3


murmurs

of ill winds

shift to the west

cheerful ladybird 

returns to nest



2


yellow warbler

on the green palms of nature

takes a perch

unsuspecting 

of a waiting goshawk 



1


her turn 

at the queue 

staggered tears

she collects in a basket

wages of labour



  Christina Chin / Uchechukwu Onyedikam

Object Poem #5/nursery rhyme series

Dainty Dish

out of my deep fluted lungs fly four     
& twenty blackbirds/like a pop-          
out birthday cake nobody                      
w(ants)/one for sorrow, two                  
for mirth, three for… /all                  
the noses pecked
unseemly 
in the
flour

garden where pockets of rye upend   
sixpence of root vegetables             
gamey m(eats)/the odds & ends               
collecting to yoke a                       
crusted sheet over          
an ortolan                          
for the king’s
pye nest
flap.
 

Object Poem #6/nursery rhyme series 

Pail

You you youououou
      ououou
                 ououo
          u
                   ou
                o
                   u
          O
             are no wet cooper, hole-sprung 
the dark fish rock bite of lichen/air collapsing between metal-hooped ribs/
lung-sprung echo/
no muscle oaken to stave the leviathan drip/I take on 
white pebbles in death’s aquarium 
                     but for a moment I nursed the grinning look in your eye, Jack
Jill, before I 
fell 
too/tumbling  
down the fungal crown of the well/no rickety windlass will set the bones/
no vinegar & brown paper will mend the holes/
     just water   water   water fetched to sink/I look 
up spring-trapped to no reflection. 
 

and before them asks the peat harvester


The days are wet and acidic. Outstretched, the flaming orange-red tendril of the sundew plant snares a Scottish midge. The bog sustains its landscape as I cut turf—peat to burn and iron ore to make swords and cauldrons, shields. The crusted land weeps hacked bone. Tablet-woven braids of sphagnum moss drift between land and water. 

On the horizon, across the tarn, bird-stuffed clouds are borne on a northerly wind. I shovel and tusker, unlayering the earth’s buttery black core. Soft, pulpy trees buckle out of the peat maw. A wet nest of swamp roots pull and tug at the ball of my heel. I billhook and brick and dry neat walls of landscaped flesh on banks of heather. The bog glows like the plumage of luminous owls. With each peat brick it wispily exhales the miasma of rewetted rituals. 

in the bog body
barley, linseed and knotweed 
written for the gods. 
 

thin cushion between rock and air

Abroche/a biological structure making 
cements out of carbon
springtails nymphalids dipluran poised & sprung like wind horses

the invisible dream architecture of soil animals/mineral particles spidered into pores & passag-es/tiny clumps of hibernaculum are building blocks for bigger labyrinths/beaver dams/wasps nests/rhizosphere the plant’s external gut. 

At night/Swedenborg pushes nails into the dirt 
& hops across the lawn with head cocked like a bird
listening for the inner order of the world, the biotremology of how matter relates to spirit 

as immortal jellyfish reorganize themselves into new kingdoms.
 

the goldilocks zone

O! dive
{{{{{ doun
{{{{{{{{{{ dreepin 

guillemot, manx shearwater
into the boundary between mixed & stratified water/scrapefoot 
the intersection of shoaling clupeids

margins change through the column/inner 
edges of tidal fronts unmoored/0.99 AV-1.7 AV/
zombie ice vagrant

dive
///// doun
////////// dreepin         

the dinosaur bridge spans the meltwater
whaur bears hunt porridge under a stagnant lid. 

Persevere

Even if your purpose here on this circular sphere
Called Earth appears uncertain and unclear
I’ve learned one’s worth isn’t a mere
Sum of what they’ve purchased or what they’ve earned in a career
Life’s about how you feel about the person in the mirror
Like whether or not they’re further on nearer 
To who you want to be, a word for the ears
Of those not there yet, ‘Persevere’


A Winning Formula

When there burns a fire within
And you’re spurred on by a desire to win
If you never concede defeat 
You can withstand pressure and keep the lead
Going against the opposition
With the approach, “A win is not a given”
Execute the game plan
And never lose faith, and you may remain the champ
For some time to come
When you find you’re the one
To beat, you’ll know that you can win
And be the one who stands in
The ‘winner’s circle’, when it’s all said and done
And you’ll rank second to none
Realizing there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’
A group can realize a dream
And win.


Stargazing

Every evening my eyes scan the cosmos
Paying particular attention to a certain section of the solar system
In search of the sights I identify
As the celestial streetlights that litter the night sky



Active Imagination

What if we didn’t have division from capitalism,
A clash of religions and a class system
And we were equals even if polar opposites,
Government put people over politics
And we could make citizens’ arrests 
Of those that abuse the power they’re given to protect
And serve, when wrong is done under the cover of law?
What’s done to one can be done to us all
So we should all spend a few
Minutes each day trying to walk in the shoes
Of others; going forward, what if we bid,
“Farewell” to the ills of the society in which we live?
I wonder…


Matters of the Heart

While I haven't been in love, yet
I have been given tips on the subject
And no, love isn't blind
You'll know it when you see it, just give it time 
And let it take its natural course, if
It's real, then you won't have to force it
We tend to think of love as 'dependency'
And that we're empty and incomplete
When we’re not in the presence of
The one whose affection and love
We seek, but that’s not true
Being alone doesn’t have to stop you
From enjoying your own company, with 
That said, if you and the one you want to be with 
Complement one another 
And share a bond friends and lovers
Can appreciate, you may have found
Love everlasting, I say that now
But really only time will tell
Love’s a matter of the heart, but the mind will help
You recognize true love; love can smooth any wrinkle
And until I find that, I'm cool with being single 


Realize The Dream

Some think, “To dream is a childish thing
And dreams only come true in your wildest dreams” 
But how do you think Martin Luther King Jr. 
Was able to see so far into the future?
Becoming a man on a mission
And it's up to us to expand on the vision
He had and do our best to bridge 
Gaps and make prejudice
And inequality obsolete
So no one’s at the bottom seeking
A better life, no matter how grim the prospects
If we’re in lockstep
There isn’t a goal that’s not within reach
Though I’m cognizant peace
Might seem elusive 
Like a pipedream rooted
In fantasy, there’s nothing we can’t achieve when
Doubt isn’t given a chance to creep in
We can even make Indigenous mascots and team names
And images a thing of the past; Dr. King aimed
To change the world, and the quest
To see his dream manifest
Continues on…

Discussing Death

Gaurav Ojha

From the perspective of death, human life is just a passing story; we are here at this moment and in another dimension of time and history all of us are here no more. Recently, I was going through an old picture from my childhood days, which included me as a toddler and as I was going through a picture I realized that three out of four individuals are missing, they are dead and gone. 

I am alive now, but eventually I am also waiting for the same fate. After some time, just like the three of them, I will only remain in some other pictures. Similarly, I was looking at a crowded picture taken in the year 1910 with hundreds of people at a musical concert thoroughly enjoying together and by now I can safely presume that almost all the people in that picture are dead. Life happens only once to each of us, and there comes a point where everything concludes and ends. 

These are my discussions on death and there are so many of them, me and some of my friends we discuss death; however this proclamation seems bizarre to most of us because we are preoccupied with life without acknowledging the dimension of death. After all, everything in life together with all its achievements appears pointless and limited from the perspective of death and dying. Hence, death discussions are either forbidden or else postponed. 

Death salons and cafes are becoming popular throughout the world with hundreds of people discussing death together, however we don’t have such privileges yet to discuss death with beautiful music, talking about the darker sides of life. Paradox is that from the childhood days children are exposed to death, characters die in cartoons, serials and movies. But we are constantly ignoring discussions on death all together. 

Death discussions are important, because how we think about death somehow determines how we live our life. Death creates urgency to act here and now because life can’t be postponed. Finite dimension of life means there is only life at this present moment and everything we do or achieve in life can be interrupted by death. Therefore, unlike many people, I think because of death, everything we do or achieve in life becomes precious. 

Our act of love, kindness and support for parents, children and friends is meaningful because we will not have them around forever or always with us. Everything is going to end, making everything we have precious. As an example, a couple days back as we were discussing death, a friend reflected on his mother’s love for his baby daughter. His mother is already into her eighties and she knows that she will not be around to see his daughter grow much longer. And, in those reflections of life from the perspective of death, we also realize how each and every bit of life is so beautiful, complete and precious.

A Taste of Death

Gaurav Ojha

In his seminal work, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, English author Douglas Adams suggests that the meaning of life is 42, and I used to think of it as gibberish and my response used to be like how about 52, 67 or 103? And, it was only a couple of days back; I was able to grasp the subtleness behind this suggestion.

When I was wandering near the Ghats of Pashupatinath, I stumbled upon a resonance that she was only 32, she died of an incurable disease and all that remains of her now is a handful of ashes slowly dissolving in the river. Maybe the meaning of life is life itself, the matter of living in a certain way and after we die it’s all over.

For Douglas Adams himself it was 49, he died of a heart attack while taking a rest after his regular exercise. Similarly, for the rest of us still alive, our time is set, the clock is constantly ticking and we never know when death strikes us.

After witnessing a burning funeral pyre at the Ghats of Pashupatinath, I sat beside a Shiva temple near the river bank.  With that sinister smoke swirling in the sky, sounds of wailing, that dreadful smell of human flesh and seeing a human body reduced to handful of ashes, I thought to myself how bizarre our human life actually is, after all that human impulses, dreams, worries, joys, suffering and sweet passion for life, why this sorrow of death?

Sitting beside the temple, a sense of fear and anxiety gripped me from within, and I kept on asking myself, if we are living now to be nothing more than a handful of ashes, why do I have to breathe? What is the purpose of my life? Why this trouble of living? With the fragrance of death all over me, all other purposes, meaning, aspirations and expectations of my life appeared dull, empty, trivial and contradictory.

In the midst of death and dying, I reflected on my struggles, sufferings, strivings, plans, relations, anguishes, aspirations and achievements. And, I said to myself, isn’t life a tale told by an idiot that signifies nothing, a bitter sweet symphony, a brief episode of dancing shadows or a meaningless puzzle squeezed in between our birth and death? It’s inevitable that we all are going to die. Death is in life as a necessary ingredient that makes human life vibrant, exciting, erratic and alive.

On my walk back home, I felt a liberating calmness touching me, a kind of feeling that cures the mind. However, beyond the Ghats of Pashupatinath, the greatest surprise remains the same, as Yudhisthira laments in the Mahabharata, death pinches us all the time and still we human being live as though we are immortal, believing that we will be living our human lives forever with all our passions and possessions together, what a self-delusion indeed.

Ripples Of Life

Gaurav Ojha

When our student died in an awful accident, struck by a truck while cycling, he was barely fifteen. The student was a bright star gleaming in his potential. Some of us thought he would one day be a great poet. He used to scratch poems within minutes and had a voice that resounded like a mature orator. However, due to a reckless mistake, all our impressions and expectations were reduced to a handful of dust scattered in the river. After his death, for days I felt a little diminished and couldn’t be at ease with myself. The claws of death had snapped my neck, and I kept pondering what if death was just around the corner waiting to catch me as well. 

Maybe his untimely death was a reminder of my own mortality. My mind got clouded with thoughts of death, and I was really anxious, eclipsed by the shadows of my lingering death. I know I can’t experience my own death with the death of another person. And, I don’t know when my death is going to happen, but I am sure there’s no escaping it. Maybe my life is just a ripple in a vast ocean of eternity, life that keeps on bubbling up, as it pours out and passes away.

Impermanence of life is all around us, and as human beings we are inexorably moving towards our death. Everything we see, touch, taste, love, hope, despise or desire is in the process of dying. There is nothing that remains unchanged. Besides, if there is a bit of meaning in life, as writer Franz Kafka reminds us, it is that it ends. Life reflects itself in the mirror of death. With death life comes to an end, and how easy it is to be forgotten and replaced. Therefore, it is meaningful to contemplate on the tiny ripples of our human existence and to think how meaningless human life actually is.

Meaninglessness of life often infuses some sense of lightness into my being. I feel at ease with all these tiny ripples of my life sparkling around me in their randomness. And, I have embraced the reality that it is not possible to have absolute control over how the plot of our life unfolds or when this chapter is going to end. Hence, whichever way our life shuffles, either substantial or just meaningless, the zest of life is always the same, that it ends.

First of all, our friend and collaborator Rui Carvalho has announced the opening of our Nature Writing Contest for 2022. This is an invitation to submit poems and short stories related to trees, water, and nature conservation between now and the March 2023 deadline. More information and submission instructions here!

Also, our co-editor Kahlil Crawford and I are announcing a Latin culture-themed issue, which will be October’s first issue. Submissions for this are welcome up through the end of September. Kahlil was inspired by the works of Fernando Sorrentino, who sent in a set of stories, one of which is published in this issue. Lorraine Caputo will write the editorial letter for that issue.

Finally, we encourage you to support assistance and education, including literacy classes, for Afghan people in need through RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan). They are looking for people to translate articles from Persian/Pashto into English and to translate the English and Pashto articles on their site into a variety of other languages.

Chimezie Ihekuna continues his half-year countdown to Christmas with a poem about traditional children’s and family celebrations in his homeland of Nigeria. Christopher Bernard also speaks to the change of seasons, describing the early beginning of fall weather in rich but sweltering farmland.

Mahbub turns towards nature as well, describing a couple who finds the beauty of their love reflected in an intricate coral reef and the timelessness of the ocean. Christina Chin and Matthew Defibaugh collaborate on another piece that’s a different sort of look at a couple on the beach.

Tanvir Islam’s poem celebrates the love between a husband and a wife, while Alimam Bolakale sends us a children’s verse style piece on romantic love. John Culp celebrates peace and love in a clever poem.

Gabriel T. Saah urges us all to embrace spiritual love, while Musa Ibrahim gives gentle calls for nurturance in interpersonal and inter-group relationships. Ike Boateng describes a quite eventful month in the life of his community in Ghana.

Md. Nurujjajman relates a tale of obsessive love turned violent, while Abdulbasit Oluwanishola laments the decay of a friendship due to someone’s being distracted by greed.

Faroq Faisal renders the motifs of a children’s story with talking animals into a meditation on betrayal from those we hope to help. R.P. Verlaine narrates the common barroom tragedies of love lost and promises broken.

Jaylan Salah’s review of John Crowley’s film Brooklyn explores a love story through the lens of the Irish immigrant protagonist’s search for home and belonging.

Shaurya Pathania’s poems show people desperate to assert themselves one way or another, calling out to the lonely road or to empty sets of clothes.

Sanjeev Sethi’s new poetry collection Wrappings in Bespoke, reviewed by Cristina Deptula, deals with aging and fitting into our world through intellectual thought. Preacher Allgood also addresses the physicality of aging through a poem about traveling with an old car and an old body.

Ian Copestick highlights a sad irony of life with chronic illness, the imprecision of our current mental health treatments and the awkwardness of life within a body. J.J. Campbell’s poems relate the wisdom and cynicism that come with age.

Akinmade Zeal’s vignette presents a father who still believes in the importance of traditional ways of raising one’s social position and a son who’s more world-weary.

Sayani Mukherjee finds joy in her incarnate experience, writing of the sensual joys of eating a juicy peach.

Michael Pollentine speaks of the stages of death, both personal and ecological. Jack Galmitz’ pieces praise commitment to social/ecological ideals while examining the element of showmanship present even in sincere heroism.

Mesfakus Salahin celebrates Bangladesh’s independence and its historical founder, and thus his own national and personal identity. Marjona Jurakulova outlines the contributions of Islamic Uzbek scientists and philosophers to world history and encourages her home country to continue fostering research and knowledge.

Jeff Crouch and Diana Magallon’s mixed media piece renders the disintegration caused by war into a grayscale surrealist film. Meanwhile, Ubali Ibrahim Hashimu hopes for the ultimate victory of peace over political and racial conflict.

Michael Ceraolo’s short sketches of stage plays speak to broad social and economic justice ideas, while Fernando Sorrentino’s drama presents “justice of the lambs” inflicted by the wronged weak banding together against the strong and cruel.

Christ Keivom evokes memory and the detritus of past lives and loves. Abubakar Auwal grieves at the loss of a dear mother and seeks to turn back time. Jim Meirose presents a stagelike drama that portrays a certain character through a loose drama about the “funeral business.”

WV Sutra remembers a singular character who cared about words and ideas and music, who marched to his own drummer.

Federico Wardal celebrates invention and genius through an article on the rediscovery of an old and anonymous play written as a tribute to Shakespeare’s ingenuity.

Dr. James Tipton, English professor at the College of Marin, also explores creativity by reviewing poet and novelist Mary Mackey’s book about her poetry, Creativity: Where Poems Begin. She offers a sober, realistic look at poetic inspiration, not from impairment, suffering, or chaos, but from thought and observation.

Christina Chin’s second poetic collaboration, with Uchechukwu Onyedikam, touches on ancient history and spirituality. J.D. Nelson contributes some more wordy experiments while Mark Young continues to work with dramatic line and color.

the violets snort without me

tele
comic

scram
bled




which shannon?

a wintry eye
& high beams

you’ve been
silent




skull popcorn

friends help

     wilma!




a ladder into the television

I miss the winchell’s
& a normal king’s dinner




wallet toe$

a numbered eye
a sporty nectarine

a serious mammal
a friend of the sun


J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s poem, “to mask a little bird” was nominated for Best of the Net in 2021. Visit http://MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at http://JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Colorado, USA.