New Fridge

Dear New 'Fridge,
You are beautiful
You shine like a diamond
You make ice instantly
You are a genius 
You are enormous, efficient
But you devour things completely
You make me bend down to you
Almost in reverence it may seem
You are a hard taskmaster
You cavernous monstrous machine
You are giving me back breaking tasks
I am at times confused and at times concerned
Where's the butter, where's the cheese?
Did we finish the curry yesterday or is it lurking in some deep corner
Of your unfathomable depths
I scramble to seize
You have brought me to my knees
Now don't bring me to my dotage
You shiny silent efficient machine!

Sushama Kasbekar

If the body told stories 

A scar is an anthology 
inscribed on my body
in delicate pieces, with
life’s treacherous ink.
My skin, once in its glories,
white as the sea’s frothy lip kissing the shore. 
It glistened, for it had never been branded 
by a brush or stained with paint. Until life raided, 
made a conquest on every inch, each territory a different memory.

After Jay Kophy’s: “If the body could speak.”


Sadiya Abdulaziz is a writer and voice-over artist from Nigeria who has been fascinated with stories from a young age. She loves conversational poetry. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Nantygreens, Spillwords, and other publications. Currently, she is a Poetry Fellow of the Sprinng Writing Fellowship. 

From Bad to Worse



He remembers

When they 

Were about to

Get married

And he remembers

His soon-to-be

Mother-in-law

Sharing that

She wasn’t sure

That she’d

Be able

To attend 

The wedding

And he remembers

Learning that his

Soon-to-be

Brother-in-law

Would not

Be attending,

At that point

He knew

Quite a bit

And wasn’t surprised

By this behavior,

Things would only

Get worse

From there.





Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fifth book, was published in May.

People on the roads and in the gardens

People on the roads and in the gardens.

Sunny bunnies eyes, hands, sounds of whispers of people, plants, wind. Sheaves. State institutions. And in every way so rich. Fresh buns, honey, clean water, hot morning coffee, cold morning dew, evening clean air, morning bells of hemingways, evening prayers and excitement: suddenly someone will hear, suddenly someone is still in heaven.

The abundance of grass, the variety of fire, the rain, the light, the mud of the roads, the nonsense of the neighbors, the flights of birds, the scent of flowers, the black circles under the eyes and the minibuses1* are not adapted to happiness.

 - I don't know what to do now ... -  the woman despaired.
- Everything will change tomorrow! - her husband's hope.
- When I grow up, I will not become an adult? - whether it is hope or despair of the child.

Hotel room for one person.

The address of the former. Lover's phone. Despair. Tears of silence.
Little boy with a toy in his hand and hope in his heart. Kindergarten with painted wallpaper. Kindergarten is like a garden. Eyes, like beetles, and want to fly, like Exupery. The mother finally comes to the nursery after a long working day and takes the child home. The guard nods disapprovingly. The mother pretends not to notice. The country pretends not to notice. The guard finally falls asleep quietly on the post. The robbers finally wake up calmly and take up their criminal post.

Taxi again ...
Apology of good and mythology of evil. Three dots. Question mark. Two for punctuation. Four for content. Three2* for the essay. The teacher puts his hand over the journal with grades and for a moment...

A woman sings an aria of a virgin at the opera house, as if she were in fact a virgin. And the night club, which is not so far from here, is about to close due to someone's vandalism and - law enforcement officers, and above them - someone else and - someone else, according to the hierarchy.

A cup of tears, drunk with a trembling grandfather's eye.
Firecrackers under the window.
The final stop - the cottage.
Curves. Hands, their intersection. Plexus of bodies.
Animal bodies. Kitten, bunny, piglet, puppy, duckling, baby. Well, just grace! And still - forcemeat in the city market.

Umbrella instead of blue sky, grayness instead of self.
Abyuz underfoot, comet tails, space rockets.
Movies after ten in the evening, when the younger sister finally went to bed. Sometimes she's really mad.

The afterlife of my grandmother's village.
Chocolate Santa Claus, who remained in the refrigerator from the New Year holidays and miraculously survived.
The face of untruth. The face of the grass.

Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplain, Uncle Misha from a kiosk on the next street.
Bookshelf of the spirit.
Perfume associations.

A birthday present, and a huge cake (and cousin's complaints about low wages).
Burning. Giants. Giant mountains. Giant people. Mountain people. And somewhere nearby - stone ceilings of misunderstandings, Easter eggs of complaints, easels of cries, dwarfs of humiliation - as soon as it is tolerated.

"New songs are always reminiscent of ...". Key: "Delete message".
Stars above your head, a dream of space, grass, roadsides, a smile on your face - and we are on the way to a fairy tale, but it's time to grow up.

In short, it is impossible to convey this feeling of a home that no longer exists ...

 This is a reprint from "minor literatures"

* 1. Here in the sense «Marshrutka» (Ukrainian: маршру́тка) or routed taxicab, is a form of public transportation such as share taxi which originated in the USSR and is still present in Russia and other countries of CIS, in Baltic states, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Turkmenistan as well as in the territories outside of ex-USSR, such as Bulgaria. The role of the modern marshrutka is theoretically similar to the share taxi, which uses minibuses in some other countries. The first marshrutka was introduced in Moscow, Russia, in 1938.

* 2.  Unsatisfactory score with 12-point school system of Ukraine.

hazy sky 
below the sun halo 
a black trail 


sharing truths ...
a poet labels me
anti vax 


last working day
a student shares her
vaccine injuries 


weekend picnic
at the local park
I search for a blue sky

Macedon’s Alexander

born in myrrh, died in velvet
lived as verb, lived as helmet
Babylon’s fatal pander

WEATHER REPORT FOR BLIND OPTIMISTS

Proudly, dawn brings out
those debutante clouds of swan --
black vultures
are secluded
from this slack culture,
tragedy is outlawed
from all our strategies.

Gradually, stratosphere turns lapis lazzuli.

CENOZOIC

Dinosaurs didn’t stay
dinosaurs, did they?
They became chickens
and museum exhibitions.

What about us?
Hitchhikers once,
between exits,
and not yet fixed
to this landscape
of no escape.

ONCE, ONCE

At one time some people believed
that the elephants
had sex but once:
No wonder such a memory!

Once, I thought love was measured
in some mean distance of imaginary numbers
from whole digits to infinity squared.
One perfect combination. (The tumblers
turn and twist.) My sandpapered fingers
bared to the wrist. But secrets hide
            in the between.
Once, love was obvious as the ebb and
flow of ocean is to charts and sailors.
(But sea, O sea – you scene of unseen
sights – you graveyard of mariners –
a gale, a new leak, or a sleeping watch,
and your white wave just swallowed me like bread
            unleavened.)

Does a lemming really embrace the sea                                                                                       
with a lover’s greed?
To know the sea, roughly
one taste’s enough.
                                    But what about love?

TRAD

So we pooled together our quarters
to buy a beige wedding dress
and hire a birdsong processional
and a greenwood wedding hall.
Deciding to forego a sermon,
we said those words that we meant,
and we solidified everything
with wine kisses and smoke rings.
But then this mud ball rolled below us
and moved us separate ways.