Please Put Me in the Sunlight

By De’Anne Roy The top lid holds on tight To the bottom lid And darkness covers my eyes Silence so beautiful Moments without thoughts Meditating, and my mind rests And recharge. The sun rays on my skin Soak so deep in The light permeates my soul Light as a feather Where worries flutter away And …

A Patch of Green

By Ebony Haywood Previously published in Five on the Fifth When my student, Cristina, told me that she lived next door to a cemetery, my ears perked.  “A cemetery?” “Yeah. Sometimes it feels creepy.” Cristina is fifteen with eyes that are always alert and a ponytail that sweeps the air like a pendulum. She is …

After Bushfire

By Julie Holland Bushfire came through Evil as devil may be No thing, nor thought, spared Just a trail of black Shapes rising to ether To sapphire sky, to smoke and sour Young and tender wind, a calling to Green, that pulls life from ash Look at that Dad, said the child A rescue helicopter …

The Landing Day

By J. P. Rizo Richard Cadmen, professor of Holistoric Reconstruction, Third Year, guided his class through the sandy trail leading to the beach. Now and then he had to stop, annoyed, to reprehend the lingerers who were picking little shell pieces.  “Focus, gentlemen. We are not on a beach day with grandma. Henry, where the …

Writers Block

By Pat Spencer As a life-long author of both fiction and nonfiction, I would never admit to suffering from writer’s block. But it’s fair to say I’m stymied. It’s not that my words are cumbersome or clumsy, falling short of what my story deserves. It is that I simply have no words. I sit so …

To My Hero and Other Poems

By Roselainie Panginuma Saidamin To My Hero To the woman who is worthy of my respect, You are the color of the garden of my paradise. A mother of five with a soft-enduring heart, Your love is wary and so is your sacrifice. To the woman who gives comfort and solace, You are the luminous …

Animated and Other Poems

By Susan Shea Animated Every week, at the library you filled shopping bags high with children's picture story books for me to drive home for you so we could go innocently grow up together in full color, away from the cemented melancholy I crawled through away from the parent-centered place where I wasn't seen or …

Cold Dark Ironies

By Brenda Mox He was born with something at odds inside a knot of vague darkness where he hides, cleared eyed as a wolf on the hunt. Brow dark and disturbed, a thunder headed runt with a raw reedy voice of outraged revenge which he spews forth from greyhound limbs. Sharp as a chip of …

I Remember You

By Gretchen Keefer Officer Hayes watched the young man as Officer Krall relayed the news. He was just a kid, really, this boy who had so confidently invited the officers in out of the August heat and admitted there was no one else at home.  Hayes saw disbelief, comprehension and grief cross the youth’s face …

Reflection

By Adam Ostaszewski The gentle hum of turbines lulled the passengers of the CW-48 space lift to sleep. One of them, Robert Smart, struggled with fatigue. He spent the first part of the journey to the Finesia space station studying the report prepared by the investigators. Torn from his comfortable bed at half past five, …