A Garden of Memory

Morning comes

without her.

No song from the kitchen,

no sound of the kettle

only the garden,

wild with weeds,

waiting.

The roses bow

beneath their own weight.

I follow her path

through the wet grass,

placing my feet

where hers have been,

and the earth gives back

the weight of her footstep,

still there.

Her brass thimble

lies beside the sewing chair,

the threads she never finished

like tangled questions

I never had the chance

to ask.

A photograph she kept hidden

folded twice,

tucked behind her Bible

her younger self in another dress,

before the revolution

came looking for her.

When they came to question her,

she was in the garden.

She did not hurry inside.

She wiped her hands on her apron,

placed seeds in my palm

warm, unhurried

and walked toward the door

as if she had been

waiting for them for years.

“They can take the streets.”

I remember this, later

by the window,

watching them go.

When I was afraid,

she called me

“my little seed.”

Now I light a candle

in the room where she slept.

The flame trembles

small and steady

like her voice

calling my name

after everyone had gone.

Spring will come.

The roses will bloom again.

And somewhere in the turning

of the earth,

in the stubborn mint

that returns every time

where no one planted it

I place my hand in the soil

and know where to go.

Review: Olympia Books to Prisoners minizines

Reviewed by A. Iwasa

Books to prisoner programs seek to offset the dehumanizing effects of mass incarceration by sending free literature to people inprisoned across the United States.  Oly BtP also engages in distributing literature on the outside to spread the word about what they do and why.

Tandem Reading Book Recs for Abolition

by Natasha Giblin, Oly BtP collective member

Tandem reading as described by Giblin “is reading two or more books at the same time, that focus on the same topic.”

In this ‘zine, Giblin presents book blurb style reviews for two books at a time, one fictional, the other non-, then provides another blurn to connect the books thematically.  The prison industrial complex, child welfare system and women prisoners’ experiences are the topics covered.

Mass Incarceration:  What do you really know about it?

by Jasper Llee, Oly BtP collective member

Similarly, Llee created a short reading list with blurbs for six different books about the prison industrial complex, though this time all six and non-fiction.

Let’s Talk Prisons…

by Anna Champagne, Oly BtP

This ‘zine is more of an introduction, a look at what’s wrong with the prison system in the US in the first place.

http://www.olympiabtp.org

Waves of Tears

Sometimes, tears come
The way the waves of the tide
Crash upon the shore of the sea.

From the chest,
Through the head—
They crash upon the eyes.

From the feet to the sky,
Water surges everywhere,
Overflowing without end.

Upon the breast
Of the waterless world,
The waves of the tears
Leave behind some unknown mark.

They wash away
All the sorrow and pain,
All the hurt and resentment,
All the wounds and blows.

Everything is washed away.

The world appears a little brighter,
A little clearer.

Unknowingly,
Pure air settles upon the body,
And some tender, cooling touch
Seems to brush against me.

Within such a Jalsa hall,
A sudden stirring—
Could it ever bloom
As a flower upon a lotus leaf?

The cry of a heart torn open
Rolls across heaven and earth —

Waves play on,
waves play on,
waves play on.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

16 September, 2026.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Once when he was in grade ten in 1990, his Bangla letter was selected as the best one from Deutsche Welle, Germany Radio that broadcast Bangla news for the Banglalee people. And he was given 50 Dutch Mark as his award. They would ask letters from the listeners to the news in Bangla and select one letter for the best one in every month.     

From 17 to 30 September, in 2018 he received a higher training in teaching English language in Kasetsart University of Thailand for secondary level students through a government order from education ministry. 

On 06 November 2015 he achieved Amjad Ali Mondal Medal for his contribution in education field by a development organization in the conference and felicitation function for the honorable personalities at Rajshahi College Auditorium. 

On 30 December 2017 from West Bengal in India he was declared a ‘Literary Charioteer’ in Bangobandhu Literary and World Bango Conference and they awarded him with a Gold Medal in their International Literary Conference and Prize Giving Ceremony.

In 2018, he achieved Prodipto Lirerary Award in Prodipto Literary Conference at Kesorhat, Rajshahi for poems in Bangla literature. He received honorary crest from the administration of Chapainawabganj District Literary Conference and Cultural Function in 2021 and 2022 consecutively. 

His poems have been published in many international online magazines such as Juntos Por las L Raven Cage Zine, and Area Felix.  His poems have been translated and published in Argentine and Serbian, and he participated in many international online cultural meetings. 

Little angels of divine

Mother-of-pearl Transformed into love, art, and tenderness, he strove to mold his little angels, yet his partner—scornful of sculpture— preferred to sate their appetites instead. 

And amidst endeavors scattered by the wind, and self-centered banners serving as mottos, art was dissuaded from the attempt to weigh the dilemmas of being and non-being. 

Thus, yearnings dissolved into the mist, into a lost dream that fades away, into a mold shaped solely by pleasure.

 And those little angels of divine mother-of-pearl, absent, could not witness the destiny of their wings, which still hang waiting to be born.

Delsa López Lorenzo. Cuba. Retired from the Credit and Commerce Bank of Yaguajay. Poet and storyteller; she writes for both children and adults. She serves as the Cuban director of the magazine América sin Fronteras (America Without Borders), founded in Mexico by Dr. José Ángel Ramírez. She has been accredited as an Ambassador of Peace by humanist organizations and was honored as a “Distinguished Woman” in the Mujeres Ilustres (Distinguished Women) program of Sancti Spíritus province, hosted by Saylí Alba Álvarez.

She has served as a juror for both in-person municipal events and online international events. She is an accredited member of the Mother Tongue Chair at the Simón Bolívar Municipal University Center (CUM). In Yaguajay, Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, she hosts various ongoing cultural programs sponsored by the Raúl Ferrer Promotion Center. These include Poesía para la vida (Poetry for Life), the Bernardo Amador Yunes Literary Workshop, and special programs serving the elderly, prison inmates, pregnant women, children with special needs, primary and secondary school students, and children in daycare centers, as well as workshops on décima poetry and repentismo (improvisational verse).

Her work has been included in anthologies across Europe, Latin America, the United States, Cuba, Spain, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries. She has won numerous awards in Cuba and abroad and has been featured in magazines, newspapers, and radio and television programs both in her home country and internationally. Her publications include the poetry collection for adults Réquiem para un amor (Mexico); the children’s and young adult storybook Paraíso de mascotas (Cuba); and the children’s books Juan Pirindingo y otros cuentos and Saltarina y el maja rastrero (United States). Her poetry collection for adults, Clamores de un hacedor de versos, is currently being edited for publication in Cuba.

Picnic by Moonlight and Mangoes

Jacques Fleury

[Excerpt from Fleury’s Boston Globe featured poetry book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, 

A Poetic Memoir archived permanently at the University of Massachusetts’s Healey Research Library]

 The night is like a whimper whistling

       sweet sounds of the Caribbean dawning

         tense taunted memories supple coconut leaves

  longing rustling uneasily singing their hissing history

    The moon smiling a single icy eye under warm Caribbean skies watching dancing fireflies

     Against the starry sky staring soundly shining as if

     waiting for a shindig for brave night birds to fly sound is silenced noise needs defiance

    fall leaves layer upon layer interwoven to make a motley leafy magenta blanket above the               

      dirt you walk in like a frumpy flirt picnic basket brimming in big Haitian hands

          singing a tune like you in a calypso band

            bruised burnished back against the moon I emerge like a boasting butterfly from the cocoon

   to see your gesture jesting me than you kneel dumb down by me leaning closer learning me

   you placed your lips perched planting a putrid punch-drunk kiss upon me

   I could smell your taste like garnished waste tepid against my lucid lanky cheeks

     Cheeks as daunting and dazzling as the moon itself than I bury my bumbling quivering hands

   Into your buxom basket winced and wrench out a near perfect pound of reddish round mango treat 

“go ahead, bite me!” 

      I hear it sing your beat jesting me testing me vesting me

        I look up as if to say to see your burning eyes beaming looking back at me like the moon mauled against 

   the aching sky you see still staring back at me as if crouching to flee I tilt my head 

   hanging to the right then I tilt my head hanging to the left

watching your blood bleeding red swollen mango beauty erected!

 basking in your basket black memory detected than most carefully 

   I slant tauntingly toward this your gallant gaudy fruit

    rowdy rueful having lost its roots perch and peck

      my lips than sank my bucking beak beneath the stuffy skin your juicy fruit dangling drooling    

      down my chin than I lay my back buried down wincing waiting quietly to hear your 

   queer croaking rooster sound staring happily into the glare of sensual satiable 

   Caribbean skies while watching fireflies stock full of colonial flare flying hovering 

   tired hanging onto the tarry air autumn stifled squirming to breath beneath heavy hung Haitian thighs

    You could almost hear its sweaty seethe that I should sing release all Haitian flies!

    Oppression deflates exhausted satisfaction sighs…finally anxious desire daring to escape

    You’ll find it squandered and spent along the cape then laying back secretly satiated under this tree your ruby red 

           mangoes falling like loads of glory! raining down on me like a fetish fantasy

           And for a second forgetting my wanton woe laying low under your shadow’s fro

           Ooooh yes you please me like a pro! i say islander scavenger

        feed me your juicy mango    flow

                As I lay back to bask while your

                                   wise fluid moon glow    sow…–

Jacques Fleury is a Haitian American poet, novelist, educator, essayist, arts critic, author, and Harvard University literary arts scholar whose internationally published voice spans continents. The recipient of the 2026 International Naji Naaman Literary Prize for Creativity—chosen from over 4100 global competitors from 83 countries—he holds prestigious memberships in France’s La Fenêtre de Paris and Lebanon’s Maison Naaman pour la Culture. His celebrated books, among them his opus Chain Letter To America: The One Thing You Can Do To End Racism… is held globally from Massachusetts libraries to the UK’s Askews and Holts, and historic sanctuaries like the Harvard Bookstore & Grolier Poetry Book Shop. Discover more of his Boston Globe-featured work at Authorsden/JacquesFleury.

When Laughter Reveals the Truth: Reading The Miller’s Tale

A Book Review by Raida Jirjees

Book: The Canterbury Tales

Author: Geoffrey Chaucer

Translator: Nevill Coghill

Edition: Penguin Classics

Publisher: Penguin Classics

Publication Year: 2003

Pages: 528

ISBN: 9780140424386

There are books we approach because their reputation precedes them, and others that remain alive because they continue to recognise something in us. The Canterbury Tales belongs to both.

What draws me to Chaucer’s work is its extraordinary gathering of human voices. Pilgrims of different professions, social positions, desires, virtues, and weaknesses travel together and tell stories. Through this simple framework, the road to Canterbury becomes a road through human nature itself.

Among those voices, the Miller’s is impossible to ignore.

His tale does not enter politely.

It arrives laughing.

And behind that laughter, it watches us.

Chaucer and the Human Comedy

Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the defining voices of medieval English literature, possessed a remarkable ability to observe human contradiction. His humour can be ironic, playful, earthy, and deliberately crude, yet beneath it lies an understanding of vanity, desire, fear, and weakness.

The Miller’s Tale is a striking example.

John, an older carpenter, is married to the young Alison. Nicholas, a clever student, desires her, while Absolon pursues her with theatrical romantic devotion. Desire, jealousy, deception, and revenge soon turn their lives into farce.

Each character enters the tale carrying an illusion.

Chaucer gradually turns those illusions against them.

Intelligence, Fear, and Desire

Nicholas believes intelligence gives him control. Educated and resourceful, he uses his knowledge to manipulate John, convincing him that another catastrophic flood is coming.

But Chaucer does not allow the clever man to remain safely above the joke.

The deceiver eventually becomes part of it.

John is jealous and possessive, but he is also afraid. Nicholas succeeds because his lie speaks directly to that fear. There is something timeless here: we do not always believe what is most reasonable; sometimes we believe what most effectively confirms what we already fear.

Alison, meanwhile, is not merely a passive object of male desire. She participates in the deception and exercises her own will, though Chaucer does not turn her into a moral heroine. Like the others, she belongs to a world where desire repeatedly outruns responsibility.

Absolon offers another kind of illusion. He performs the role of the refined lover through appearance, song, and courtship, only to have his romantic self-image transformed into humiliation.

Here lies one of the tale’s sharpest contrasts:

the language of romance exists beside the physical reality of desire.

Why Does Chaucer Make Us Laugh?

Laughter in The Miller’s Tale does more than entertain. It strips away appearances.

Education does not guarantee wisdom. Age does not guarantee judgment. Romantic language does not guarantee love. Cleverness does not guarantee escape from humiliation.

Everyone believes, for a moment, that someone else is the fool.

Eventually, almost everyone becomes one.

Nicholas is educated but manipulative. John has experience but lacks discernment. Absolon has polish but little self-awareness. Alison understands the game but cannot stand outside its consequences.

Each character knows something.

None understands enough.

That distinction feels remarkably modern.

The costumes change.

Human vanity does not.

Reading Chaucer Today

A contemporary reader may find the tale’s bawdy humour excessive or uncomfortable, but its earthiness has a purpose. Chaucer deliberately sets the physical body against idealised notions of romance.

Modern readers may also question its treatment of marriage, gender, age, consent, and power, particularly Alison’s position as a young woman married to an older, jealous husband.

Such questions do not weaken a classic. They keep our conversation with it alive.

The Miller After the Knight

The position of The Miller’s Tale after The Knight’s Tale makes its comedy even sharper.

The Knight gives us chivalry, honour, ceremony, and elevated love. The Miller answers with bodies, tricks, adultery, and laughter.

One raises love toward the heavens.

The other pulls it into the bedroom.

Yet both ask whether human beings truly understand what they call love.

Final Assessment

I no longer see The Miller’s Tale simply as a collection of medieval jokes. I see laughter being used as a mirror.

Its comedy exposes weaknesses that time has not erased: vanity, jealousy, self-deception, desire, and misplaced confidence.

For the modern reader, the tale is also a reminder that a classic need not be solemn to be profound. Literature can reveal human nature through tragedy and beauty—but also through absurdity and an indecent joke.

Perhaps this is Chaucer’s quiet achievement.

He lets us laugh at his foolish characters long enough to realise that some part of their foolishness may belong to us as well.

And that is when the joke becomes literature.

Human Skills in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Five Key Human Activities That Computers Can Never Replace