Letter from Your Unwritten Poem

by Anastasia Vassos

  
I’m your last thought
your head on the pillow
your first breath
when you wake
having forgotten me—
 
the metaphor mislaid
when you’re lost in traffic
when you miss
the turn at the library.
Oh, I know—I vanish
 
if you don’t write me down
right away—that’s my magic.
I mean, you’re reading
this now, aren’t you?
I lurk
 
in the quiet shadow
behind your eyes
in Ratushinskaya’s
bars of soap,
the Gulag,
matchsticks carving
her words
before she washed
her hands—
 
in Emily’s
apron pocket
pencil stub
torn envelopes
at the ready.
 
Tell me what
you’re afraid of.
I am everywhere.
 
Find me in the sound
of waves stripping
the shore, the expanse
where grain fields bend
and groan in the wind.
 
I remember it all:
your parents
how they lived and died
the rhythms of your body
as you blossomed and aged
the time you drove drunk
the time you quit smoking
the day you got the diagnosis
those nights you gave up on me
nights you couldn’t sleep
worried about some bull shit.
 
Yes, don’t look at me like that
I know how to swear.


* * * * *

Anastasia Vassos is the author of Nostos (Kelsay Books, 2023) and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate, 2021). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Find her work in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Thrush, Lily Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Off the Grid, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and lives in Boston.

Beyond the Reach of Time

by Ann Christine Tabaka


Black crow
          sings a song
unknown to man.
Forest awakes,
          answering back.

Vestiges of life
          fall from the sky           
like winter snow.
Existence comes into being.

Dawn bursts forth,
          day enters.
Stars blink their goodbyes.
So it is said, so it is done.

The guardian steps forth
          as light emerges.
Time lapses …
Burgeoning worlds converge.

The sky is alive.
          I hear his song.
Black crow flies off,
Beyond the reach of time.


* * * * *

"Beyond the Reach of Time" received the Third Place Award in Vita Brevis January 2018 Best Poem of the Month Contest

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 & 2023 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year; featured in the Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021. Selected as a Judge for the Soundwaves Poetry Contest of Northern Ireland 2023. She is the author of 17 poetry books, and 1 short story book. Her most recent credits are: The Phoenix, Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Ephemeral Literary Review, The Elevation Review, North Dakota Quarterly.

Disorientation

by Ann Christine Tabaka


The whistle of a distant train pierces the night.
Loneliness swallows the darkness.
Unspoken words consume the mind.
Strange thoughts invade reality as walls close in.
Time painfully creeps by until almost at a standstill.
Slowly strangling the will of its ability to resist.
A disoriented half dream world,
where corners of the imagination
shatter into vibrant fragments,
in the eternal plight of sleeplessness.


* * * * *

"Disorientation" was previously published by Ariel Chart and nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry.

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 & 2023 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year; featured in the Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021. Selected as a Judge for the Soundwaves Poetry Contest of Northern Ireland 2023. She is the author of 17 poetry books, and 1 short story book. Her most recent credits are: The Phoenix; Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Ephemeral Literary Review, The Elevation Review, North Dakota Quarterly.

AUTUMN MELANCHOLY                                                 

by Brenda Mox


The sea works gently
at the shore,
its halo of waves
wash over her
barnacled rocks,
floating seaweed,
sun mottled sand
and soaked, fallen leaves.

As autumn’s pervasive melancholy
drips translucent veils
that few can see
on trees that hide
in the folds of the land
near the sand
where seagulls grieve.


* * * * *

Brenda Mox is a poet, visual artist and MFA graduate from Old Dominion University many moons ago. Her work has been published in Wingless Dreamer, Bewildering Stories, Blaze Vox, Ariel Chart, Down in the Dirt, Neo Poet, Discretionary Love, Corporeal, Heart and Mind, Edge of Humanity, Poetry Pacific, New Myths, Poetry for Mental Health journals, Eber and Wein Anthology. 

Autumn

by Laura Ann Reed


Beyond a window, a stone’s certain surfaces
are dark with shadow, and each of the three
white blossoms on a rhododendron stem
opens to the wind in a different direction.
From between gray clouds light shines
on a crow’s wing as I turn and turn
in October’s yellow weather.


* * * * *

"Autumn" was first published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry 2023.

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native, taught modern dance and ballet at the University of California, Berkeley before working as a leadership development trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada, and Britain. She is the author of the chapbook, Shadows Thrown (2023). Laura and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.