturated with toxic masculinity and narrow ideas of who belongs. She’s been told to change her appearance, to tone down, to fit a mold that has nothing to do with her talent.

“Everybody told me ‘I should not be doing that,” she says. “Everybody, literally, family, friends, strangers.” We duet on the Amyl and the Sniffers’ song. “People told me I shouldn’t be doing that..” She says. “I lived it too. I related to it so much.”

Her album Burn My Crosses was misread by some as anti‑Catholic, leading to bans from events and venues.

In reality, it was a response to corruption and hypocrisy she witnessed in Catholic school, where choirs were rigidly controlled and singing pop songs “for fun” was considered disrespectful.

“Anytime I tried to instill an element of fun musically, usually shot down,” she says. She’s been banned multiple times for being outspoken, for refusing to soften her critique, for refusing to pretend that institutions are benign when they’re not.

At the same time, she’s deeply rooted in dark literature and subversive art. She’s a member of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, a detail that fits perfectly with her aesthetic.

She loves Poe, Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, and the whole lineage of artists who turn darkness into revelation. Her upcoming work includes a collaboration with 24‑7 Spyz and a solo album titled For Those Without Shadows, a post‑apocalyptic project that promises to push her themes of identity, survival, and rebellion even further.

Threaded through all of this is a refusal to compromise authenticity. Whether she’s side‑saddling on a piano bench, painting her face black and white for an industrial performance piece, fronting Judas Priestess, marching in Pride with dark drag queens, or being featured on Real Sex, Militia Vox is not interested in shrinking herself to fit anyone’s comfort zone. “If you guys are gonna make me feel like I’m doing things wrong, I’m just gonna go for it,” she said as a teenager—and she never stopped.

Three hours of conversation with her don’t feel like a linear biography so much as a constellation: classical guild exams and King Crimson, Duran Duran and Dead Can Dance, drag queens and Deicide, Cleopatra Records and shelved albums, Catholic school choirs and banned records, Judas Priestess and Tina Turner, Poe societies and post‑apocalyptic visions. What ties it all together is the same line she screamed at Duran Duran as a kid: “I’m one of you. Take me with you.” She wasn’t asking permission. She was announcing a fact.

Militia Vox didn’t simply move from classical piano to metal. She built a life out of refusing to play dead men’s music quietly, out of insisting that drag queens, trans people, Black women, and neurodivergent misfits belong at the center of the stage. She didn’t just find her voice. She forged it, loudly, and never apologized.

About Alex S Johnson:

Dubbed “The Baudelaire of our time” by John Shirley, primary screenwriter of the cult classic horror film The Crow (1994) and songwriter for Blue Oyster Cult, Alex S Johnson is a retired university English professor, author, editor and publisher with Nocturnicorn Books. He has performed spoken word with the likes of Iris Berry (Punk Hostage Press; The Lame Flames, The Ringling Sisters with Pleasant Gehman), Ellyn Maybe (Beyond Baroque; author of The Cowardice of Amnesia as edited by Exene Cervenka of X and published by Henry Rollins of Black Flag and Rollins Band); Danielle Willis, author of the cult classic Dogs in Lingerie (Zeitgeist Press) and Lambda Literary Award-winning author and retired Yale University trained pediatrician/bi rights and disability rights activist Jan Steckel. Other interviews he has done published on Synchronized Chaos, Blue Blood Magazine, Metal Hammer and Zero Tolerance, etc. include Diamanda Galas, Jarboe, Gitane Demone, Rozz Williams, Lemmy Kilmister, Ronnie James Dio and King Diamond. He lives in Carmichael, California with his family.

Blurb and Review of  

DID YOU GET MARRIED TO HER WHEN I WAS IN THE MENTAL HOSPITAL?  

by Abigail George  

Published by ZamaShort 1^st April 2026  

Blurb 

In DID YOU GET MARRIED TO HER WHEN I WAS IN THE MENTAL HOSPITAL?  Abigail George takes the reader on the big dipper of her poetry, riding us through shocks and thrills  in the carriage of her life with mental illness, a stigma she was branded with at age 16. En route, we  become as Eve, but abandoned by Adam, teeth tearing apart the apple of knowledge, alone; we  become akin to Lady Macbeth, trying to wash the blood Netanyahu has spilled – nothing is  separable from anything else, and the language relentlessly stirs the pot of our inescapable oneness. This is a writing-witch’s brew, cooked to nourish and forever transform your understanding of  mental illness, womanhood and writing. 

* * * 

Review 

Dear Abigail 

Your story, DID YOU GET MARRIED TO HER WHEN I WAS IN THE MENTAL HOSPITAL? is not meant to be an easy read. I know it took it out of you to write it, and I am not surprised by  that. While I read it, I felt almost as if I were being confronted with the life that might have been  mine, had it not been for … what? The two facts of your childhood that distinguish your life and  mine most significantly, in my opinion, are, firstly, the fact that you were burdened with the stigma  of mental illness. As you write in the 24^th of a total of 25 passages, or prose stanzas, that make up  this work: “It was my destiny to call stigma a companion” (The Sea.) Oh, I empathise with you saying  how tired you are of the illness: 

I am tired of being mentally ill, this chronic sickness, this flame, the powers that be. I watch  it burn between my fingers. It tastes of Palestine. Cold stone turned into rubble. Make it go 

away but it doesn’t go away. (Longing, and on Reading that Sad Story ‘Flowers For Algernon’, Here  are Some Thoughts.) 

I was diagnosed with mental illness in my 30s, but I was compelled fiercely to refuse the stigma,  because my father told me in no uncertain terms to right myself, he did not want to, or could not, pay for more sessions with the psychiatrist. (I don’t have medical aid, you see.) And I had a three year-old child to look after. So, I weaned myself gradually off the meds I was told I’d need to take  for life, and focused instead, fully, on having to mother, and having to be a wife. You lament that  those age-old, anonymous roles weren’t for you – “I could never be wife material […] I could never  raise children. Oh, madwomen couldn’t do that” (Longing, and on Reading that Sad Story ‘Flowers For  Algernon’, Here are Some Thoughts.) These roles can indeed help, can ground us – as you, too, I think,  are finding, by having to look after, to mother, to care for, your two-year-old niece, and your elderly,  vulnerable father – ? 

But back to the illness with which you were loaded at such a young age, as we discover in your bio  that precedes your story. As I see it, this load was weirdly and unwillingly (or unwittingly?) linked  into the thing you state unequivocally saved you: language, poetry. I will say more to try to explain  what I mean by this, but before I do that, I want to name the second significant event that for me distinguishes your and my destinies in, I hope, mutually instructive ways: the fact that both your  parents supported and encouraged your writerly gift. We learn from your bio that your father  proofread your drafts when you were in your twenties and thirties, and that your mother “recognised  my talent for writing early on” and bought you a typewriter, first a manual and then an electric one,  wow! And this happened even though she “makes it a point never to read anything I have written”,  preferring Barbara Taylor Bradford and Danielle Steele novels. Well, as Richard Bach famously  observed: “Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” Still, your brother,  though far from filled with joy over your life, as you describe him, nevertheless published your first  book. The bitter contradictions life forces us to accept! And so: Writing was a sign from God […] it gave me a reason to live, a purpose and I could heal myself, and others. (From your Bio)

Despite the hatred and the absence of peace around you, despite the sickness inherent in the social structures of school and the nuclear family, despite the fact that your family members, teachers and peers “had no time” for you and “severely bullied” you, “leaving [you] breathless, or half deranged with all the negativity in [your] environment”, you found “a sea of wildflowers” in poetry, “a bed on which [you] could rest the vessel of [your] body.” (From your Bio) That is beautiful. The same motif serves your experience of reading: Reading, you write in Eating Rice and Potatoes with some Steadfast Patience, “is for the wildflowers in our imagination to blossom”. 

You begin your story addressing your First Love. Later, in Don’t You Forget About Me, Pinky Swear  Promise Me, R., you address your toddler niece, then, in We Need to Discuss Crystal Meth, Struggle, the  Healer, and Forgiveness, it’s your brother you’re talking to. And in This is My Convent, you talk directly to  Anne Sexton. And then, in Poem for Gaza, Songs for Me, you revert to your First Love, O. Have I got  that right? Seeking a hearing, a connection, a conversation – just like any ordinary woman, like any  social creature. 

I like the way each of your passages, your prose stanzas, begins with a sentence full of capitals, there  is something stately and leonine about that. 

Years in Summer Days. 

Let Me Sleep Now in Peace, Please. 

I mean, it reminds me of the Lion in Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, the way you make the words  march in, heads held high, bringing that energy of the Unquestionable Arrival of the Sovereign. And  that allows, later, for the “vessel of [your] body” to claim her vulnerability in the ‘aquarium’ of your  suffering, to announce: 

I Don’t Know How to Start. 

Or: 

The Gap Between Symbol and Reality. (The final passage.) 

… where the capitals seem to submerge the reader, with equal grandeur, but no longer breathing  with lungs, there is almost a having to hold the breath as you write that:

The sea began screaming at me. 

And: 

I held the blueprint of my wound and stopped breathing. 

(Finding Machiavellian Turning Points in Having a Nervous Breakdown.) 

Henry Lombard calls your story “claustrophobic” in her comment, and remarks that you “prove” writing to be “a holy act of reclamation”. That is what I want to dwell on now, I mean the role of  literary language and its implicatedness, as I see it, in illness, and in “the brutality” which “was the  same”, whether you were at home reading a magazine “whose words hurt [your] eyes”, and “A refugee camp falls out”; or whether you were in Israel, which you discovered while your mother  watered the garden, in Finding Years in Summer Days, or whether Netanyahu speaks, in Gaza is not  Dead, and you squeeze blood out of stones in a refugee camp and wash soiled garments in the sea. The aroma of death, the rubbish, and decay, I need to get it off my hands. (Forgiven, but not Forgotten, it Doesn’t Matter you see.) 

Now you are Lady Macbeth, and all of humanity’s horrors are yours to cleanse. And the reader is  with you and it’s awful. 

So, what is happening here, the way I see it, is that language is dumping itself into you, into us, via  an unchecked flow of sounds and images. You write that “when it appears in the newspaper it has a  beating heart” (Finding Years in Summer Days) and there is this sense of the limitlessness, the  continuous increment, the boundarylessness, that dreadful slipperiness of the medium you use: 

I can’t throw out my feminine energies with the past, nor with the pasta water. (Octopus  Flowers in the Dark.) 

Or: 

Nothing grows inside this garden except the dead bodies of children, and snails who were  somehow not involved in the Palestinian struggle. (Silence.) 

And:

These pills fill me or are they peas? (For Gaza’s Flame Gatherers, Those on the Frontlines and the Ambulance Chasers.) 

The snails are actually comical in their non-involvement, a last, languid bastion of feet and feelers in  Eden. Even the pills and the peas bring in the curl of a question mark, or is it a shy smile, after their  shared p’s – ? But when you “fry the ham in the pan” (A New Love), I accidentally read “harm” for  “ham”; and in This is My Convent I see you eat “my friend egg”, and only afterwards realise it’s a  perfectly regular “fried egg”. I mean, what is happening is that the language is uncontained, or  should that be untamed? The verbal stew of torment is bewildering, the fine details are so awfully  human, again I gasp for breath, asking, where is reality, where is the realness of the animal I am, my  connection to the wind? I want to run away and breathe an air free of language. Maybe on the  mountain, who “have ears and a kind of feminine energy” (Finding Years in Summer Days)? I have to  admit that I don’t have the tenacity, I don’t have your ability to live this remarkable destiny of  showing the world that the word was NOT God, the word was far, far too HUMAN! 

The truth reveals itself. Unlike your mother, who eats an apple “in tiny bite-sized pieces” (Octopus  Flowers in the Dark), you “tear the apple apart with [your] teeth” and “deconstruct [dried fruit] on  [your] tongue” (A New Love), and “Gaza falls like the neck of a wildflower falls” (For Gaza’s Flame  Gatherers, Those on the Frontlines and the Ambulance Chasers.) 

So, you are Eve, abandoned by Adam to a fallen Eden, eating the whole apple by herself, teaching us  that we have not survived the Age of Permissiveness, where the sea is language and, as female  writers, we inhabit an ocean of suicidal female poets: “Ingrid Jonker’s sea” (Finding Machiavellian  Turning Points in Having a Nervous Breakdown). Who can deny this fact? Yet you crave for your mother  to SAY she loves you, her gifts of actions are NOT enough (Longing, and on Reading that Sad Story  ‘Flowers For Algernon’, Here are Some Thoughts). I was the same, exactly so, where I likewise craved to  hear words from my parents that I eventually learned to accept could not and still cannot be  articulated by the soft animal that is love. Is that why the following paragraph touches me so deeply? 

My spirit has evolved because I loved you. On lonely nights I gather this fact of life to  myself. […] What is this observation that challenges me to overcome my suffering? (I Don’t  Know How to Start.)

You write, “I don’t know how to end this on a positive note, so I will end here” (I Don’t Know How to Start) – words which must surely move even the most coolly detached of readers.  

And then!  

Then you ask. You ask with a directness that jumps beyond words, it’s the gentle curiosity of a wild animal. Cautious, but fearless. The Gentle Curiosity of Woman. You jump, no, you pounce straight to the heart of matter (not “the matter”, just “matter”): 

As a poet, as an individual, whose joy matters most to you? What is your response to loneliness? 

Oh, Abigail, thank you for those questions! I want to do nothing more than respond. I want you to  know, and I want myself to know that, As a Poet, As an Individual, it is The Voices of The Earth  that matter most to me. And my response to loneliness is To Move. To Walk. To Extend a  Kindness to Someone. To Make Something Using My Hands. Maybe then, after all, to write (By  Hand). For, to be a female who writes, I have learned, I may not prioritise the role of ‘being a  writer’. For a writer such as I am – and this is, despite everything I did not want and did not ask for, a destiny of choice – the act of writing must come last of all. For a woman, writing is a verb, not a  name, not an identity. Then it is easier done than said. 

I see your story as the beginning of The Dance Of Wildflowers In The Wind. Your wildflowers.  Your seeds and your planting. For, the way I see it, your hands are clean now. From All The Work – writing and otherwise – which you have done and still do, through the summertimes of your father’s  embrace, through the winters of your mother and sister and brother, through your wound’s blooms  every spring (Finding Years in Summer Days) through to “the silken smell of autumn” (Let Me Sleep  Now in Peace, Please) – a smell my nose is now hunting to harvest! 

Love from 

Silke 

– Silke Heiss, Sunrise-on-Sea, 6^th April 2026

Abigail George’s Did You Get Married To Her While I Was In the Mental Hospital? is available from publisher ZamaShort here.

Here are fifteen poems by young Chinese teenagers. All of these poems have been approved for publication by the young poets themselves, their parents and teachers. 

The collection is titled Youth & Poetry Project.

Launched jointly in the spring of 2025 by Chinese poet Su Yun and Greek poet EVA Petropoulou Lianou, the Youth & Poetry Project aims to boost international cultural exchanges through teenage poetry. Below are poems written by young Chinese writers, full of childlike innocence and unique philosophical insights peculiar to their age:

1.五月的风

毓秀小学 裴熙月（10岁）

五月的风

吹过农民的脸颊

滚烫的汗珠

闪烁着丰收的希望

五月的风

吹过环卫工人的扫把

扬起的尘土里

藏着城市干净的朝霞

1. Wind in May

Pei Xiyue (10), Yuxiu Primary School

The wind of May

brushes across farmers’ cheeks.

Those burning drops of sweat

sparkle with hopes of harvest.

The wind of May

blows over the sanitation workers’ brooms.

Within the raised dust

lies the clean morning glow of the whole city.

2.勤劳的春天

毓秀小学 宁静涵（10岁）

春天的勤劳

藏在暖暖的风里

它轻轻吹过

把花香送给大地

藏在小蜜蜂的翅膀里

嗡嗡唱着，采蜜不歇

藏在小鸟的歌声里

衔来树枝，搭起新房

藏在老黄牛的脚步里

低头耕开，一垄新泥

 2. The Diligent Spring

Ning Jinghan (10), Yuxiu Primary School

The diligence of spring

hides in the warm wind.

It blows gently

and sends the fragrance of flowers to the earth.

It hides in the wings of little bees,

who buzz nonstop, gathering nectar all day long.

It hides in the songs of birds,

who carry twigs to build their new nests.

It hides in the footsteps of old oxen,

ploughing open rows of fresh soil.

3.我给月亮写诗

毓秀小学 柴舒畅（10岁）

我给月亮写了首诗

读给它听：

“月亮啊月亮……”

它边听边笑

笑着笑着

就弯了

 3. I Write a Poem for the Moon

Chai Shuchang (10), Yuxiu Primary School

I wrote a poem for the moon,

and read it out to her:

“Dear Moon, my dear Moon……”

She listened and smiled,

smiling and smiling,

till she curved herself into a crescent.

4.雷雨

毓秀小学 原凯伦（10岁）

雷雨轰轰烈烈过后

小草喝饱了

太阳从云里跑出来

而它留下的水坑

成了孩子们的乐园

 4. Thunderstorm

Yuan Kailun (10), Yuxiu Primary School

After the thunderstorm roared past,

the grass has drunk its fill.

The sun runs out from behind clouds,

and the puddles left by the rain

become paradise for children.

5.思念的翅膀

毓秀小学 辛婉怡（10岁）

思念的翅膀把我带到

时间的长河中

我看到了奶奶向我招手

等我跑过去

她已消失在苍穹

我摸着湿透的枕巾

把思念写进诗行

 5. Wings of Yearning

Sin Wanyi (10), Yuxiu Primary School

The wings of longing carry me away

to the long river of time.

I see Grandma waving her hand to me.

Yet the moment I run toward her,

she fades away into the vast sky.

I touch my soaked pillow,

and weave all my longing into lines of poetry.

6.梦

河北省石家庄市藁城区工业路小学 苏墨琰（11岁）

妈妈

不要再说

睡醒之后我的头发乱了

那是因为梦要找一个好去处

有时候

梦会迷路

脑袋便乱糟糟的

也有时候

它会变得很小

在发丝中偷偷蔓延

但是不管怎样

茂密的头发丛林里

它总是能悄悄溜走

见不到梦的真面目

 6. Dream

Su Moyan (11), Gongye Road Primary School, Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

Mom,

don’t keep saying

my hair is messy after waking up.

It’s because my dreams are searching for a nice place to stay.

Sometimes,

dreams get lost,

leaving my head all tangled.

Other times,

they shrink tiny,

creeping quietly between strands of hair.

No matter what,

amid the thick jungle of hair,

they always slip away silently,

never letting me see their true faces.

7.衣兜里的秘密

河北省石家庄市藁城区工业路小学 苏墨琰（11岁）

妈妈洗衣服

掏开我的衣兜

一颗带来好运的金瓜子

三枚亮闪闪的游戏币

五粒同学送的酸酸糖

一叠小纸条也蹦了出来

上面写着

“啊”“呀”“唉”

它们轻轻松松

暴露了我的小秘密

 7. Secrets in My Pocket

Su Moyan (11), Gongye Road Primary School, Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

Mom was washing clothes,

and emptied my pocket.

A golden melon seed that brings good luck,

three shiny game coins,

five sour candies given by classmates,

and a stack of small notes hopped out too.

On them were written:

“Ah”, “Wow”, “Sigh”.

With such ease,

they gave away all my little secrets.

8.床

河北省石家庄市藁城区工业路小学 苏墨琰（11岁）

一个小角落

一棵不起眼的枫树上

搭着一个鸟窝

阳光嫌冷

秋风嫌硬

小鸟嫌小

蚂蚁嫌高

只有一片

红枫叶不嫌弃

静静地躺在那里

 8. The Bed

Su Moyan (11), Gongye Road Primary School, Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

In a quiet corner,

on an unremarkable maple tree,

perches a bird’s nest.

The sunlight finds it too chilly,

the autumn wind finds it too harsh,

the little birds find it too cramped,

the ants find it too high.

Only one red maple leaf does not mind,

lying there peacefully all alone.

9.光

河北省石家庄市藁城区贾市庄镇贯庄小学 顼铭泽（10岁）

冰最不喜欢的东西

是什么

当然就是光

光打在冰上

冰不堪重负

被打成了水

水被光照着变白了

就像冰

举着小白旗投降了

 9. Light

Xu Mingze (10), Guanzhuang Primary School, Jiashizhuang Town, Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

What is ice’s least favorite thing?

It’s light, of course.

When light strikes ice,

the ice cannot bear the weight,

melting into water.

The water glows pale under the light,

just like ice

holding up a small white flag to surrender.

10.贪吃的雪

河北省石家庄市藁城区贾市庄镇贯庄小学 裴晨宇（10岁）

卖冰糖葫芦——

卖冰糖葫芦的来了

一会儿

孩子们都出来了

还有一个糖葫芦

雪飘下来

买下了最后一串

10. Greedy Snow

Pei Chenyu (10), Guanzhuang Primary School, Jiashizhuang Town, Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

Candied hawthorns for sale—

The hawthorn vendor has come.

Soon,

all the children run outside.

One last skewer remains.

Snowflakes drift down

and buy the final string of candied hawthorns.

11.黄昏

黄山头镇中心小学 张海童（11岁）

太阳顺着地平线下落

路上车来人往

我背着书包回家

买一根冰棍

很甜 很满足

鸟飞回巢穴

世界缓缓入眠

11. Dusk

Zhang Haitong (11), Huangshantou Town Central Primary School

The sun sinks along the horizon

Vehicles and pedestrians pass on the road

I head home with my schoolbag

Buy an ice stick

So sweet, so satisfying

Birds fly back to their nests

The whole world drifts off to sleep

12.夏日趣事

黄山头镇中心小学 黄震宇（10岁）

夏日趣事

就是一卷凉席

一根冰棒

一部电视剧

一个美好的心情

 12. Joys of Summer

Huang Zhenyu (10), Huangshantou Town Central Primary School

The little joys of summer

are a roll of summer mat

an ice pop

an episode of TV series

and a peaceful happy mood

13.红

黄山头镇中心小学 何梓康（10岁）

这个世界离不开红

红色的太阳

红色的苹果

红色的怒火

 13. Red

He Zikang (10), Huangshantou Town Central Primary School

The world cannot do without red

The sun is red

Apples are red

And anger also burns red

14.夜

黄山头镇中心小学 孙晓帆（10岁）

夜是宁静的，

因为，

每到夜里，

所有的生灵都会沉睡。

夜是美丽的，

因为，

月亮高高挂在天空，

星星还纷纷来给它点缀。

14. Night

Sun Xiaofan (10), Huangshantou Town Central Primary School

Night is quiet,

because

when night comes,

all creatures fall asleep.

Night is beautiful,

because

the moon hangs high in the sky,

countless stars come to decorate it.

15.光明

黄山头镇中心小学 罗夕（10岁）

光明可以赢过黑暗，

我们都喜欢光明。

整个世界都有光明，

光明无处不在。

15. Light

Luo Xi (10), Huangshantou Town Central Primary School

Light can conquer darkness,

and we all love the light.

Light fills every corner of the world,

light is everywhere

When the eyes meet…

Look, right now, at this moment

In the harbor of love

Face to face with me

Eye to eye

In the ocean of my eyes

In the angle of the eyes

Looking at the future

In that little boat

In the arms of the waves

In the height of the sail

Looking for happiness

See how it composes

The joyful rhythm of love,

The song of the King of Love,

Oh my dream hero!

Let me declare to you

You are the first accent of my heart

With you I understood

The feeling of being loved

That love exists.

But I never knew

The thousand games of fate.

When I suddenly saw you

When those magical feelings

Wrapped my heart

Like a little bird

I would fly away from there…

I would drown in your gaze,

I would sleep late in the evenings,

I would count stars one by one

In the moonlight in the sky

I would find a double star

I would name us

Look, it would be you

Me next to you.

It would land on my face, hey

A constant pleasant smile

Yeah… It would get stuck

Stamped on a document

Like an official seal.

Now I look at you

In your eyes full of love

We stand face to face

From a memory book

The embroidery of patterns

It is solved like a puzzle

This moment is lived one by one

A life that has not been lived.

Elmaya Jabbarova was born in Azerbaijan. She is a poet, writer, and translator. Her poems from 2019 to date were published in the regional and foreign newspapers, magazines, books, websites, and anthologies. She has been awarded many certificates, diplomas, and medals. She is the department manager of Hekari newspaper of Azerbaijan. She is an honorary member of the Writers of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyzstan World Association of People’s Creators, Honorary member of the International Academy of Literature, Art, Culture and Social Sciences of Uzbekistan. She is an Academic Appointed Coordinator by the Secretary General of Azerbaijan, Argentina. She is presented in the book Famous Personalities MultiArt – 5, Argentina. She was a member World Poetic Fraternity. She was awarded the title of Global Poet of 2023; 2024. She was awarded the title of World Poet Laureate from Azerbaijan as one of 55 poets selected by Pentasi B Friendship Poetry for 2025.

Time

thoughts were silenced

misfortune befell the leaves

autumn crept up 

The desert

The grass smells of sweaty paints mixed with wolfish yawns and dirty fur

I kiss the grass of your leafy hands and try to warm them with my tired hands

But you fade like a candle of sunlight on the eve of the polar night

Your body is so beautiful, so white, but I can’t take it with me: corpses are capable of decomposing

Your thoughts are empty, like a desert —

Let’s go tomorrow at sunrise and take a last breath of preoccupation air

Love

Mother sews a dress for her daughter 

Mother sews a vagina for her daughter 

<Mother wants grandchildren> 

Mother sews a vagina for her daughter for a soldier 

Mother’s husband died long ago 

Daughter still feels like a child 

Because being a child means being a slave to parental love 

And vagina tries to talk at night 

And the nuclear rain outside the window never ends

The bell

bears sprats viennese carpet turkish ball brazilian borscht ukrainian carnival white bears sharks telephone injections or (open) calls all kinds of cola sugar and blood memory and mint and first and foremost want to die and never never twice and thrice never see newer ti see to know or to hear the killer(s) number(s) 89 back bladder balls beaten chops kidneys of the punishment shorty shortly shitty cell molecules of corpses separated like lovers no one loves and no one knows locusts begin to emerge from the sleeve god’s torn robe еven flowers can’t drink blood water cotton and candy cotton cocon candy sandy mold of memory has grown on my moss covered back (grass or glass) i still can’t speak or remain silent but my screams and these people are pulling my soul out of my carry belly oh oh how painful it is it was it will then they hammer my soul back in like a nail with a hammer and despair

The peeling putty

The peeling putty of human life

The snake sheds the skin of the past and falls asleep

Snake catchers go hunting and kill icy time

The pendulum of the bell tower of the nursing home is covered with gray snow

Cut off the cute

Cut off the cute eyes of a handsome boy

Trample the dew from the glass with your bare feet

Break the grass and crush the helpless ant

(I look down and feel small)

The sky painted with the infinitive of murder floats overhead

The sky floats away overhead

The ground disappears from under your feet and

And the sand of time dissolves in the bowl of memories

Birth

Death

Design

Signature

Time doesn’t exist

Only sand exists

The amount of pain cannot be counted

The number of aircraft carriers cannot be counted

Pain doesn’t exist

Paint doesn’t exist

There is only death

Silence

Scream

Fuck me endlessly and cum inside so that a new atomic bomb is born in my body

You’ll never fuck me

Everything around has long been dead and buried

Blue pоem

The sky is the color of angel blood

•••

Dot drops swell to the size of thinking

°°°

The capillaries of autumn spring burst with a cemetery

|||

The blue shadows of the dead during sleep will be picked up by crows

^^^

The blue shadows of the dead during sleep will be thrown down from the heights by crow

~~~

Down there the river dries up with frozen faces of screams

\\\

The rain is still stone and milky cast iron

×××

God’s assistant presses the wrong buttons again

∆∆∆

Uninterrupted ending

“Historical Memory is the Foundation of the Future”

​In our country, May 9th – Memory and Honor Day – is widely celebrated as a nationwide holiday. This date is one of the sacred traditions inherited from our ancestors and passed down from generation to generation over the years. In our independent Uzbekistan, this holiday continues to be celebrated with special respect and attention.

​As our First President Islam Karimov emphasized: “There is no future without historical memory. A nation that forgets its past has no future.” Indeed, every person must never forget their past.

​According to a parable, a man’s father was a simple farmer. He worked tirelessly day and night with honest labor to educate his children and settle them in their own homes. When his time came, the man passed away. His children buried him and returned home. After that, the division of the inheritance began: one took the field lands, another took the saved money and gold items, and another took the house.

​Then, one of the sons said: “I want my father’s boots that he wore while working in the field.” He took only that pair of boots and hung them at the entrance gate of his house. Everyone who entered or left would touch these boots with their head.

​One day, someone asked him: “Why have you hung these boots here?” He replied: “So that I never forget who I am, my identity, and where I came from.”

​In conclusion, a person should never forget their past, their ancestors, and their hard work. Memory is a sacred concept that serves to help a person understand their true identity. Valuing the heritage left by our ancestors and remembering them is the duty of each of us. As our honorable leader Sh. Mirziyoyev emphasized: “We must never forget the horrors of war and must appreciate the value of peace.”