Station

People stand with tickets 

like small permissions to leave.

Some read the time again and again, 

as if it might change its decision.

No one is fully present here

one foot already in departure, 

the other still negotiating with what they call home.

Trains arrive without apology, 

and leave without regret.

Names are called like warnings, not invitations.

And love, if it exists here, 

is always in a hurry it cannot explain.

What hurts is not leaving,

it is how ordinary it looks while it happens

as if separation were just another way of arriving somewhere else.

She is a Pakistan-based published writer whose literary work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, websites, and digests. She is also the author of the book, Eternal Melodies.

Heartbroken

My heart has been left open

to learn that nothing lasts forever

and if you live life to the fullest

you’ll be happy just remembering it.

The times my life tasted

the flavor of love

were shooting stars

in the firmament of my life…

But just remembering them

gives me the certainty

that I was immensely happy…

Mirta Liliana Ramírez has been a poet and writer since she was 12 years old. She has been a Cultural Manager for more than 35 years, creator and director of the Groups of Writers and Artists: Together for the Letters, Artescritores, MultiArt, JPL World Youth, Together for the Letters Uzbekistan 1 and 2. She firmly defends that culture is the key to unite all the countries of the world. She works creatively, integrating projects at a world cultural level. She has created the Cultural Movement with Rastrillaje Cultural and Forming the New Cultural Belts at the local level and also from Argentina to the world.

This Is Not Art

: an assemblage

“The Americans call photography an art.  They have

galleries, institutions, exhibitions. But what I’m doing

is not art.”  Don McCullin

Cholera victim. Eyes rolled back into her head.

Cradled in arms of her husband as an offering to

Death.

Shabby woman of no particular age.  Standing in 

her, three-rungs-below-hell, dwelling.  “Rats the

size of cats,” her son says. Whoring is a way of

life here.  You have to eat.  So do the boy with no-future 

eyes.

An American soldier in Hue city. During the offensive.

Throwing a grenade amid the ruins toward an unseen

enemy.  Seconds before his arm is blown off

by a sniper’s bullet.  Before another soldier takes his

place. Throws a grenade. Is shot. Before another

man is ordered forward.

Three heavily armed, cocky young American soldiers

in South East Asia.  Their captive forced to his

knees, arms trussed behind his back, rope around his

neck like a leash. Eyes blindfolded with a dirty once-

white rag.  The village behind them about to burn.

Three blind black women fast walking in bare

feet past heavily armed guerrilla force on the last

days of the Smith regime in Rhodesia.

American army chaplain lifting an confused, dazed old

woman from bombing raid rubble.

A face only portrait of a starving boy in Biafra.

Oh, the Humanity!

Insanity: a poem with an epigraph and a closure by

The Poet Spiel

“It’s a good thing to die at least once in a lifetime.”

Life had become a place where

you could fall asleep in a world

that adhered to moral principles

and natural laws, and wake up in

another where all those rules had

been suspended.  Even the environment

unrecognizable. All the buildings,

public spaces transformed into

creations by narcotects, city planners

on cocaine using blueprints crafted

from splatter art like those pock- 

marked Bill Burroughs’ paint smeared

canvases randomly created by shotgun

spray patterns and arterial blood.

All the faceless men and  women

stick figures fashioned from coat

hangers, high tension wire art made

bright with electrical charges that

illuminate the night.  Nothing moves

but the poison gas clouds, the blood red 

sickle of a waxing moon.

“What if, in fact, the world does not end

but just goes on and on and on….and….”

After Reading What Light Becomes: The Turner Variations,

by George Looney

Is this how the dead

assemble, by fire light,

on river’s edge near

where the spires give

themselves to the flame?

The night is charred by

all this burning, are smoking

screens that descend from

blackened clouds as secrets

contained by ash.  No reason,

to direct water where

total conflagration reigns,

the passion of all this fire

must be spent, consumption

the end of this, of all things

mortal, of all things made

by man, even that, even those

who purport to rule the world.

One Life Is Not Enough

after artwork by Edward Boccia

for the allegorical voyages of all

these independent minded souls.

For the men rescued from a filthy house

of cards, pulled from the wreckage

of a breaking hall of mirrors 

unfolded now as an accordion,

a shaped enclosure reduced to shards

of crystal lodged in the near perfect

eyes of a princess dreaming of her

mythic lover. For that half-man, half-beast-

thing, sent in exile to sea with a fleet

of confusion boats, consigned to

onerous duties, trials, and elemental

war. For, a lifetime of tasking before

the tempestuous days of false ecstasies.

For dancing on the heads of ship to shore

lynch pins, pulled from the tortured

flesh of soon-to-be-sacrificial virgins,

defilement inevitable as the monstrous

heart excavated from a sacred ruinous

place beyond understanding. For an 

inexactness tiles fitting into a mosaic-

a map of love more lasting than all t

he misleading dreams that layered, 

obstructive dead adhere to, blocking 

the way inside; here, at land’s end,

the final choices are offered and

made. For the man with the lasting vision

is the one who come out whole on

the other side of night.

This war, that war, the next war, war everlasting:

with lines from Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon

“Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly with Death;

Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,

Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in one hand.”

Wilfred Owen, “The Next War”

Oh, brave new world of gravity rainbows,

long range death by guided missile, satellites,

drones;

all those Space X unscheduled midair disassembling,

air space disruptive, debris spewing on residential

homes and gardens;

all those air show explosions casting shrapnel 

to the wind like Turner fireworks falling, 

like Owen’s fleeting flares;

Oh, those happy days in the arms of death

like close combat in the green, all those mad minute

tracer rounds before the final fight,

before the shock and awe of carpet bombing

civilian targets, concussive assaults, in great

fireballs forged and deadly as Death From Above;

all those polluted by stealth bombers and super sonic

jet fighters, skirting toxic clouds and the acidic rain

that falls after;

Oh, the odd beauty of it all, the way the world

is ending with a blustery tweet, a nuclear winter

without Strangelove’s unearthly chorus singing,

“Until we meet again, I don’t know when…”

“War’s a joke for me and you

While we know such dreams are true”

Siegfreid Sassoon

Post Card to Thompson May 6, 20–: The Poet at Kurt Cobain 

Landing wearing a rubber dog mask 

and hand painted answers to 

Kurt C questions, Private Keep Out

He wrote Anthems for the Doomed

Youth: not Wilfred Owen but Cobain.

He’d be a one name rock star if he

were living now. So famous he didn’t need

a first and a last one, just a brand name.  For

personal appearances all he world have to do

is show, act cool, preen. Just being was enough.

Mega.

Man.

Went directly from his mansion to

rock and roll heaven with a shot gun in his mouth.

Fuck Go, fuck the two hundred dollars,

fuck Courtney Love.

He was already in Nirvana. What more

could he possibly need?

“I say shot gun, shoot em ‘fore he run now….”

Junior Walker

River 

Flowing current against my warm body.

The river whispers to me, “Be strong and stand tall

let your womanhood become strong.

Sometimes sadness flows into my soul and beckons me 

to lay down.

And the river pounds on my body “Arise , Stand Tall 

Be Strong “.

Now my body is filled with the strength of the Old Strong river 

flowing into me.

It breathes the breath of life. 

Elaine Murray 

2001

Gentle Soul 

Lay down on the warm sandy beach.

Castles in the sand make believe I’m walking 

with you hand and hand.

You are the gentle soul that lights up my life.

Elaine Murray

May 20 2008

Walking Through The Mist 

Walking through the mist your hand touches mine.

Shadows of our bodies touch each other.

Oh! Stars Show me your brilliant light .

Stars light up my soul,

Walking through the mist with you  

Elaine Murray

May 20, 2008

Loneliness 

Tears  of sadness run down my face .

Loneiness is my passion.

Turn and turn you’re not there.

Open the earth so I may go down ,

Sea sends your waves to flood my grave .

Open deep so I will fall.

The Breath of life is gone.

Elaine Murray 

May 17, 2008

Environment 

Terrorism Hits Our Sea

Terrorism hits our sea with black goo

of concoctions with deadly elixir the demons 

drink venom.

Like the snake venom the sea dies a painful death.

Elaine Murray

July 2010

Excerpt from Fleury’s fiction book: It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories]

Jislene scurries around her apartment determined not to be defeated by the Haitian Time Curse to always be late. She is married to a White man and living—what looks like to most outsiders—the American dream in the suburb of Lakeville, Massachusetts while her only daughter is away at university.

Now, in her red convertible with the top down and the wind in her straight black hair, she is listening to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” from her debut album just released. She sings along with the lyrics: “You got a fast car; maybe together we can get somewhere. Maybe we make a deal, starting from nothing got nothing to lose…” She smiles to herself as she anticipates seeing the girls since they only meet once a month.

First there is Gilda, a gregarious gal who’s constantly laughing, even at things most people don’t even find funny. Betsy is a yoyo dieter. Her husband often mocks her by making “BooBoom Booboom Booboom” sounds when she walks in public, which Betsy always pretends to laugh off and then cries herself to sleep at night. Wanda, an Arabic woman who always wears a head wrap and covered up in layers of clothes leaving only her face and hands visible to the
public, to appease her Arabic husband. Polish Paula, at 25 with blond hair and blue eyes, is the youngest of the group with a curvaceous hourglass figure that most middle-aged men would mortgage a house for.

Jislene arrives just as the sun is setting over her rural surroundings. She pushes through the door left ajar with an apologetic half smile on her face for always being late. “Bonsoir and sorry ladies, I really tried hard not to be late this time,” she says in her Haitian accent.
“Oh, Jislene. Next time, I’ll have to send a time police to your house to handcuff you and bring you here on time?” Gilda utters laughingly.
“Sweety, you think I would waste my time with you bitches if you sent me a uniformed stallion to play with?” Jislene tilts her head back and laughs.

“Ladies, I take it you all have finished the book? I know I did and it was a fascinating read please, sit,” Betsy declares. “I particularly like the title ‘Mother, Lover, Murderer.’ I also found it to be quite relevant to the plight of modern women to free themselves from male domination, don’t you?” They all sit in Betsy’s living room and commence sipping tea and coffee.

“Oh, yes…I’ve known plenty of women who have been pushed to the edge to…you know, have reason to kill,” says Jislene as she looks nervously around the room, avoiding direct eye contact with the other women while she sips her coffee. “I found the sex scenes to be quite tantalizing indeed….” Wanda chuckles as she looks around at
the women.

“You of all people? Walking around all covered up like a mummy? You almost had me thinking that all you do in bed is pray!”” says Jislene, which invokes laughter from the women. “My favorite part was when Marla murdered her husband. I think it was justified since he practically enslaved her. I mean, who ties someone’s arms and legs to bed posts and then continuously act out mock rape scenes just for kicks and then afterwards expect her to cook his dinner and draw his bath. I would kill the motherfucker too if I was in that situation.” Spitballs are flying out of Jislene’s mouth and the veins in her neck are visibly throbbing as she practically barks out the words. Wanda squirms uncomfortably in her seat as she watches Jislene speak. Gilda laughs, but it almost seems forced. And at that very moment, a hissing sound can be heard coming from the kitchen, and Betsy—welcoming the distraction—stands up and asks, “More tea
anyone?” Everyone said no.

“Well, I definitely think that the son of a bitch got what he deserved,” offers Paula. “Now you can understand why I use my looks to manipulate the hell out of those assholes and clean out their bank accounts by the time I am done with them. Sex appeal is my ultimate weapon against those pigs and he better be packing no less than eight and a half inches if he wants to slip his key into my lock.” Paulo tilts her head in a brief forward and backward motion to accentuate her point. And all the women drop their jaws and raise their eyebrows in Paula’s direction.

“Well, my Charlie has his asshole moments, especially when he pokes fun of my weight, but for the most part he is good to me. As long as I do what he wants and try not to piss him off with back talk, we’re good. So what if he wants me to cook and clean in full make-up and high heels when he is around. I like to surrender to his 1950’s housewife fantasies,” Betsy says in a low resigned voice. As the ladies take turns talking, the moon can be seen hovering behind a cloud outside the living room window and the sizzling summer night air, which has seeped into the house—feels stifling and Betsy responds by turning on the ceiling fan.

“My husband is fucking my brother!” Wanda exclaims and all eyes turn to her in shock and disbelief. “As you know my brother has been staying with me since his divorce. Now I know why the marriage didn’t work!” The ladies are all silent and shocked. Paula speaks first, “Your macho male chauvinist husband? What makes you think…I mean…do you have any proof?”

“Well, one day I came home and my brother came out of our bedroom bare-chested, sweaty and buttoning up his pants, and I could hear Slav scurrying around our bedroom and when I quickly
poke my head in, he too was half naked trying to get his pants on. They both said half in unison that they were just wrestling with each other. Which I thought was a crack of shit!” Wanda leans forward with her right hand on her right thigh and cupped under her chin as she looks down at the floor. Outside, the moon is still slowly trying to evade the dense cloud that obliterates it and the windows are illuminated slightly by its fluorescent glow and rattling a bit from the growing wind. All the women are silent for a brief moment and the sound of crickets can be heard coming from the nearby woods. “What are you gonna do now Wanda?” Gilda asks.

“I don’t know. The women in my family never even consider divorce” Wanda says as she looks off in the distance. And then suddenly, like she just became infused with a sudden boost of manic energy, declares “But you know what, I think I’m gonna be the first. I’m going to divorce his faggot ass!” Then she stands up, yanks the head wrap from her head, takes off the long robe to expose a tight strapless red dress she wore underneath and all the women gasps in utter bewilderment and then suddenly begin clapping while Wanda takes a number of bows as if she’d just given the performance of a lifetime. “This is the kind of clothes I am going to wear from now on,” she says in a triumphant fashion. And with that, they adjourned the meeting.

As Jislene drives home, she is content to think that the ladies don’t really know her or what she has done. They don’t know that she is a serial black widow and that she has killed every man she’d ever married because they all reminded her of her father. She had been raped and sexually abused by her dad—while her mother looked the other way—since she was just five years old to the age of sixteen when she finally mustered the courage to run away from home. They don’t know that as she is driving home, she plans to stop by the store to buy more arsenic to prepare her current husband’s dinner. They don’t know that she has been physically and mentally abused by every man she’d ever married since running away from home, including her current one.

Would they judge her to be a bad person if they knew about the killings? After all, isn’t she the real victim here? They don’t know that the book they are reading was written by Jislene herself under a pen name. “It just goes to show,” She thinks to herself, “’our secrets are what constitute who we really are.”

As she shifts the gears of her stick shift, the moon finally peaks from under the heavy-handed mass of clouds to illuminate the dark highway on which she had driven many times on her way home from her book club.

Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured and internationally published Haitian American poet, theater reviewer, educator, author of numerous books of essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and literary arts student through Harvard University. He was chosen among over 4, 000 competitors from 83 countries as the Recipient of the International Naji Naaman Literary Prize for Creativity (2026) and a Certificate of Participation for his “…esteemed contribution of poetry to the anthology Water: The Source of Life (Volume IV) presented by La Fenetre De Paris. 

It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories among other titles are available at all Massachusetts public libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, Wyoming University, Askews and Holts Library Services, the leading library supply specialist in the United Kingdom, The MIT Press Bookstore, The Harvard Bookstore and the oldest poetry bookstore in America: The Grolier Poetry Book Shop (est. 1927) has hosted great American poets E. E. Cummings and Alan Ginsberg and online bookstores worldwide such as Bookshop dot com, Amazon etc…

Father is a Pillar

As nature enhances the beauty of the earth,

A father’s education turns life into a gem,

In amulets teaching protection,

In advice to be elegant in education,

Sow the seeds of seriousness,

The harvest is as a good person.

Father wants his child to grow up.

Surprise everyone’s heart. 

To raise a child wears shoes, toils,

The father’s role in the future is bright.

Father’s Day Tribute Says,

Parents’ faces shine everywhere by my work,

Parents take care of the responsibilities from the side.

Country: India,

Date:18.06.2026

Amb. Dr. Priyanka Neogi is from Coochbehar. She is an administrative controller of United Nations’ PAF, a librarian, a CEO of Lio Messi International Property & Land Consultancy, international literacy worker, sports & peace promoter, dancer, singer, reciter, live telecaster, writer, editor, researcher, literary journalist, host, beauty queen, international co-ordinator of the Vijay Mission of Community Welfare Foundation of India.

a rumor in the wind

and this what happens

when utopia was always

a myth

love simply a rumor

in the wind

loneliness as common

as the common cold

longing until it goes

out of style

hard to find comfort

in a land of broken

chairs and high

anxiety

tap the arm twice

and find a good

vein

hopefully

this one is laced

with something

milder

lost soldiers in

a frozen retreat

time not weather

the end came

years ago

no one bothered

to notice

——————————————————————

unremarkable

a doctor after

one of my latest

scans said the

results were

unremarkable

i have a few

ex-girlfriends

that would

agree

———————————————————-

slow and deliberate

hard to watch the seconds

tick away when the clock

is always flashing twelve

do you pick from the

pile of dirty clothes

or the pile of not as

dirty

no one warned you life

gets incredibly harder

as you get older and

the money stops

coming in

it makes it harder to

not figure death is

not the easiest but

the most logical

solution to all of

this

no loved ones to

talk you out of

your common

sense

only a fool waits for

a romantic ending

life comes at you fast

why is death so fucking

slow and deliberate

—————————————————————

broken and lonely

temptation is a beautiful

woman without any baggage

coming along for the ride

reality is every scar that

some dumb fuck put on

her in the past you will

be accused of at some

point

i can’t imagine why

anyone wants to

be with me

not like i am some

angelic soul that has

no scars

broken and lonely

what a way to go

through a world

that couldn’t give

two shits that you

exist

it is an endless agony

hoping for a kiss

sometime before

you die

sure, get romantic

on the verge of

another world war

——————————————————-

at the end of the horizon

whispers lost in the wind

all dreams go to die at the

end of the horizon

fifty cents off two lemons

too cold for lemonade

she told me she wanted

to see other people

i asked if i could do the

same already knowing

that answer would be

what it always has been

crash landing in the

middle of hell

do they even write

home letters to loved

ones anymore

somewhere coltrane

is playing and one

lucky soul will hear

it for the first time

if they only knew

it will be all downhill

from here on

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in suburbia, plotting his escape. He’s been widely published over the last 30 years, most recently at The Rye Whiskey Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Yellow Mama, Night Owl Narrative and Mad Swirl. You can find his latest book, to live your dreams, on Amazon by going here: https://a.co/d/0aaEe8ph