Contributor: Sheetal

- -
It feels cozy, its so warm
Will I go back to the womb?
Its my day today.
The mesh is dying and so is the glue.
I cherish this lasting color of blue.

The fiber is strong, like a cobweb,
Life time work of a spider.
Desperate attempts to stretch, wailing cries to maintain joints.
But I am happy, the mesh is giving away.
At last, finally i am able to earn some points.

Pull the roots, uproot them all.
Warm blaze will heal them all

For once, I don't agree with you today.
Why not help the fire
Why do you stand in the middle.
This glue is of no use.
Let the fire do the justice and close this riddle.

You fed a barren, you nourished a fallow.
But today the cactus has a poetic thought.
Its my day today, I am to follow.

A call to you, maintain the sanctity
Let the fire do the duty.
Trust me, it knows more than you and me.
It feels more than you and me.

Vision is clear as water.
Cactus has the road finally,
With the blaze, i shall go
Entranced in the fragrance of wood,
Alcoholic effects are gone, the steps are perfect.
Falcon is out of the hood.

Oblations to the communion with pyre,
Thanks for lighting the fire.


- - -
I am a poet and a traveler by heart.

Contributor: Linda M. Crate

- -
I'd walk a thousand miles
for your love and even a million
more, I'd wear nothing more than
a white withered rose if that
would gain me your affection; I
could be your super nova and burn
away all the pain of every
hurtful yesterday that clings as dew
upon your grasses, let me be the
star that brightens your galaxy -
allow me to be the one to blaze
dawn upon your darkest day.


- - -
Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh, but she was raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She has recently moved to Fort Fairfield, ME. She attended and graduated from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English-Literature in 2009. She has a passion for writing that she has nurtured since the age of thirteen. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines the latest of which includes: Nebo: A Literary Journal and Visceral Uterus.

Contributor: Stacy Maddox

- -
Stay, give me one more loving night
Just hold me close, til morning light
Whisper your secrets, kiss my wanting lips
Let us sail away on colossal ships

Leave the shores behind, we'll fly by
Over waters deep and star-punched sky
The sun won't break through, unless we've seen
Beauty inside the dream of a dream

We'll taste the sweet nectar in the air
Delighting of a fragrance we both share
Tangled in the moonbeams, silver streams
Raining down by uncharted means

Feel the sounds immortals will roar
When through their heavens our bodies soar
Souls entwined on golden wings of lore
Glorious visions never known before

We can ignite the all-consuming blaze
Radiant illuminations and fantastic displays
Leaving behind a memory meant to amaze
Give me one more loving night, stay.


- - -
Stacy Maddox lives, dreams, tends her gardens and writes in the fast-paced city of Lawrence, KS. Indulging her time in the outdoors, connecting with nature, walking the Kansas River trails and discovering new writing and photo opportunities, is one of her greatest pleasures in life. Stacy has been published in over 25 books, print and online magazines and websites. She has been passionate about Literature and Visual Art for over 30 years.

Contributor: Juan J. Gutiérrez

- -
Regal idiosyncrasies,
As you walk round a nimbus cloud,
You are draped with a cosmic cloak,
Of virgin black and spattered stars.

Moonfire, burning bright, rends
Your silhouette of silken flesh, ashen cold.
For your beauty is beheld by nocturnal light.

A raven wreath lays on your brow
Making more evident your ivory skin,
Salient.

So perfect is the daedal carving of your face;
Your ebon lips wisped by the fingers of night.
Seductive guile rests in your eyes,
Sublimely wicked with sidereal blaze.

Your poignant grace in arcane arabesque
Fulfills a perpetual lust.
Your scarlet whispers of enticement and carnality
Send me to the path of nostalgia.

Remembering and frolicking
In the time when you were once mine:
Being held in your loving embrace
My head on your shoulders
Wishing, hoping
We would lie in this rapture for all eternity.

Your religious stigma infecting me to this very day
Please remedy the sorrow and disease ...
My twilight queen


- - -
Juan J. Gutiérrez was raised in Sunland Park, New Mexico and now lives in Desert Hot Springs, California with his wife and daughters.

Contributor: JD DeHart

- -
the challenge of the basic
task lies ahead
I promised myself yesterday
I would do fifty sit-ups
but had to stop at fifteen
and take a break before
the next ten, which then led
to five, not quite making the quota
nevertheless, I will attempt it one day
the bound of the arena,
the blaze of competition,
or else settle for stands and popcorn.


- - -
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. His work has appeared in Eunoia Review, The Commonline Journal, and Eye On Life Magazine.

Contributor: Luna V

- -
Laughs in the forest,
a tribe living near a river
where trees turning bare

White blankets the scene.
Swift winter brings swifter sunfall.
Dead of night, sparks fly.

Chills run down the spine
blaze consuming the frost, and
the kids that played there.


- - -
Elino Benjamin Villegas feels at home in the big city, though he is trapped in the suburbs of Southern California. When he’s not writing the worst short story ever, he’s hammering out a blues lick on his black Epiphone, experimenting with different recipes in the kitchen, or designing computer graphics and fan art.

Contributor: Neil Ellman

- -
(after the happening by Allan Kaprow)


they (it) happen(s)
or not
life as it should(n’t) be
or not or was
as it is
audience & audience-r
in a haze
in a blaze
in a phase
disconnect(ed)—
whatever happened
didn’t
or did
happen(s)
performer(ed) as one
stage(ed)
or not
no way of knowing
what’s happening or if
it is we (or they)
who play the roles


- - -
Twice nominated for Best of the Net, Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. His poems, many of which are ekphrastic and based on works of modern and contemporary art, appear in numerous print and online journals throughout the world.

Contributor: Ken Allan Dronsfield


- -
mellow whispers through turquoise hazes

blossoms of hatred sprout in the homeland

floating through space, a prism in rhyme.

journey onward, carrying crosses of fury.

dapperly dressed as we arrive at the gate

unescorted tours, leaving faith at the door

wander the maze while contemplating faith

with an eternal bright blaze now at the core.

inhaling decaying essence of sinister deeds

neurotic dreams and a breathless scheme

seeking an inhale but gasp rings of fire

an irrational screaming indulgent chant

pestilence billows from a darkening abyss

old troglodytes dress as saddened clowns

singing a sonnet of a love for brimstone

we waltz in time as Hell's not so far down.


- - -
Ken Allan Dronsfield is a published poet from New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma. His poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prize Awards and the Best of the Net for 2016.

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
Dance your way through the pain
Dance away
Until you can summon the day
Spin through the fray
Spin work into play
Spin the very clay
From which you are made
Into a blade
Into a blaze
Until nothing dark can stay.


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

Contributor: Lewis R Humphries

- -
Astride the Harbor Bridge, bright radiance
shimmers through an airless summer, and gilds
the passageways of stone and providence.
Were it not for these columns of light, and
their multifarious smolder, he would
not have glimpsed the outline of her splendor.

Journeyed beneath the steeled arch, she is
heedless of her beauty, as she weaves the
indiscernible threads of time through her
fingers; then marvels at the neon blaze
of simulated day, its steeples
plunging through the course of cobalt torrents.

Her contemplations, imbued through mottled
rivulets, are not inflected by the
thrusts of his intentions. She is
sentient only to the malleable melds
of dark then light, his presence cast in the
consequent sheathes of far pitched shade.


- - -
Lewis is a freelance writer and blogger based in Birmingham, UK. He also has a passion for creative writing, and has featured in magazines throughout the UK, U.S. and Oceania.

Contributor: Juan J. Gutiérrez

- -
Feathers, gold, fall evermore from silent sky, forlorn
Tint of fire, immortal blaze, touched and it is ashen cold
In repose upon the ground, flick and flutter, summer born
Sundered gloom beneath its fell, spirits from the years of old
Bloodlines lived in winged' words, but from the lips are torn:
"Under the Sun's eye, painted in the sky
He is born of the air, the Summerbird,"
Bloodlines lived in winged' words, but from the lips are torn


- - -
Juan J. Gutiérrez was raised in Sunland Park, New Mexico and now lives in Desert Hot Springs, California with his wife and daughters.

Contributor: B. A. Varghese

- -
Light
leaps from the sun,
dancing downward to a green
swaying forest. I fly with the birds in, out,
around leafy branches of the tall noble trees. A
mother swallow warms three tender fledglings under
her wings. Alive by wind, the trees rock to her song of glee.

My careless cigar relights a smothered campfire. A spark
grows into a blaze, ripping the forest. Smoke hides
light and fire cuts in to dance on life and leaves
behind ash, soot, silence. Under
a charred wing, emerges
a baby bird
alone.


- - -
B. A. Varghese graduated from Polytechnic University (New York) in 1993 and has been working in the Information Technology field ever since. Inspired to explore his artistic side, he is currently working toward a degree in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. His work has appeared in Apalachee Review, Rose Red Review, The Camel Saloon, Foliate Oak, and other literary journals.