Seeing Desperate Lives

The photos make me feel a hundred years old:

Schoolroom made rubble, skeletal steel frames

of desks somehow standing, withstanding the blast;

exhausted fireman sitting in the living room

of a burning house, admitting defeat; woman

with concerned face dappled by sun through leaves

of her yard's beautiful trees leaving her village house,

one forearm holding a fluffy white kitten, its face

buried in her shoulder.



They are desperate, and I tire of mainlining

their anxiety, so I look up from the phone

into my rearview, at the sun-scorched asphalt --

the road beyond my yard's tree cover

is molten with summer sun.  I wheeled in

and looked up Ukraine, like I do at least once a day,

and it makes me feel a hundred years old.  So,

I do the only thing I can think of to forget:

step out of my pick-up, take shoes off toe to heel,

pull off socks, walk my pine straw and oak leaf drive

onto the sizzle heat of road, and its sudden tactile feel

in the flesh of my feet consumes me.



And I am here, now, away from war, and soon

I am young again, walking barefoot

the hot paved parking lot to the state park spring

that began a river in Florida, that mine

and two other families caravanned to in summers,

the hours of swimming, the picnics in a blanket of grass

by sedges, herbs, and wildflowers at river's edge.

Until -- the burn's ministry becomes too much,

and I walk back onto the cool of pine straw, open

the truck door for the phone, look again

at the places I will never go to anymore.



After Russia invaded, I talked with my Iraq vet friend

David who told me of two acquaintances

who went into Ukraine to rescue the in-laws

of one of them, native Ukrainians, and I said

I could no longer handle war psychologically:

my mind hearing the ominous thump

of helicopter rotors, distant artillery, pounding

"danger close" seconds later, high flying planes,

birds of prey dropping dots of bombs that ride

gravity's slipstream to earth, plowing earthquakes

that reverberate, spit heat and flame

against everything natural.



He tells me of the healing power of yoga,

how he's started yoga teacher training.

Next time we talk, I'll have to tell of walking

a hot street.  I look again at one of the photos.

I'm well removed now, twice, through the lens

of the camera, through the lens of the phone,

but I remember the pain of watching starving dogs

being shot by laughing Iraqi soldiers, and I wonder

where the woman will take her cat.




Year 2, Ukraine



It was last year that the shelling first disturbed

the deep time of an old village, hub for farmers

and beekeepers



Now tanks roll into the square again, one crushing

the stone walls of a central fountain, old coins

fall with the water from its heavy treads



In the corner of the square, from the alley by

the Armenian church, a shadow strides, moves

into the square



Pacing here and there erratically, palm to temple,

this walking wound gathering breath to force insults

in growing gasps



This man whose family was killed in last year's shelling

The Polish radio says his government is winning,

at 10:00 and 5:00 daily



He thinks the war has already gone on forever  Bitterly,

he thinks the war has already killed him  A soldier shouts

"Khokhol!" in the language of bears



Waving him closer from the height of his round, iron hatch,

the soldier points a pistol  This dead man loads his mouth

with more insults and rushes forward



Into the loop of everlasting war  In the sky's drizzle on his face

are tears that were once salty seas




Prayer for a Savior




Come for your gentle people

who shudder in this darkness



bring your sovereign brightness

unbreakable shield of goodness



let misfortune, famine, disease,

war, become faraway sounds



make them gray at the temples,

let them fade away



give us a spell of warm sun, soft

winds, clear rain over green valleys



we know death is stronger than

suffering -- may you open its horizon



of strength in this living season and

forgive our fragile clay, wounded



hearts, that for heaven's peace

can't wait.

A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Misfit Magazine, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

April

 

April has long fingerprints on the window

The girl climbs up to the soft cheekbones

Across furrows touched by life

It is morning and freedom smells at the top visible to the inner stumbling

Enchanting flowers will bloom from the fingers,

and smells flow instead of blood

But despite the joy of the will,

her body doesn't recognize the arms that hug her.

 

 

Emina Đelilović-Kevrić (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) 

After studying the b/h/s (bosnian/croatian/serbian) language and literature at the Philoshopical Faculty in Zenica she got her master's degree on the subject "Memory construction in the South Slavic interlinear community: typical models of the war camp experience in literature“. She is the author of the poetry collection "This time without history“ and the short stories collection "Erased lives."

Her collection of poems "My son and I“ is awarded by the Publishing Foundation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021. In 2022 she won the second place in the international literature competition "Isnam Taljić“. She is the winner of the second award for the best short story of the regional literature competition "Zija Dizdarević“ 2022, and she won the first place on international literature competition "Nastavi priču“ in 2023. She won a third place on the international poetry competition "Ossi di Seppia“ in Italy.

 

Gen X

Maybe we weren’t resourceful. Maybe we were just confused.
Maybe we lost our way. Maybe we lost our shoes
in a pond with a surface like a screen without words or songs
from the future disconnected walking barefoot down the long
screen to the future which doesn’t have a phone
or a bookstore or a workplace and is leaking like snow cone
purple across the tile. We follow cracks from lock to key
through the back screen door. To be safe you touch the tree
growing upwards towards the moon and on up towards the light
pollution that blurs what’s happened. Together with what might.

After Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

          For things they did not tell us:
        “Life is our teacher, & our tears,
          sighs and sweats; the levies.”

Mother told me that father was a good man
& I should tread the path he led. & because
she was my mother, saying no was a metaphor
for calling myself unfilial.
I echoed the songs of his footprints, hoping
to reach the shore, but yonder was his
footprints echoing some faded tunes that
reeked of rusty bones. There the stamps
on the sand became broad & heavy; my feet,
swollen. I folded my hopes into a talisman,
hung it on my suprasternal notch–to drag
this broken body to the shore. Yesterday,
mother called me a gentle man (like
father's mother had done) & I smiled.
I smiled, shrouding my cries & pangs under
a fake face. I knew father, too, was a hostage
like me for there were tears and sweats
in the wake of his footprints & yet, he died.
He died like a contused chameleon,
shredded off of his color to look for another
at the shore, but couldn't reach the shore.
But because she's my mother, I couldn't teach her
that we all had sketches of our destinations.
For here, we grew up, we grew up to brook
the path on which life put our feet.
And the courses to our own shores
were the roads not taken.

Arikewusola Abdul Awal writes from Oyo state. His poems have appeared on ila magazine, willi wash, Teen Lit journals, Literary Yard, The Yellow House, Eboquills, Afrihill Press, Spillwords magazine, Thirty Shades of Roses Anthology, Broken chunks of hearts, World Voice Magazine and elsewhere.

When he is not writing, he is found reading or watching movies.

YOU SAID

 

You said;

I will leave!

I will remove the seed of your image from my eyes

And plant it in the hard land of oblivion.

The shine from pupils will easily squirm, 

like a fish from palms.

 

I stood like a tree with many branches

abandoned by birds

and their nests.

 

I'm getting used to it

like earth's ground on dead bodies -

to your headless 

words.

 

Azemina Krehić was born on October 14, 1992 in Metković, Republic of Croatia.

Winner of several international awards for poetry, including:

Award of university professors in Trieste, 2019.,

„Mak Dizdar“ award, 2020.

Award of the Publishing Foundation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2021.

„Fra Martin Nedić“ Award, 2022.

She is represented in several international anthologies of poetry.

Flying

I remember flying

Learned it early

Somewhere between

Peter Pan and Superman

Sitting out on a windowsill

Overlooking Adsit Court

Legs dangling and then

I was off flying

The whole world in front

Of me, waiting for me

Up with the geese

And the gulls, as if there

Were no limits

No expiration date

On my flight

Soaring, zooming

Hovering, floating

I could be there or anywhere

I had the mind to be

Now I just remember flying.

It got away from me.



                Free Fall

Sometimes running feels like falling.

perhaps like free falling

your feet barely touching down

as distance appears and disappears

under you

 

They told you that life was a marathon

and not a sprint

but they sprinted away while you sat

there tying your shoes

 

And now you are running alone

almost weightless

 

This is running, falling, free falling

without a parachute to snap open

to catch you when the ground leaps up

to show you – you’ve reached the end.



     Getting Away


Time to walk away

Turn your back

A full 180 this time.

Pick up your pace.

 

There’s no rear-view

Mirror this time.

 

There are memories

That will go bump

Go thump in the night

 

But right now you’re

Moving away

 

Physically at first

Mentally sometime later.

 

But now you’re moving

Putting distance and time

Between you

 

And all those things –

the list seems too long

to go over ever again.

 

Those things you knew

You had to leave behind.

 

And now you’re

Alone out here

Without them.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.