I have to know the wage of text

For a poet, silence is an acceptable, even flattering response, 
claimed Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette.

Another claimed 
that the calm that is the history of silence 
is the poet's revenge.

Look, I walk around with a quill 
between my teeth

Some people have their sensory hearing absorbed into in the most unexpected organs, and some will qualify in silence, accordingly I have to know the wage 
of 
text —

Surely, the initial reaction in humans 
in their early lives is the voice, after
which everything else is a charade.

I am new

They don’t know 
Where I came from
I must connect the- leg
With the waist 
And the pelvis to the spine

That’s the way when items
Are separated from bodies 
And an artificial 
Lens is implanted 
In the - eye.

Who said it’s possible to move 
Organs
Away from their 
Place?

Who said?

Tali Cohen Shabtai, born in Jerusalem, Israel, is a highly-esteemed international poet with works translated into many languages.

She has authored three bilingual volumes of poetry, “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick”(2007), “Protest” (2012) and “Nine Years From You”(2018). A fourth volume is forthcoming in 2022. 

Tali began writing poetry at the age of six. She lived for many years in Oslo, Norway, and the U.S.A. and her poems express both the spiritual and physical freedom paradox of exile. Her cosmopolitan vision is obvious in her writings.

Tali is known in her country as a prominent poet with a unique narrative. As one commentator wrote: “She doesn’t give herself easily, but is subject to her own rules.”

Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Dynamic 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Landmine 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Summertime 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a book lines 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Quarantine.

Look! Her mournful eyes say it all what words can't
She is too tired of battered but you don't understand
She was an endearing dream, turned to be a nightmare
And this is because of your so-called reprimand
                   WATCH OUT!
She isn't anymore a magical fairy of a fairyland
Now she is a grisly dinosaur from Jurassicland
She is a roller coaster of emotions but no longer your wonderland
          She is invincible, She is archaic
She is the Chosen one and owns her own never-never land
            Listen adorable "SHE IS YOU"
Who eventually understands how to take her own right stand...

By Doctor of Optometry RAAFIA SHAHEEN
From PAKISTAN..

Mario Loprete, Catanzaro 1968

Graduate at Accademia of Belle Arti, Catanzaro (ITALY).

Painting for me is my first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to transmit my message this is the foundation of painting for me. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting that voluptuous and sensual lover that inspires different emotions which strike prohibited chords.

This new series of concrete sculptures has been giving me more personal and professional satisfaction recently. How was it born? It was the result of an important investigation of my own work. I was looking for that special something I felt was missing. Looking back at my work over the past ten years, I understood that there was a certain semantic and semiotic logic “spoken” by my images, but the right support to valorize their message was not there.

The reinforced cement, the concrete, was created two thousand years ago by the Romans. It tells a millennia-old story, one full of amphitheaters, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now, concrete is a synonym of modernity.

Everywhere you go, you find a concrete wall: there’s the modern man in there. From Sydney to Vancouver, Oslo to Pretoria, this reinforced cement is present, and it is this presence which supports writers and enables them to express themselves.

The artistic question was an obvious one for me: if man brought art on the streets in order to make it accessible to everyone, why not bring the urban to galleries and museums?

With respect to my painting process, when a painting has completely dried off, I brush it with a particular substance that not only manages to unite every color and shade, but also gives my artwork the shininess and lucidity of a poster (like the ones we’ve all had hanging on our walls).

For my concrete sculptures, I use my personal clothing. Through my artistic process in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform these articles of clothing into artworks to hang. The intended effect is that my DNA and my memory remain inside the concrete, so that the person who looks at these sculptures is transformed into a type of postmodern archeologist, studying my work as urban artefacts.

I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was Covid-19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period.

Clothes that survived Covid-19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies.

The Song of Life

Ahmad Al-Khatat

A song you’d be thrilled to hear, 
with eyes sharing their sorrows 
to the nightingale 
a grief’s mouthpiece takes me 
to innumerable nostalgia
We hear the lyrics of the song, 
as clothes become wet from 
sobbing to the morning daylight, 
not moonless nights...



Wings In the Wind

Periodically, I see everything 
all at once 
I know every corner I walk
by myself

I turn my skull before I make a 
rational conclusion, I wrap my finger 
to assemble my achievement
in Montreal and Baghdad.

When my generation was removed,
It erased my innocence, 
It erased my imagination, 
Shatter my days into black as soil

Death has forgotten about 
Wings in the wind, after it demolished 
my written poems to homeless signs 
as if I am playing marbles barefoot.


The Finest Cigarette 

On the first day of the new year, 
 I light the finest cigarette up and 
sip a cup of black coffee by myself, 
then write about hope on the typewriter.

The night born with stars and torn them 
The children of world recall their little pets 
While the children of Iraq & Syria remember
the dates of their siblings' death in the war.

I no longer run after the birds and butterflies
My days are low, like the tears of a dying angel
My life is no longer delightful and brief  
Even love has been eliminated from my universe.

No one seems to care about my flying wings
Everyone is celebrating the night we shattered 
The wooden floor sustained your bitterness tears
This oppression made me an alcoholic and hopeless.

Another cigarette, another bottle of Russian whiskey 
Another great rhythm and blues to listen to alone 
Waiting for the time, and walk missing from the pub
Destiny undresses my flesh and leaves me as rotten skulls.


Ahmad Al-Khatat was born in Baghdad, Iraq. His work has appeared in print and online journals globally. He has poems translated into several languages such as Farsi, Chinses, Spanish, Albanian, Romanian. He has published some poetry chapbooks, and a collection of short stories. He has been nominated for Best of the Net 2019 and was also nominated for the Pushcart Price 2020.

My Body is a Testimony of Grief

as a boy growing up,
i tossed my body against the cold floor screaming for things i couldn't get.

i poke my fingers in the fire & thought scars are not real.

i have held scars without fire, too many times,
this is how a boy germinates into a man.

i remembered the one that sailed me to this unknown place
it turned me into a wrecked boat that lost its route.

this poem holds a testimony of a boy who survived depression
of how i sobbed in dark.

Written By: Aloysius S. Harmon

Aloysius S. Harmon is an emerging writer and poet who writes from his room and quiet places like the beachside, under the large mango tree, etc. He is also one of the disciples of Dr. Patricia Wessely.

  Text by M.A. Blickley



   Licking the Wound		

	Laying naked in this bed on my back, I tilt my head and I look down with so much pain in my face. This is the third time today my boyfriend has gone down on me. Shouldn’t a girl be happy?
 	I would be, but this is how he apologizes for the blunt fist to the face he gives when he loses his temper. I tell myself every day I need to leave. Just get my shit and leave.  But I don’t. I let temptation win every time as soon as his tongue strokes me slowly up and down until the abuse feels distant. 
	I look down at him in between my legs, my natural fluids moistening his face. I am in such heartbreak and awe over how the man I love can deliver such pain and pleasure. It’s insane. I stare at him. He looks up at me and whispers, “I love you baby.”
	 I search his eyes until I can find the apology for the black eye and the blood from my nose that stained the satin sheets we just purchased. My moans grow louder and drown out thoughts of me leaving until I hear my mother’s voice echo inside my head pleading, repeating, “Don’t you ever let a man hit you the way Daddy hits me.”
	I have fallen in love with a man who one day will take my life and I continue to do nothing but look at him as we lay in this bed of lies, the same bed I retreat to after he beats me until I’m numb and then licks me until I can feel again. 
	Today something is different. Something is very, very off.  I can feel his darting tongue actually trace individual letters inside of me that turn into words that form a full sentence that rises up through my body and explodes out my throat, “You are not my suicide note!” 
	His mouth jerks back and he jumps off the bed. For the first time ever, I can see he is afraid. And I am not. It must be true that the third time is a charm because I am going to save myself and leave this cowardly son of a bitch. I wish my mother were alive so I could thank her.