A DREAM OF CROOKED ODOR BY KAREEM ABDULLAH

 A DREAM OF CROOKED ODOR 

 KAREEM ABDULLAH 

I have fumbled your sweet spirit as overwhelming my lips rabbles. I breathe you as marigold that interposes my covers stained with memories which after this night, you will solely muse as a magnitude that washes my fawned colored clothes. With the wine of gypsy eyes, you ripen ardent passion.

You leak in me as Euphrates that abounds the afterbirth of this waiting as an intoxicated cascade of light penetrating my confused seasons. You flavor the arid eyes with long awaited grants of yours after old aged appeals. Your specter will remain copulating with the dreams of my night, disperse my fears, call back words and suckle my parts forgiveness and polish my crumbled mornings, so my laced canopies will pulse saying.

Welcome to you as you are kneading patience with the kohl of your beauties and planting in the chest vase your seedlings to perfume the tissues of the heart, so swallows come back to separate their dreams of my nightmares. You stamp the fluttering of your wings on my embalmed doors. O Bliss of your shadow.

I bequeathed you loaves, wet with smell of hunger snapping at me. Scoop up your bucket with the leftover of the stuttering of my scared wells, overtake the heights of the pale sadness, overtake fears, chanting you are. Come on and accumulate in my poems overflowed with your breaths. 

Blind were my wings, hardened, knowing no directions. The day I left my galaxies to fall, marginalized by the throes of labor and collapsed were the pupils of the morning eyes, chewing the nectar of your ecstasy and my rivers overflowed with losing, the hermit's corpse sprouts.

 Translated from Arabic  by John H. Smith

Kareem Abdullah, is an Iraqi poet and writer. He was born in Baghdad in 1962. Kareem Abdullah is the author of "Baghdad in Her New dress" ( 2015 Book House). His name had appeared in many important Arabian literary magazine and he won Tajdeed prose poetry prize in 2016 .Kareem has eight poetry collections in Arabic and his poetry was translated for many languages.

TWO POEMS BY PATRICIA AMUNDSEN

TWO POEMS 

 PATRICIA AMUNDSEN

I love it here, sitting in the grass. Birds are singing, ocean condescending. Red Fly exploring my alien presence. He's a curious Fly, checking all that is new, phone case, mandarin, book and red shoe. Just one red fly. And then he went. And there he went - the mayor of this establishment!

He came, languid in the night and saw her naked form stretched upon silken sheets of a vast divan. Soft summer breezes carrying the fragrance of Night Jasmine stirred wisps of transparent gauze covering her lower form, like a caress from a lover's breath. An involuntary gasp escaped his chest as he held the exquisite living portrait in his eyes. The rhythm of his Heart beat faster with each breath as the poem before him turned, revealing limpid pools of love sparkling from her violet eyes.

I am Patricia Amundsen, Lover of God, Poet, Artist, and Broadcaster, a wild Bird from Kangaroo Island, South Australia who has flown worldwide studying Nature and Humanity, now a resident of Valla Beach, Australia.  I am compelled to write, it is my way of contributing and connecting with other Humans.   

THE MADNESS FRUIT BY HASSAN ALMAHDI

THE MADNESS FRUIT 

 HASSAN ALMAHDI

In the extraordinary place I found him talks to the invisible light comes from the incredible imagination ; waving to the sadness by the arm's laughter. He seems like the Indian dancer covers the black space by colours so as to hidden the human pains on this big math. He is swimming in the foggy, lest he may losses his pure senses on the confused desert which fulfilled with the terrified fingertips that quarrels the crying trees.

Oh , dear gosh, how much hardly to collect all his fantastic fruit which rises in his stony eyse field; the fruit that hidden by our blinders.

Haasan Almahdi is an Iraqi poet and writer. He has born in 1967 in Diala. His name has appeared in many literary Arabic magazines. He is the author of poetry collection in Arabic " The Tangent" 2016.

A HOUSE WITHOUT DOORS BY JYOTIRMAYA THAKUR

A HOUSE WITHOUT DOORS 

JYOTIRMAYA THAKUR

There is a huge house at the end of the road with very high walls and big trees skirting the boundary of ramparts of mountain rocks.The children of the village live to play at twilight close to the wall in the woods with a beautiful lake in the middle of the hills where mysterious birds made their nest. From the height they could see inside the house through many of its French Windows which opened in the evening and they could hear heavenly music with beautiful chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Only the children had dared to stay long enough to smell the fragrance emitting and seen people wearing formal dresses dancing in a big hall filled with a long ornate table with beautiful trays of delicacies and exotic food. The children imagination wondered how people assembled in this fortress without a door and Windows closed till sunset.They kept an eye everyday on the windows to open and get a glimpse of who the guests were and if they recognized anyone from the village so they could know the way to enter this house which resembled heaven.

Jyotirmaya Thakur is a bilingual poetess, writer, a teacher,academician, administrator, translator,reviewer,Reiki healer,social activist,promoter of literature and honorary counsellor of charity organisations. A creative writer for ‘Poet's Choice ‘forum and Co-editor in ‘My Books Publications’,Editor of of Anthology of Telangana poetry forum-”Symphony of souls’.Many of her poems have been published on national and international websites and anthologies.She has published two poetry books this year which is available on Amazon.com -”RHYTHMS OF REALITY” & LOVE & ROMANCE. A series of 3 Poetry Books are being published and shall be launched in 2018 .She has won many awards from national and international poetry forums and organisations. She is an admin of 13 poetry forums Moderator in 2 & coordinator and member of jury in 7 poetry forums. A widely travelled person and in love with all cultures of the world.

  

TWO POEMS 
EDUARDO ESCALANTE 

Call for Love

See how the Light extends day and day allowing to sleep in peace. Each life minute, like the notes of a larger universe, builds from scattered fragments that remain connected by a line, sometimes invisible, traversing the space, denoting distances, time, emptiness, and silence between one piece and another. Showing the possible and infinite relationships that exist between things. Someone reads aloud what God wrote in the universe about his life. The blessing drinks from the sea waves.  Give water to those who do not dream. Nothing distorts my hope, no rock, no door.

Faith

In the end, the thoughtless impetuosity of nature and singing birds overlap with the spring sympathy. If at any moment the moon has withdrawn, and the sun has fallen asleep for a moment, the light always returns, only a slight wave of darkness and the ashamed smile of the ignorant. Mass for the instant, coffin for the hour. Where is the strangeness lost and constancy refuges? A flight of revelation with clear borders. One requires reading Sacred Writings to understand the journey.

Eduardo Escalante, writer and researcher living in Valparaíso, Chile; publish regularly in Hispanic Reviews (Signum Nous, Ariadna, Nagari, Espacio Luke, Lakuma Pusaki, among others) and actually is publishing in Spillwords, Slamchop and in Gramma Poetry.

His Eyes Alter Her To An Almond Tree by Maram Attya

His Eyes Alter Her To An Almond Tree 

Maram Attya

Alas! she's a sad emerald; waves push her toward mysterious beaches. Autumn steals her bracelets and loses her earrings, tempting darkness to stay in her eyes, digging channels for tears and filling her face with wrinkles. Emerald seems like a pale fish in a drying sea or as a yellow leaf ravaged by storms, so she jumps to the sand bank. Suddenly a skillful peasant sees her. He peels her thick sadness and combs her hair with love and longing . He implants her in the deepness of his brown eyes while his blessing hands altering her to an almond tree in spring. Emerald then wears her white dress as in the feast, becomes ready to the future emerald’s season on the peaceful banks. What a charm! I see her dancing running toward the areas of beauty. Bravo hardworking and lover peasant! Beatitude nice emerald!

Translated from Arabic by Kinana jani

Maram Attya is a Syrian poetess with master’s degree in Arabic language. Her name has appeared in many Arabic literary magazines. She has awarded The Lady of Narrative Poetry from Tajdeed Literary Institute in 2017.

THE TREE by Josep Juarez

THE TREE
Josep Juarez

I've always been a tree that loves its roots,but that afternoon I ran behind you and as I could dig up my roots; I had to find her. I had to see her again, then cut my roots and the biggest ones mutilate. Suddenly I was a tree that walked through the streets dropping my leaves and looking for you. But it was useless because little by little I felt that I was drying; the dried leaves that I pulled were like memories of my past, but to get rid of the green leaves was what really hurt me. I could not find you and in the end I was alwaysthe story of a dry tree with a heart marked by a knife in its trunk.

Josep Juarez is Mexican poet, storyteller and author. His works are "mi delirio" (2015), mi eterna carta de despedida " (2016). His poems have been translated into several languages; English, Chinese, Arabic, Serbian, Italian and German and published in several journals, from Spain, Iraq, Italy, Serbia, Colombia, Chile and Mexico. He has participated in several international anthologies in Canada, Spain, Chile, Mexico and Italy.

Genuine Gestures by Neelam Malik

Genuine Gestures

Neelam Malik

The limitless sky gives gestures to open the road and the moment yet unknown.Every moment accumulates its own wealth and converts in a star in the inner ecstatic galaxy of such numberless stars that ignites the internal wisdom of grace.Enrich thyself to traverse all the unknown and be a hub of fragrant roses and bask amidst the gales of daffodils .Come my coevals and enter this ultimate galaxy of love and light.

Neelam Malik is an Indian poetess and writer. She is a senior Lecturer in English in the Department of Applied Sciences; lndia. She has won several lnternatnatinal Awards for her two poetic anthologies; "Curbing the Menaces" and "Scintillating Smiles" like Honorary Doctorate Degree from Federative Republic of Brazil by Institute for Educating for Peace(IEP) andTemirqazyq;The Best Poet __Writer of the World by Writers' Union World Poets; 2017. Dr. Nelaam was the editor of an International Anthology "POETIC RAINBOW". She is also among the top in "A Galaxy of Distinguished Poets and Emerging Contemporary Voices by Creative Impulse"; An International Journal of English Poetry and Researc. Her name had appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies and her literary articles have also been published by various magazines in Germany, Belgium, Nigeria, London, Australi, Canada and Pakistan.

A New Yorker Soul By Anwer Ghani

A New Yorker Soul
Anwer Ghani

I love New York, but I am a simple man know nothing about baseball. My New Yorker soul appears in my dream as a smiling flower with long hair. Someday I will accompany a New Yorker poet on Brooklyn Bridge and collect the rain drops from Statue of Liberty. At that moment I will gladly buy "A poet in New York" from Fifth Avenue. Yes, I am a simple farmer, but I can see the soul of Empire State from my old water wheel. Believe me, I am not a big dreamer when I wish to sleep near the Central Park in that unsleeping city.

Anwer Ghani is an Iraqi poet, author, artist, editor, essayist and publisher. He was born in 1973 in Hilla. His name has appeared in many literary magazine and anthologies and he have won many prizes and awards. Anwer is the author of "Narratopoet"; (Tajdeed PH 2017), "Antipoetic Poems"; (2017), "TRUMP" (Inner Child Press 2017) and "The Narratolyric Writing";  (2017) and 40 books in literature and religious sciences in Arabic. He is the chief editor of Arcs prose poetry and Inventives magazines. Anwer is the founder of Tajdeed Literary Institute and Tajdeed Publishing House.

Websites: https://anwerghaniwriting.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

 

Two Poems By John Thomas Allen

 Two Poems

John Thomas Allen

Sweeney Todd’s Pastoral

Let’s finish. I will help you once, here in the cutting station. I will swab your eyes with Mandarin cotton and slather your bald head with drooling hexagons of Barbicide. Reaching in the jar next to those angular instruments, I will unpeel your eyes from mine and your obscene ant colonies of black stubble will crawl as a somnolent blue glares back, and within this mirror outside of which you no longer appear, the two dark moons of your exact hunter’s snare should go cross-and a flood of dirty water from the moth eaten janitor’s bucket slops the surface of your reflection in raining dispersion while your two disproportionately large and stubbly hands reach (one cracked in the sea of age, bone and spotted liverwurst, one cauterized forever with the decades harvested red ions of children’s silent screams) rise one at a time and with the patience of hobby horses at a carnival ride, to gauge my approach. You are fluttering. breathing as a man caught up with that one last thing in the week’s sleeping middle, as he begins to lose breath, only in a special way, as though a single hair had risen somewhere it never had before. You will still eat up gooey compliments up about your new baby blues as you feel fortune cookie strips fall from your muskrat ears with the frantic ring of a dated cash register informed of it’s eventual fate in the blinding lamplit alley end of a noir cut-out book for children who are dropping the filaments of paper glass through to the chair you are bound in giggle. A dry itch of burning nose hairs somewhere distant bothers you and a shuffling rainbow morph of bodiless deja vu takes a small boy’s shape in this always dimmer glass moon. Did that hurt? Consider: all this is gentler than, well, any standard experience as you’ve had here waiting in this spinning chair for someone to finish it in the cutting stations and drugged city nighttimes and all of autumn’s black delicatessens, and the body of Halloween leaves belly up with their Rice Krispy nightmare chill. In this last last cut I will read you a blinking red, white and blue bed-wetter (though I suspect the colors are dimming a bit) and as we close, and as much as I love parting without goodbyes, willful amnesia will not be possible; we can share something one more time. I will unfurl, for you, before we begin, a silk flag of cruel gnosis some desire but none really deserve or should want: because of me you will know your number, date, and time.

Dolly-Shot: Camera Zoom

City items: a crack baby, cicadas, petrichor  rain vows, a treehouse above a stairway half-completed…that moth eaten music box:  anyway, they drag me in (off time) through a tonsorium  with my cloak, and here I sleep, in a cloakroom where the roof leaks.  I blow hermetic stars from a flute; they flake on your first lens, your asbestos palette, and the audience passes.  I’ve met Conrad Veidt,  Malcolm McDowell, and Andy Garcia.  I threw my cape, turning my back on them (all at their direction). And these slashed ribbon boughs rise as  memory’s scarred waters, my makeup crusts away in space as a mime’s mirror, each crag, dissolute possibility: a brow remains, and the phantom furls, a church organist’s libretto.  My face discharges as in Mask with Eric Stoltz, and I count to keep calm as the green slime moves…

(A “dolly shot” is a technique filmmakers use to zoom in on the subject.  These prose poems are emerging in a book called Fake Shemp. They are from the perspective of an extra in the movies.  One has already been published in SurRVision.)

John Thomas Allen is from Upstate New York though he travels to the city often. He has edited three different anthologies, all three of which included writers of speculative poetry and also writers one would term mainstream. In my first book, “Nouveau’s Midnight Sun: Transcriptions From Golgonooza and Beyond”, in 2014 he formed a group of diverse poets (everyone from David Lehman to poet John Olson) and formulated a surrealist/ Neosurrealist vision for the anthology. The poems “Camphor Body” and “The Sleeper In Transit” are from an upcoming book entitled “Fake Shemp”, about a deranged extra.  He has poems emerging in Surreal Poetics, The Cimmaron Review, Veil: a Journal of Dark Musings, and two other places. 

Two Poems By Eduardo Escalante

Two Poems 

Eduardo Escalante

A Map To Now

  

Having spent all my life near the sea, in a tightly circumscribed part of one beach, now I am standing here and looking at the horizon with the certainty of innumerable uncertainties. Thoughts are silent as shadows, obscurely clumsy when maneuvering in the night closed towards an idea about something. A valley can be green and extensive or can be a valley of trenches. A name reminds me of a city or a field of extermination in its suburbs; and two clean words, the exodus of a people. Human life is complex and paradoxical.

A Serious Landscape

Persistent shadows, constant images force the retinas to load them into fragile moles. Vibrant mountains of solar closeness, unprecedented rain, invisible flowers possible to create under so much sky, much chromatic fire, much conjecture in the place. During the night, the air goes down, leaning; prepares for the first light, begins a day of rain and one sleeps, or makes lists.

Eduardo Escalante, writer and researcher living in Valparaíso, Chile; publish regularly in Hispanic Reviews (Signum Nous, Ariadna, Nagari, Espacio Luke, Lakuma Pusaki, among others) and actually is publishing in Spillwords, Slamchop and in Gramma Poetry. 

Tears Of Love by Martin Ijir

 Tears Of Love 

 Martin Ijir

The starry night where stars sparkled with endless mercy, frail my soul to the edge of time, as I stare at her rippling smile I was lost with words to utter. Her lips shines with adorning flowers as I sauntered closer, more intentional failure drum in my eyes. The eye-sighting was akin to the first moon, her miniature glory like Ramadan fasting, I walk closer with a still smile, an emoticons of love-play resurrects as a full moon, I am yours for you to love I say. She stares with aptness surprise as if waiting for me to confide in her, as I tell her the words she expect to hear. I have my knees down for you with love, marry me I say as tears of love rolled from our eyes.

Martin Ijir is a poet, a teacher, a novelist and an activist. He is a prolific writer. He authored "The Vulture". To his name he has three international awards: World Icon of Peace from World Institute of Peace Osun State, Nigeria and Poet of the Poets from National Human Rights and Social Justice Commission from New Delhi India, Menzione Poesia Estera from Unicef Premio Internazionale di Poesia cum Associazione Culturale Euterpe, Bitetto, Italy respectively in 2017.

Two Poems by Mark Murphy

Two Poems

Mark Murphy

Sunday Haibun

We stumble up and down friendless streets in the rain and wind accompanied by the usual melancholia that first drove us from our rented rooms to seek solace in the affairs of other minds. Moving slowly, stubbornly past road works and weekend labourers with the same Sunday dread we feel every churchless Sabbath, we search for love, laughter and belonging, but no matter where we walk, awkward in our distress, no matter which bus we catch, faithless and solemnly depressed, we really have nowhere to go, no one to visit that isn’t already engaged or dead. Awful the realization – we never swapped the Sunday sun for a life of solitude with all its doubt and fear of death. Alas, this is where we find him in his 47th year, provincial and nameless, no intentional loner, but an unintentional poet.

 

 Larks Ascending Haibun

Outside history, outside the clouds lowering upon this ward. What have we here but love, destruction, kindness? Some might live, some die. Guardian angels are among us if we would only look and Vikings beside us on our journey through this life – where, try as we might to react to every lark, every breeze makes us lighter for we are each and all valuable to the next as we are to each other. The birds in the trees have no knowledge of Dr P, yet he has saved so many and we must pay tribute to a man, selfless in his endeavour. Lights, lights in the night. Impressions. Riders and rovers, fleeting motors where attic windows are sentinel. Trees are silent now in the half dark. Voices, voices in the night. Sirens return in the street time after time. Brothers and sisters, this is our paper destiny, remember the names of those that care – Jasmine, Lisa, Max, Amy, Gemma, Maria, brave women all, and Raj and Ben and Paul, good men all. Mother, I say unto you, thank you for I’ve known the value of love.

 Mark A. Murphy was born in 1969 in the UK where he still lives. He studied philosophy (BA) at Stafford and poetry (MA) at Huddersfield University. His poems have been published in over 100 magazines and ezines world wide, including Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Scotland, The Warwick Review (UK), Istanbul Literature Review (Turkey), The Paris Atlantic Journal (France), The American Dissident (US), The Tampa Review (US), Left Curve (US) and The Stinging Fly (Ireland). He is the creator and editor of the online poetry journal POETiCA.   

Daughter of the Wild by Bambi Hayes

 Daughter of the Wild 

 Bambi Hayes

She loves the forest, where the giants stand guard protecting her, shielding her from the world of busy streets and pollution.She knows lightning bugs are stars flying down to visit.Gently she captures them in a ball mason jar, temporarily holding starlight. Pixies emerge when her exhales send them flying from the dandelion stalk, floating free in the field of lavender.The only blades in this place are the ones that tickle her toes as she dances below the weepy willow. It will never judge her tears. The babbling brook tells her tales of the deep cerulean sea, where it longs to be salty to the tongue, 

but free to roam into the sunset.The trailing vines use their tendrils to show her how to overcome weakness, sharing others' strength to rise above the depths they derived from. The forest isn't a place on Earth, it is a magical place where her spirit wanders free. She knows the stories of the mountains, how they rest from years of reaching for the clouds. She knows the fruits of the branches, some to sustain her, others to bury her amongst the fern and moss.

She's grown with the saplings, spread her wings like the eagle emerging from the nest. She knows the devastation brought on to her sanctuary. With a heavy heart she walks the woods, 

taking nothing that isn't needed, leaving only her tiny footprints.

Bambi Hayes is a freelance writer currently working on her degree in Professional Writing, and English Literature in the state of West Virginia where she was born. She currently publishes her work on Facebook under the page name: My Bare Bones Poetry. She is working on a collection for publishing in the near future.

The Soldiers of God by Kareem Abdullah

The Soldiers of God

Kareem Abdullah 

Heavily armed with their frustration, Your soldiers drag the metropolis misery before your authority that ends up in the blindest tyranny. They violate their humanity and you do not know anything about the banks of supplication lounged on by her distant voice that comes to the ears of the sea.Whenever the trees of alienation smile, the extensive face of night falls, lying there, ahead the soldiers as deconstructing my lavishing history on the tongues of the ominous war.They led the leftover of dream crucified in your shining evening, searing it in front of the mockery of stations, elegized by the childbirth of a morning that sleeps on the brink of a glow of the waiting of my return shackled with rifles as tearing the whoop of the resurrection, tattooed on the wings of the colourful butterflies behind the glass of the bombed cars. 

A three-dimensional text Translated from Arabic  by me John Henry Smith

Kareem Abdullah, is an Iraqi poet and writer. He was born in Baghdad in 1962. Kareem Abdullah is the author of "Baghdad in Her New dress" ( 2015 Book House). His name had appeared in many important Arabian literary magazine and he won Tajdeed prose poetry prize in 2016 .Kareem has eight poetry collections in Arabic and his poetry was translated for many languages.

The Gypsy Girl By Anwer Ghani

I like the quiet lakes and their reviving breeze, where the water’s eyes are always sleepy. You can't imagine its red cheek in the winter nights. I remember when my mother had made a nice hat for it. My mother is so expert in the seasonal souls and she told me that the autumn is a gypsy girl. I didn't see autumn, but I am sure that my mother saw her because she described her face precisely. She told me that autumn is flying between the trees’ branches as a small bird and leaving her veil weaving airily in our souls. Sometimes I feel that autumn is a fairy and you may see her stormy tale swimming deeply in our dreams’ water.

 Anwer Ghani is an Iraqi poet and writer. He was born in 1973 in Hilla. His name has appeared in  Otoliths, Adelaide, November Bees, Dodging, Zarf, Peacock, Eunioa, Rabbit and many others He is the author of "Narratopoet"; (Inventives Cloud 2017), "Antipoetic Poems"; (Creat Spacee 2017), "TRUMP"; a poetry collection, (Inner Child Press 2017) and "The Narratolyric Writing"; essays (Smashwords 2017).. Anwer had 40 books in literature and religious sciences in Arabic. He is the chief editor of Arcs prose poetry magazine.

Websites: https://anwerghaniwriting.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Anwer-Ghani/e/B06XK5BJBR

The Eid Did Not Pass; By Omar Fahed Haidar

The Eid Did Not Pass 

Omar Fahed Haidar

I told my mother that I forgot my father's details. His face was sparkling with cleverness. My front threw all the details folded towards the sky. She told me about a sea passing in our fields planting love in us. It soured like the winter's wine. He shines in the morning and evening. The blueness of his eyes is our clear skies, and how it becomes a spring. Winter and water moisten the veins and cure the sick and go a long way in us. When he died, my tears dried, my soul envied you. I went into a deep sleep. I lived for ages regurgitating my concern, sadness and melancholy. I apostrophize the beautiful god. He slept to let the winter stay a home wiping everybody's tears, sewing the Eid suit for all crowds.

The Eid did not pass by my home as if it occupies my attention, making me forget that the Eid came but the dears did not come with it. They came dead for the sake of the home as if it is a dream passing like time.

My mother said: "I am about to forget your details." Have these women changed your details? Have your hearts been hardened? I forgot all your shapes as if my heart had rebelled because you became the shape of life. It is the war which destroyed all the details in us, even the fields of our ears. We write our dates stamped with blood; kill, hate, death and life.The Eid did not pass by.We felt ecstasy with death. All dams towards us were destroyed, even the trains got lost and the hearts had no way to the beloved.

Translated from Arabic by Nahed Al-Hereh

  

Omar Fahed Haidar  is a Syrian poet and lawyer. Omer be born in Tertus in 1962.His name appeared in many Arabic literary magazines as Tajdded. He is the author of " Failed Poems" from Meslon- Damascus 1985 and " The Harp of the Dream" from Alersat house- Allathyqya.