NO WAR

Another day cries out its terror,

the earth is red under the rubble.

The silence

of those who do not want to hear

falls upon the earth.

Indifference is gunpowder.

Elisabetta Bonaparte is an Italian poet, writer, lawyer and teacher. Her passion for poetry has materialized in a significant literary production, characterized by a profound sensitivity to existential and natural themes and by a refined, intimate and meditative language, rich in symbolism and metaphors. Elisabetta Bonaparte has participated in national and international literary competitions, obtaining First Prizes, Medals, Plaques, Special Prizes, as well as numerous other literary awards. Her compositions, translated into several languages have been selected and included in literary anthologies and published in national and international specialized journals, both in print and online, in many countries.

Developments

There used to be animals, the latest litter

of kittens being fed on the street by strangers,

or racoons rolling across the uncultivated grounds

along the railroad tracks,

and birds, countless birds, stretched across the sky

perched on high voltage wires, starlings

mostly, but also crows and occasionally

a falcon would show from God knows where.

Now, they are gone. Construction is

mostly responsible. But there was more to it:

ill-informed young men had heard racoons

were always rabid and would attack them,

so, they poisoned them. And they poisoned

the cats, too, because they reproduced;

no one had thought to fix them and that that

would do. And the tall buildings placed where

before there were giant black trees made

the place incommodious to the birds

who used to range their rainbows in the spring.

Oh, how I miss them. Miss them all badly.

How gladly would I replace the people

for their preening and unconsidered living.

How much more than a motel

was the murmuration of those birds.

Listening To The Voice of Virginia Woolf

It was always

reaching a crescendo

then descending

like a shirt ironed

with a hiss from the steam

released like the tide

the rattle of pebbles-

I saw it with my eyes.

It returned always

the way words do

that fill a line

and make it stable-

earth shoveled into

a garden and into

a burial plot, too.

Petals open

our own tiny sun.

Shaking out the sea

it sparkles and bears

witness to the bodily

shape of memories. To some

it is ironclad law that is all

and holds within it

such dread as to not

be considered at all.

Who but a poet would associate

incarnadine with multitudinous

seas? Ah, words went

breathing and traveling

from street to street

picking up habits

remembered for centuries

becoming lips and speech.

The Examination

The doctor’s nurse will lay you down

on crumpling paper on a metal table

and place electrodes on your chest and arms.

She will record your heart rhythms

and be satisfied with the results

if they are regular and recur.

The test has its limits: it tells the heart’s

electrical currents. It does not know

the many hurts it suffered, or when it started

fighting back with all its umbrage.  

I am surprised that they separate the heart

from the rest of the life, as if we did not belong

to an interrelated organism.

Afterwards, she will escort you to a waiting room,

where everyone sits alone and no one

talks or looks around. She will leave you there

where everyone wants to hear

their name called out and their hearts unstimulated

go on beating alone.

Loneliness When It Rains

The sky weeps tears of mercury,

each drop a dense, cold thought.

My soul, a ship adrift on a sea of ​​lead,

without a compass, without a port,

only the gray horizon.

The umbrella, a cage of broken ribs,

half-protecting me from the inner storm.

The streets, empty veins of a sleeping city,

where ghosts dance to the wind’s rhythm.

The silence, a rough cotton in my throat,

choking the words I never spoke.

I am a leafless tree in the eternal winter,

waiting for a spring that never comes.

The asphalt, an obsidian mirror,

reflecting my blurred face.

Each puddle, a blind eye watching me,

reminding me that I am alone in this labyrinth.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.

Caleb Levin, Odin Vega, Lyla Randall in Fun Home; directed by Logan Ellis; photo by Marc J Franklin

Serious Playtime at Huntington Theater’s “Fun Home” November 14 – December 14, 2025

A serious yet playful reimagining of parental memory through surreal childhood dreams conflating with the imposition of adult reality

The winner of five Tony Awards including Best Musical, Fun Home is a beloved, groundbreaking, and soulful story of conceiving your parents by way of adult point of views. Constructed from Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir, the musical unearths Alison through childhood, college, and adulthood as she decrypts her coming-out story, and her compounded relationship with an astute, labile, and closeted father. How have the mysteries of her father’s life shaped her own discernment of love and integration of her lesbian identity? With a lofty score by Jeanine Tesori and a terse, emotionally charged book by Lisa Kron, Fun Home is a mesmerizing, must-see theatrical experience, directed by Logan Ellis.

Among the multifarious thematic spirits of the unfeigned theatrical biographical missive ‘Fun Home’ (inspired by the popular comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For), which is a play on words meaning ‘Funeral Home’, is a rip roaring song and dance journey into a childhood past to come out soaring into the greater understanding of present day adulthood. It explores how we perceive our parents from our childhood perspectives and how we come to understand them better through adult introspection. Through the plays’ use of the musical genre, it was able to achieve magical dreamlike moments that may have otherwise proved to be a challenge. The main characters’ understanding of her mysterious complex and brilliant father left me feeling a need to understand his obscure sense of aloofness myself. His perhaps deliberately vague characterization left me with a queer desire to learn more about his enigma, much like the way some of us feel about our own fathers.

Amidst all the adult complexities of parental woes and domestic tensions, growing up, navigating college life while discovering her budding sexuality, the main characters constant presence on stage to explain in a literal sense the multitudinal stages of her life effectively kept the audience in on her private thoughts and youthful perspectives that kept spectators engaged and invested. I, for one, was really rooting for her and symbolically rooting for my own childhood self remembering the mysteries of my own parents and homelife. “Fun Home” alleviated the tense moments of the production with a hot handyman in tight seventies short shorts, awkward first dates and sexual encounters that conceivably made some uncomfortable, albeit in a “fun” sexy way.

This play speaks to the phenomena of children wanting to understand their parents better through childhood dreamlike imaginations, wishful thinking and adult realistic reflections conflating to give us a serious study of childhood understanding of adult relationships but in a “fun” way; thus consequently that’s a five out of five stars for me!

— For more information, visit huntingtontheatre.org

Maja Milojković

Eva Lianou Petropoulou 

A Poem Dedicated to All Women 

Žena

Pitala sam se da li sam slobodna.

Da li se ti osećaš slobodnom?

Ne.

Svakog dana hodam ulicom mogućnosti i prilika…

Ali niko me ne gleda.

Jer sam žena.

Neizrecivo je koliko se žena iskorišćava.

Od prvog dana.

Žena je trebalo da vaspitava dete,

da kuva za dete,

da ga nauči kako da misli, govori,

postupa…

Mnogo je toga što žena treba da uradi.

Ali šta se dešava posle?

Šta je sa ženinim potrebama?

Njenom željom?

Ženinom rečju?

Kao da ne postoji.

Sve dok jednog dana

ne pogledaš u ogledalo.

Vidiš svoje lice.

Vidiš svoje srce.

Vidiš svoje telo.

I ne prepoznaš ga.

Jer si toliko iskorišćena.

Iskorišćena odbacivanjem.

Potrošena samoćom.

Iskorišćena lažnim ljudima.

Potrošena lošim odlukama.

Bez vere.

Eva Petropoulou Lianou

Grčka

*******

Women

I was wondering if I am free?

Do u feel free?

Nooo

Every day I walk in a street of possibilities and opportunities..

But nobody look at me

As i am a woman..

It is unspeakable how much a woman is used..

From day one

A woman needed to educate the child

To cook for a child

To learn him how to think.. Speak..

Act.. 

A lot for a woman to do

But what happens after..

A woman need

A woman wish

A woman word

Inexistant person

Until one day

You will look at the mirror

You see your face

You will see your heart

You will see your body

And u will not recognize it

Because u will be so used

Used from the rejection

Used from the loneliness

Used from the fake people

Used from the bad decisions

Without faith!!!

  Books

I’m jealous of my books

Sitting over there

So smugly on their shelves

Complete, closed

Finished years ago.

Almost all their authors

Have moved on

Untouchable now

And all I have left

Are these reminders

Lined up side by side

Shoulder to shoulder

Settled in

Knowing their place

In my small world

And that bigger

Outside world where

People know them

Glad to see them

Hold them, read them

Sometimes I dust them

Tend to them as their keeper

Their clumsy, quiet keeper

Who has discovered

His place and is now

Jealous of theirs.

         Cold War

These days it’s easy to miss

and even reminisce fondly

about the Cold War –

the coldness of it,

the threats of it,

the simple sides –

one world power

vs. the only other.

Back then it seemed

like there were only two,

and the rest,

the non-world power countries

sat back waiting, watching,

anticipating outcomes.

We imagined spies

and checkpoints,

missiles pointing

this way and that.

We listened to speeches,

the good guys and the bad,

understood the easy equation

of mutual destruction,

measured the future

in terms of numbers

and then sizes of weapons.

Those were simpler times,

checkers instead of chess,

a simple plot scheme,

cowboys and Indians,

just children at play

as opposed to today.

           Haiku

It’s hard to get a haiku

to happen.

First of all, we must

adjust our thinking,

get big ideas in small spaces

a small upstairs room

instead of crowded

street scenes,

more Dickinson

than Whitman.

Then we get to count

three lines

and words viewed

in their pieces –

syllable count

oh, syllable count.

We get to see them

in a different light

broken down

into the parts we rarely

remember.

And the haiku needs

an image to play on

and a speaker we trust

to lead us through

the lines, the words

and the brief moment

we give over

to its take of the small

world we share.

Pyramid Prison

in detritus metronomes

of human habitation

the ghost of Shelley’s imagination

questions the elemental,

experimental

chromosomes

and ribosomes

of DNA,

reverse engineered

that suddenly appeared

as evolution yesterday.

her monster mirrors dark wells

of monsters in our smart selves,

the lost humanity and oratory

that fills laboratory

test tubes

with fused

imbued

genes

to dreams

of flat forward faster

distinction

to disaster

and barbarism’s

ectopic extinction.

this is our pyramid prison,

where all souls

and proles

climb the debased

opposite steps of extremism,

like Prometheus Unbound,

defaced

sitting around

the crouching sphinx

abandoned by missing links.

free masons of money and wars,

warp the altar of natural laws,

so reason withers

and wastelands rust-

no longer rivers

of shared stardust

in the equal symphony of spheres

in space,

filling our ears

with subwoofer bass,

definitive

primitive

medieval

evil

waste.

It’s So Quiet

it’s so quiet

our eloquent words dying on a diet

of midnight toast

with Orwell’s ghost-

looking so tubercular in a tweed jacket

pencilling notes on a lung black cigarette packet-

our Winston, wronged for a woman and sin

rewrote history on scrolls thought down tubes

that came to him

in the Ministry of Truth Of Fools

where conscience learns to lie within.

not like today

the smug-sly haves say and look away

so sure

there’s nothing wrong with wanting more,

or drown their sorrows

downing bootleg gin

knowing tomorrows

truth is paper thin

.

at home

in sensory

perception

with tapped and tracked phone

the Thought Police arrest me

in the corridors of affection-

where dictators wear, red then blue, reversible coats

in collapsing houses, all self-made

and self-paid

smarmy scrotes-

now the Round Table

of real red politics

is only fable

on the pyre of ghostly heretics.

they are rubbing out

all the contusions

and solitary doubt,

with confusions

and illusions

through wired media

defined in their secret encyclopaedia-

where summit and boardroom and conclave

engineer us from birth to grave.

like the birds,

i will have to eat

the firethorn

berries that ripen but sleep

to keep

the words

of revolution

alive and warm

this winter, with resolution

gathering us, to its lantern in the bleak,

to be reborn and speak.

THE PORTAL IN THE WOODS

Seeing somnambulist sunrise

Through open window

Touch your face

After love rides

On moon tides

In ebb and flow

At tantric pace-

Love resides

Tasted

No asides

Wasted

Spices of the flesh

Soaking rooms in Marrakesh

How I ate your truffle in Zanzibar

While you smoked my long cigar.

Back home-

Tribes of bloods

And druids roam

Seeking out the overgrown

Portal in the woods

Where we hondfast

In this present of the past

Dance chanting

In stone bone circles

Like ooparts

Practicing

Magical arts

Settling

What chaos hurtles-

Reconnecting rhythms

In living and dead

To those algorithms

In nature’s head.

We are rustic-

Romantic

In land and sky

The  air  fire  water

To warriors who slaughter

If Us or Them must die.

We wake

For clambake

Pleasure

In a cauldron lake

Of limbs together

Then cut sods of peat

From the bog under our feet

Exposing the pasts

That never last.

CUBIST GHETTOS

I think

To shrink

The distance

Of resistance

Inside self

To all else-

Knowing

Showing

Vulnerability

In the mystery

Leaves what is closed

Openly exposed-

To explanation

Under examination

When there isn’t one

That hasn’t gone

Until roof floor and sky door

Are no more-

Only roulette rubbles

Of drone troubles

Imprisoning

Reasoning

In cubist ghettos

Wearing jazz stilettos-

Flashing flamingo legs

To pink paradise Harlem heads

While new trees grow up mute

And ripen with strange fruit

Some whites too this time

A drowned boy, me and mine.

THE HEAD IN HIS FEDORA HAT

a lonely man,

cigarette,

rain

and music

is a poem

moving,

not knowing-

a caravan,

whose journey does not expect

to go back

and explain

how everyone’s ruts

have the same

blood and vein.

the head in his fedora hat

bows to no one’s grip,

brim tilted into the borderless

plain

so his outlaw wit

can confess

and remain

a storyteller,

that hobo fella

listening like a barfly

for a while

and slow-winged butterfly

whose smile

they can’t close the shutters on

or stop talking about

when he walks out

and is gone.

whisky and tequila

and a woman, who loves to feel ya

inside

and outside

her

when ya move

and live as one,

brings you closer

in simplistic

unmaterialistic

grooved

muse Babylon.

this is so,

when he stands with hopes head,

arms and legs

all aflow

in her Galadriel glow

with mithril breath kisses

condensing sensed wishes

of reality and dream

felt and seen

under that

fedora hat

inhaling smoke

as he sang and spoke

stranger fella

storyteller.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x4 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.