A RIDE INTO THE PALETTE OF MEMORIES 
After reading Ojo Olumide Emmanuel 

Once upon a dream,

I journeyed through the history of me as a page. 

Inside, there’s a whirlwind teaching a boy theories of hell. 

There’s a naked hell glowing from bone-to-skin skin-to-ashes

& ashes into everything the fire named.

I bent down to morph the ashes into bowl of sand. 

Suddenly, Dad’s picture emerged like dust on the pulpit of wind

With a broken image still blurring on the album.

In the album, his sins are mine,

the last duplicate of his sins winged through 

my palms to sky. You see, this body

Has become a temple of forgiveness.

I forgive him. I do, I believe I do.

Outside the album, he’s vomiting all the apologies 

Out of boredom.

Adamu Muhammad Ja’agi (AMJ D’POET) is a young Nigerian poet, debater, public speaker, and a spoken word artist from Minna, the center city of Niger state. Ja’agi is a young voice who is passionate about art and it’s magic at storytelling. He has represented the state including in a project presentation nationwide. Ja’agi is a student of father O’Connell Science college, Minna

The First Shelter

Long before the first lullaby,

before blankets, before names

stitched into fabric

that will never stay clean,

she was learning

what it means to hold something

that does not yet have language.

Time came in small, private signals –

a turn, a kick, a sudden stillness

that no one else could hear.

The world kept asking

whether she was ready,

as though readiness

ever arrives before love does.

Then one ordinary morning,

everything narrowed

to the size of breath in a room.

It fits inside her arms –

this miracle that once lived only as waiting.

After that, days began changing shape.

Shoes left by doorways that never stay

empty.

Rooms rearranged by growth she did not

vote for.

Hands that once held her finger

now testing the distance of departure.

Still, something returns –

not always in bodies,

sometimes only in echoes:

a word spoken the same way she once

spoke it,

a laugh that forgets to be careful.

Perhaps that is motherhood –

not holding everything,

but becoming the place

where things first learn they are safe

and the place they return to

without always knowing why.

A Heart That Multiplies

No one notices

when the day begins inside her.

Before the kettle remembers its song,

before the window quite let in morning,

she is already gathering scattered hours

into something the family can live inside.

She carries invisible things –

an appointment no one else will

remember,

a sweater already folded once into a

schoolbag,

rain waiting somewhere without warning.

She makes an apology

for arguments she did not begin,

simply because peace

has learned her name too well.

There are afternoons

when silence follows her

from room to room,

not like loneliness exactly,

but like another task

she has not finished.

She wonders, briefly,

who she was

before every thought

began with someone else tomorrow.

Then a laugh cuts through the house –

too loud, to alive to ignore.

A voice calls, Mum.

Just that.

And something in her shifts –

not fixed, but pulled back together

in a way she cannot explain.

She does not mistake love for ease.

She knows it is built

the way rivers worry stone:

slowly, without witness,

until every hardness begins to change shape.

Chidimma Ewelukwa is a Nigerian writer whose work explores memory, belonging, identity, and the quiet tensions of everyday life. She has been published in Writer Monk Literary Magazine.

A Burial Place

I could never escape paying rent
all my life.

When I was young,
it never troubled me.
“Bury me,” I would say,
“wherever I happen to die.”

As the years passed,
my thoughts changed.

Now I am searching
for a place far from the city,
with white marble
and a view of the sea—

to be buried there,
and never have to move again.

Barbaros İrdelmen

İstanbul/Turkey

Love

By Dr ©®Barbaros İrdelmen

It cannot be told
by drowning someone in false words,
by smothering them in gifts,
by laying red carpets along their path.

Never with splendor—
love is not wrapped in shining paper.

To love
is to sit at the edge of the soul,
without a rope of safety,
with a lamp that gives no light,
and descend into a mysterious well.

To love
is to wander fearlessly
through the hidden chambers of faces
where fragile dawns tremble.

In that dark silence,
to hear what is left unsaid,
to see what mirrors do not reflect,
to become the sun that enlightens hearts
with sincere glances mistaken for faintness.

Even if centuries pass,
though fragile and trembling,
it is the majestic mountain
whose name never changes,
the one you always seek refuge in—
to love.

Tavşancıl, Turkey
Copyright reserved

We Were Young

I was smitten with your smile

And you, to my compassionate gaze

How we liked each other

When we meet

We held hands and decided

We’re ready to join our lives together

Brides, grooms, in-laws, grandchildren

Half a century of ups and downs

We lived happily together

Now?

Our springs are tense

Our arrows are sharp

Axes at our waist

We dislike each other…

Dr Barbaros Irdelmen

AI in the Classroom: Are We Upgrading Education or Downgrading the Human Touch?

Not long ago, a university laboratory was a place defined by the smell of chemical reagents, the scratch of pens on notebooks, and hours spent looking through optical microscopes. Today, a student can walk into that same lab, open a laptop, and let an Artificial Intelligence algorithm simulate the entire experiment in three seconds.

Technology has moved from the margins of our lives right into the center of our classrooms. For the current generation of university students, AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it is a daily study partner. We use it to debug our Python code, translate complex foreign texts, and organize messy research data. On paper, this is the ultimate democratization of knowledge. But on the ground, the reality feels a bit more complicated. The biggest promise of AI in education is efficiency. In scientific research and laboratory settings, digitalization has broken down massive barriers. Algorithms can analyze thousands of data sets in real-time, helping young researchers spot patterns that would otherwise take months to find. It acts like a super-powered assistant, handling the repetitive, time-consuming parts of science so that human minds can focus on actual creativity and big-picture questions. However, this rapid transition hides a subtle trap. When an AI tool can write a flawless essay, solve a complex higher-mathematics integral, or predict a physics simulation instantly, the human brain gets lazy. The critical muscle of “struggling” with a problem is being bypassed. True learning rarely happens when the answer is delivered instantly on a screen; it happens in the frustrating, messy process of trial and error. Furthermore, there is an invisible element that no language model can replicate: the human connection. A screen cannot replace a professor who notices a student’s hidden potential during a rough lecture. It cannot replicate the late-night debates between roommates trying to crack a logic puzzle together, or the shared joy when a peer finally passes a difficult national certification exam. These deeply human interactions are what actually shape an academic journey. Technology should serve as a bridge, not a substitute. The goal of integrating AI into our universities should not be to turn students into passive consumers of machine-generated data, but to empower them to become sharper thinkers. We must treat AI like a high-tech microscope: a tool that helps us see the world more clearly, but never a replacement for the human eyes doing the looking. As we reshape education for the digital era, the challenge is not just teaching students how to code or use prompts. The real challenge is ensuring that as our technology becomes smarter, we do not lose the raw curiosity, persistence, and human empathy that made us want to learn in the first place.

AMONBOYEVA SHAHNOZA, UZBEKISTAN
FACULTY OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING IN URGENCH STATE UNIVERSITY

Free!

by 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 Healy Research Library]

Dock
we’ll dock stones
roll and
we’ll unroll
in my America
the big flying eagle
birds well done abroad.
two groups of people
the rich and the poor
the young and the old
the white and the black
and three tons of fat
all in procession
silent tales are blooming
flowers growing shells
olive branches
climbing white house walls
two candles burning
shades of gray
I trust in god
holy bloody sunday comes
sunday morning
god bless those whose veins
bear none
twilight swallows the moon
darkness
descends
soldiers gone AWOL
run like panthers
here and gone
they’ve staged a snare
running rivers very dry mouths
Dutiful soldiers beat their drums
paragons of strength and honor
masquerade balls
dinky shoots smack and
the dumb blond flunks
fall down stand up
walk the line
walk backwards
juggling well
will set you free!

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. 

OUR STAR CHAMBER: RACK AND EXTRACTION

“And now,” says my torturer,

it’s time for your manicure.”

I strapped you to my machine

that moves belows to above.

“By means of proper stretching

I’ll teach you to loosen up.”

My fingernails, your pliers,

my distorted solo choir.

KINGSTON

8 DaYS! 7 NIGHTS!

Son, dey

moan

day to day

when dey

thirsty.

Fried, dey

sat ern de sun.

Deh!

 SPI(RITUAL)

marriage is a ritual,

agreed universality

of rote, script, symbol, image,

repetitive activities,

(temple, ring, song, robes, candles)

sameness within variety,

recitation from a page

Blood marks up the invisible.

love is the spiritual

ungloved particularity,

a simple cherished mirage

that completes our I-dentities.

THE ID ENTITY

There is a Trinity, some say, within each soul.

Even so, only one

of them is in control.

JUST A MOMENT

That night we togethered.

Our snowball moon may melt

amid its blizzard of stars,

but our being

at that there,

at that then,

and at that thus

was that moment

that will never move

into the being

that we had 

not yet been,

those plants 

and stones

to come,

the selves surrendered,

the selves sundered,

variously victors or victims,

deluges of confusion

among pussie,

tits,

and asses,

the tomorrows

of betrothals and betrayals

of other Peters, other cocks,

and the knowledge known

but could change nothing.

I do lust after gold, jewels, and such, shiny things. I am shamelessly bold, and I want shiny things because they are shiny. And I deserve honors, distinctions, high titles. I crave folds of fawners, many affairs, sweet flings meaningless as candy but rich in imaginings that appease variety. I burn with impatience and rely on cunning, grasping will to hasten the end of the burning. And I want what I want — any passing fancy — and of course I must flaunt that uproooted pansy. And I rationalize injustice in my dreams, and I invoke conscience to accomplish my schemes; it reminds me of rules I use to maneuver sure-footed among fools who forsake their Mover.

There is a minister

of reason, one who schemes

and justifies. And one

jester/councilor seems

to advise moral sense.

The Tyrant Child is king!

And this despot’s desires rule over everything.

Long-awaited Love

Bangladesh

To hunger, the world is but a slender thing;

To thirst, the seven seas are small; 

To love, life itself is trivial; 

Love knows no map. 

Hunger is an absolute truth;  

Thirst, an ultimate reality within the soul; 

Love—a stranger walking through one’s blood. Open the door of night and behold the home of sunlight,

Where the prayer of dawn smiles in silence; How many have truly touched the essence of love?

Like a shadow, I walk into a vibrant tavern; Desire chases after the glow. 

When the sun within the heart sets, the rose weeps; 

Love gathers beneath the tongue. 

Ah, love! Ah, art! 

An indecisive, incomplete shadow of fire; Intoxicated lips know not the address of liberation—

Only an attempt to embrace the love resting upon the saucer.

Two Roads and a Passionate Passerby 

A passerby has to complete a journey 

The journey may be short or long,

Good or bad;

Attractive or miserable;

There are two roads

But one should be left

And other should be selected

One road leads to heaven

Other leads to hell

Freedom is everywhere 

Which road should be taken

Choice depends on mentality 

If Allah guides he is blessed rightly

Whomever He leads astray he will be guardianless

The destination is one

The journey is one and fixed

It should be from the darkness to the light.

From the creation to the Creature

From the transitory to the permanent