I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me but because of the path that lies behind me. I remember that which matters most… We are still here!

Morpheus, character in the Matrix movies, spoke these words to inspire the resistance force during one of the darkest times in their long battle with oppressive machine overlords. He encouraged them to keep fighting not because they were sure to win that night, but because they had withstood many other obstacles in the past.

This quote, and the release of a new Matrix movie, makes me think of the world surviving injustice and a pandemic for the past two years. I acknowledge and mourn that not everyone has survived, and some have been left with lasting scars. That said, sometimes just living through a global crisis and remaining a person with the capacity for love, courage, kindness, humor and creativity, even without any other visible achievements, can be a serious accomplishment. Sometimes being ‘still here’ is all we can do, and we can be very proud of that.

Contributors to this month’s very large issue are all asserting that they are all ‘still here,’ and referencing the different sources of strength that have gotten them through these seasons.

Abigail George describes her psychological struggles and the medication, books and creative writing practice that keep her sane. Chimezie Ihekuna and Dave Douglas take refuge in their Christian faith, where God’s love expands their perspective on life and comforts them during loneliness and regret. Hongri Yuan, in works translated by Yuanbing Zhang, talks of stepping outside of our human experience to find spiritual transcendence.

Michael Robinson reflects on having made it through very dark times and come out the other side, while Mahbub’s speakers seek rest and solace on land or at sea.

Abdulloh Abdumominov urges us to make the most of the time we have, while Scott Kaestner shares pieces about being okay with living the life in front of you and not shackling yourself to unrealistic expectations. Duane Vorhees reminds us to ‘count the cost,’ to think of what’s involved when we seek revolution, spirituality, or wisdom.

Laura Stamps describes lives and relationships that have fallen short of our dreams, and the surprising ways we care for each other, and ourselves, at crisis points. Ashley Wang’s piece affirms relentless hope, always asserting that tomorrow will be better. Christopher Bernard resolves to take action to preserve the environment and inspire the rest of the planet to do the same. To him, we can kick our carbon addiction the same way he quit smoking.

Katrina Kaye reminisces about love and the memory of love, about small tokens of others’ presence and care. John Thomas Allen seeks to capture and personalize a bit of his abstract love, to have a token in his hand as well as in his heart. John Edward Culp compares the creativity required to adorn a canvas with the imagination required to understand another person.

Some writers bear witness to difficult times. Christine Tabaka speaks of mothers’ empty arms, the death of relationships, and other human griefs. Bruce Mundhenke captures the fear and dread of a planet under attack. Howie Good relates death and destruction in a more surrealist, darkly humorous manner while J.J. Campbell conveys the loneliness and quiet dignity of caregiving and the end of life. Ahmad Al-Khatat longs for love in a landscape depopulated after war while Nguyen Thanh Hai mourns a missing companion. Karen Boswell writes of a random memory made sweet through loss.

Susie Gharib also writes of relationships hurtling towards inevitable ends. In subsequent pieces she celebrates the life enrichment brought through travel, as Robert Thomas does with his extensive depiction of Marrakesh’s street markets. Sterling Warner’s poems incorporate more ordinary venues (cities at dawn, carousels) along with the exotic locales. Ian C. Smith’s speakers sail into maritime adventures of strength, bravery, and beauty.

Abby Ripley describes the power of thought and ideas in shaping prehistoric human lives. Far from being a luxury, imagination helped our ancestors find food and water and shelter on the savanna. Saurav Ranjan Datta also references history, celebrating the lives of powerful women leaders in a new book, Goddesses of Fury: History’s Most Daring Queens. In the spirit of the Matrix films, Andrew Dibble’s short story probes the linguistic systems created by humans versus intelligent machine-learning algorithms.

Mark Young’s impressionist literary pieces reference art, creativity, and learning by experience. Vernon Frazer’s work elides the ordinary rules of syntax, creating its own world of sound and syllable arrayed on the page. Patrick Sweeney arranges phrases on the page in a semblance of meaning. Michael Todd Steffen’s words paint canvases in homage to visual artists’ work, while Norman J. Olson reflects on his legacy of art based on the nude human figure.

James Thurgood crafts pieces that seem simple but encapsulate deeper thoughts and truths. A boy’s unevenly tied shoelaces evoke parents’ inability to ensure children’s lives will be free from risk, a teen’s romantic gesture becomes a meditation on the passing of youth.

Peter Cherches also references ordinary life, sharing the thoughts and memories coming to his mind when he thinks of formerly popular songs and TV shows.

Ike Boat promotes the writing of a children’s author and literacy advocate, Dennis Mann, while John Grey ponders what items we collect and what knowledge we seek, as some facts inevitably slip out of our grasp with time, like water evaporating from a thirsty land.

We hope that you will take comfort and find strength within these submissions and join in the literary exchange of ideas.

Another Whisper & Triumph

today i declare will be glorious:
revel in the morning gold
the light shines on still, even
when clouds sever the sun &
pieces fly to blinding rays.
endless day again; here,
where night has ceased,
will we truly be happy?
it has been this way,
it is this way,
it will be this way. but
sunlights drench me.
then clothing is just a reminder
we are alive & burdened
the day has gone on
too long & my creaking bones
splinter a bit further.
humanity weeps a
tired anger, fierce sorrow.
when night comes again,
we swear a million times
today,
tomorrow,
someday,
will be different.

Ahmad Al-Khatat

Grape Lips


The liquor store said that 
They have sold their last bottle of red wine.
I wanted a woman who rises in my apartment, 
and on the balcony like the sun back in Baghdad.

The snowstorm will not change my feelings about her
I am comfortable and independent just by thinking about her
The wine melting its fruits on her lips
-elucidates why I taste grape after kissing her.

Some people faces are breathing not peaceful, 
It reminds me of the daylight of a hundred men and women who died
I sob for them, and the world took my tears to a particular forest, 
Pour my sorrows’ to lifeless plants, leafless trees, and wasteland creeks.

 The moon in the midnight whispers in my ears
I want to kiss her apple blossoms on her cheeks lightly
I hope that I can farewell my grief the moment I kiss her neck gently 
By then, her warm hands caress my bitter body against her sweet flesh.

12/24/2021

The calligrapher writes the landscape.    

The rain's crow quill points ink across pigeongray parchment sky and draft indelibly themselves upon an eager gravid ground   

and sins and memories, and hopes and charities, that take root, grafted into the earth, remain ensoiled past the droughts and floods to come.  
 

THE MARE'S BREAKING IN 

 

Wanting the beads and choirs too, 

she took the veil and cincture. 

But inside the now 

she regrets the vow 

since accepting the saddle  

means all the bits and spurs too.



COME THE REVOLUTION  

 

Which among you will bring sandwiches? 

And who'll organize the selfies? 

Which manifesto would you execute? 

"The sky must be purged if the earth is to prevail!" 

"The earth must be buried for Heaven to reveal!" 

Which Utopia would you provoke? 

Which of the pasts should be banned? 

But don’t be the freak hot on the runway 

or the gangster in church, 

don't be the priest caught in the whore house
the banker in the line-up.



OPIATES OF THE MASSES      

     

Crucifiction, Failosophy, Hisstory:   

Tomorrow is a myth. And so is yesterday. Now is all. 

Physicks, Asstrology, Isometricks:  

Yourself, as you are at present, is your only guide.  

Medisin, Accupunkture, Sighchiatry:  

There is no cure for reality.  

Litterature, Statuwary, Musick:  

Art is a grand mirage -- and it takes great pride in being so.  

Soshellism, Dicktatorship, Demockracy:   

All government systems are synonyms for slavery.  

Kingdumbs, Militearism, Onerousship:  

Allegiance to others is suicide.  

Noosepapers, Liebrarie. Educashuns:  

"Knowledge" so-called is mere pretense.  

Relashunships, Guarantease, Freedumb:  

Promises are illusions. But illusions may also be promises.
Ambishun, Suckcess, Sellebrity:   

Self-promotion is the greatest deception of all.  

Syphillisation:  

Truth is what you trust.




THE MYTHIC ARCHAIC CUB, HIS MANDALAS, AND ME    

   

I wait here still for the wise old man   

and his chatter of universal traits,   

how they shape my acts like hands   

on a potter's wheel (but hereditary, innate).   

   

"Archetypes are to psychology   

as instincts to biology."   

   

I sit in his psyche, peeling my mandarins,   

and wonder, is this a proper asana?   

Some tables down someone plays a green mandolin   

and my self stifles respondent hosannas.   

   

My me was always confused by the we,   

and I was never the one I used to be.   

   

I used to take my tea with cream   

but now I prefer lemon.   

Why do I have all these dreams   

about so many different women?   

   

Decades have passed like clouds over seas   

as I searched for any available lee.   

   

The minutes pass like birds in flight   

and my shadow cowers in shadows   

I interpret as monstrous daytime nights.   

Mandolinist fingers dissolve into adders.   

Duane Vorhees is an American in Thailand. Hog Press of Ames IA has published three of his poetry collections, HEAVEN, GIFT: GOR RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, and THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES.

Lights of Christmas, 2021
For Andrea Molina

It has been a long time since the snow fell from the sky in my life.
Covering me at midnight on Christmas eve forty-three years ago.
A night when lights were colorful as a backdrop to the snow.
It was a quiet night of fear laying on the floor.

Emptiness pressed upon me on that warm December night.
The light faded and my heart stopped and the sounds ended.
Oh, my God dying at twenty-one without anyone.
A flurry of thoughts came from my childhood prayers.

A second when my world stopped.
“God save me!”

He saved me that early Christmas morning.
Forty-three years later watching those lights.
Remembering dancing with the snow with angels.

Michael J. “Midnight Poet” Robinson
12-25-2021

Father

Allow a streak of light
from single bulb hallway
to lay across the floor.
Remind me, in this mild action,
there are heroes in the world,
not every act is based on
the selfish hunger of men.
On nights like this
the rocks of the world
lay heavy on my spine,
pinning me to an earth
I have no desire to inherit.
It is why I am well versed in
the tongue of loneliness.
I am most concrete wrapped
in solitude.
Let me hear the voices
down the hall. The influx
in cadence regardless of meaning,
the occasional laugh.
I am again
five years old asleep in
a stranger’s house feeling
no desire to resume the
party but comforted to know
it continues.
Leave the door cracked,
just enough, so I’ll know
when the house rings silent,
when the hall light finally dims
that I am completely alone.
 
Reminding


When I met you, I fell in love 
with flying, with candle light, 
open windows. From the safety 

of your late lit bedroom, 
I watched rain as it ate the earth,
leaving soft teeth marks

in the dirt of your gardens. I hear 
the moths come every seven years, 
but sometimes it seems 

like they are always here, flittering 
against door frame in praise 
of porch light. We don’t always 

forget the way we are supposed to, 
nor do we remember the way 
the seasons would like us 

to believe. I crawled upon your hand
on fine legs, wing brushing palm,
steadying myself as you peered

through the brown spots on my wings.
You did not crush me or push me 
away. Details blur and the edges 

of film burn through so all one sees 
are big moments, not days shifted 
in between. My wings against 

your open hand; you let me stay 
as long as I needed, did not protest 
when I took again to the air.

I don’t remember exact words,
but I have not forgotten your face.
I can’t remember why I loved you

but I can’t forget that I did.
It’s been over twenty years
since you made me feel loved 

just by the meeting my gaze.
It has been six years since 
you died, but I swear I have seen

the moths more than once since then. 
They flutter on the window beside 
my late-night lingering, reminding me 

of the early hours we shared 
before the sun approached. We had 
closure; nothing left unsaid or undone.

That was the last season of the moths,
Reminded me that you were once
a light I could not resist.
 
Prayers

You say you have some prayers to teach me.
Prayers that could sooth you to sleep
or shake you awake.
Prayers that can raise the dead or let them lie.
Prayers that will keep your hands out of your pockets.

I don’t know those prayers.
But I pray scars that poach underarm
bleach and shallow when given time to heal.
I pray lungs take one year to shed 
the black they spent seven years collecting.

You know prayers like crickets,
prayers that spark rainbows in the desert,
prayers for sex with strangers
and wide-eyed staring dolls whose marble eyes
gleam across dark bedrooms.
Prayers that will keep you from calling out the wrong name
	across the dining room table,
in the bedroom,
when he asks for a towel.

Prayers for wild horses
who don’t know when to stop their chase.
Prayers for scarecrows and splintered straw.
I pray skin toughens under desert sun;
the sand in my chest scrubs me clean,
scours the ill, the wicked,
the ugly I held tightly,
until it shines.
You know prayers that cast black magic,
that knock out front teeth
and rebuild shattered mirrors.

I pray my body is in a state of redemption.
I pray to resist the temptation
of a Thursday night in the back
of your car and one drink too many.
Do not allow me to regress into sickness.
Lead me not to deteriorate to the
fragile I once was.
Unable to move I crouch low and hold tight
to wooden beads that coddle the back of my throat
cutting off the circulation to hands
grasped tight in prayers for daylight,
prayers for the flutter of wings,
prayers for morning song.

 
Remember
Remember the way the light soaks
into the wet streets on a Tuesday morning.
Remember the way words are shared,
are smeared, are cut up and divided out.
Remember how clumsy your smile
caught me and how fingers and
shadows make excellent shows
against cave wall.
Remember the cave,
the loneliness of it
and the isolation,
the cruelty.
Don’t abandon my memory
upon the rocks and leave
it for the dogs to dig up.
Remember.
It is the only way
to find your way back.
It is the only way to learn better,
to see better, to love better,
to be better.
I watch the rain
and remember once believing
birds couldn’t fly when wet.
I know better now. 
 
Seventeen Years

In my dream you were alive.
I saw you:
a broken man with
crooked smile telling me
it’s been seventeen years.
You’ve been looking for me for
seventeen years. You’ve been
in love with me for seventeen
years.
It’s been seventeen years since
your spine cracked upon impact.
It was just one of those things
that happen, an accident.
No one’s fault; No one
to shoulder the blame.
In my dream, I look for the book
you gave me, the only thing
you ever gave me, hungry for a signature
scrawled on the first page. Your j’s look
like g’s in fast black ink.
It has been seventeen years since we
raced the halls together. A good kid
who smiled too much. A chip of broken tile
and notes passed by girls. You never should
have become a name smeared to highway.
Never should have been anything more than
a fond memory, a high school crush, a missed
connection.
Now, you survive in the pit of my stomach,
and despite a promise of pleasant reminiscence,
the dream shifts to the crack of skeleton,
the shattering of front tooth. I can’t trade this image
for a kinder one. It haunts me.
It haunts me still.
More than anything in the world, I
want to find you, to call you,
to write you a message in my
sloppy script assuring you
some things never die. But
you are already lost to me.
This is how I wake, chasing
rabbits and following sparrows. At
a loss for what I cannot quite
reach. You were always the illusive
one. So I lay here and I endure and
it is as sweet as the Sunday morning
we never shared.
 

Katrina Kaye is a writer and educator living in Albuquerque, NM. She is seeking an audience for her ever-growing surplus of poetic meanderings. She hoards her published writing on her website: ironandsulfur.com. She is grateful to anyone who reads her work and in awe of those willing to share it. Twitter: @PoetKatrinaKaye Facebook: Iron & Sulfur