By Dee Allen

The silent walls
Know my every mood.
This room is where my
Confidence goes to die.
I come here as well
To recover, nurse the wounds
Past detractors
With knives sliced into me.
Four wooden walls
In a first-floor duplex apartment
Provide refuge from
The mob of haters looking to finish the job.
No more performances.
No more false adulation.
No more attempts to impress
Faces that will despise me later.
Give me seclusion.
Finally, I can lay down
And relax
And reflect
And brood
And hate
With my whole heart
The species I disown
Never giving me
One slight chance.

This room is where I come to suffer.
And heal.

In solitude’s stillness, no one can judge me.

African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing &
Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s. Author of 5 books [ Boneyard, Unwritten Law,
Stormwater and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press, and his newest from Conviction 2 Change
Publishing, Elohi Unitsi ] and 25 anthology appearances [ including Your Golden Sun Still
Shines, Rise, Extreme, The Land Lives Forever and Civil Liberties United, edited by Shizue
Seigel ] under his figurative belt so far.

By Garry Turchin

The way mail piles up
the way we argue
the way we fail
and keep failing
the way we age
and carry grudges
the way we hurt ourselves
and each other
the way we smell
or others smell
the way we have to wait
the way we have to hurry
the way no one cares
the way we don’t care
the way our government doesn’t understand
the way our understanding doesn’t matter
the way we live or don’t live
the way we die
or will die.

And tomorrow
the Sun
like a giant ball of wonder
will bounce up
happy and yellow
inventing each day
like it’s the only thing that matters.

Gary Turchin uses humor and plain language to evoke poems with deep cosmic underpinnings and vast scope.He is the author/illustrator of the wondrous, If I Were You (2011 Simon DeWitt), and the award-winning verse collection, Ditty-Ditty Doggerel; A Life From Bad To Verse (2012 Simon DeWitt). In 2013, Sugartown Publications released his poetry collection, Falling Home. 

Recent poetry credits include Inquiring Mind, Blue Lyra Review, The Gathering, Light the Sky (anthology published by San Francisco Peace and Hope), and Poetalk. Recent poetry awards include a number of Ina Coolbrith Circle awards, Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Poetry Contest awards, and a few Soul-Making Keats Literary awards.
His epic poem, My Father Who Art in Heaven, was published in an anthology, Fault Zone, Stepping Up To The Edge (2011, Sand Hill Review Press). 
June 26, 2016 was declared “Gary Turchin Day” by the Berkeley City Council, in honor of his contributions to the Berkeley arts community.

By Brianna Booker

daddy’s out of jail now
she can’t see him anymore
he’s in a halfway house

she pictures a building with only three walls

mamma gets home from work
she hands her baby girl a coat
winter’s coming in the mountains

This is only halfway to a home; the best she thinks there is

they live off diner leftovers
snacks from the gas station
seasoned with ash from the menthols
mama can’t afford to be as sick as she is

times are changing, but not for them

mama loses her part time job
at least minimum wage was something
they sleep in the car for a few nights

this isn’t what she prayed for

she’s going to grow up
go to a good school, get a job
she knows hard work doesn’t always pay off

living in the bad part of town changes you

She got half a mom
and a dad who left
yet she’s still fighting

an unfair fight with life

this thing she’s doing, living
it’s a special kind of radical
she’s going to keep fighting

mama taught her not to give up

someday, she will get off work
come home, to four walls and a family
it will all be worth it

she’ll have what she prayed for

Brianna Booker is a 19-year-old Pennsylvania poet who brings her “teacher voice” on stage with her. She discovered “the scene” at 15 and began performing at Open Mic at the Sherman Showcase, which she would later become the regular host of. Currently, she is involved with the ESU Living Poets Society on her college campus, where she is working towards her degree in Early Childhood Education and a minor in English with a focus in creative writing.

By Paul Corman Roberts

All this distancing
is going to leave us
hornier and kinkier than ever

All this time lying about
our platforms will leave no
willing body undiscovered.

There is only so much lonely
We can bear
before giving in to the larger ocean
and all the forbidden that follows

Sadness and joy
become a singularity
resistance turns to vapor
shoes removed on sand
bodies presented momentarily
before returning
to the void of lonely asteroids
passing in the night
searching for a shore
they can’t even remember
was promised or not

All of us now
deep in the sideways
still pretending
it’s not us.

 Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the forthcoming full length poetry collection Bone Moon Palace from Nomadic Press (2021.) He is a co-founder of Oakland’s Beast Crawl Lit Festival and teaches writing to students as young as 5 and as old as 93, and plays drums for the U.S. Ghostal Service and Wimmin’ Flewids.

A feeling accompanied with Love and disdain
Scattered leaves on a rooted tree
Yellow leafs on a supposed green tree
Deceit in the mind of nature
Go back to where you came from,
From nothing.
Is better to BE NOT than BE and NOT
Sanitation is about to take place in paradise.

Samson Charles is full time weirdo from Gombe state, Nigeria who loves “soul messing” creative words. According to Samson, “Poetry melts down a mountain of sugar into an ocean of my honey-mind. That is why I love it.”

by Ruby Read

I confer with the ferns
To make sense of the cons
The time that we squander
To wander with swans

And watched as the wind
Sang sweet serenade
And danced with the trees
To alter the shade

And light of all this
I still felt so cold
As I pondered the pond
My reflection seemed old

Ruby Read is a New England poet that had never dreamed of being a writer while growing up. Over many years of song writing she slowly discovered her voice and woke up one day to realize she was a poet. Now she embraces poetry and exudes it wherever she goes.

by Frank May

I have to do it again and again and again and again and then I will be able to make a decision by myself or not but if we don’t get the chance can we get the chance to go through this again and again and again for all of your hard to believe that you called me back at your leisure time and effort to make a few calls from your end as

Frank May is the owner and curator of M Galleries and M Galleries PNA (mgalleries.org) in Washington, NJ. He is currently the apprentice of ceramic artist Peter Callas (petercallas.com). Frank has a BFA in Sculpture from Mason Gross School of the Arts – Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ (masongross.rutgers.edu). He is also on the faculty of the duCret School of Art in Plainfield, NJ (ducret.edu).

By Eva Parry

Everyone thinks his leap of faith is
like a trust fall
or talking about his dark past.
most people don’t consider jumping off a bridge
to be his leap of faith
Perhaps faith that it will end in darkness
or faith he will survive and
someone will finally ask why
or faith no one will go looking for him
or maybe just maybe
he leaps from the bridge so that the people pulling him back will finally
let go
and let him fall
and let him be alone.
finally.

Eva Parry is a fifteen year old poet and musician. Both her parents are writers. She also hosts the stick figure poetry open mic.

BLEEDING
One of these days
I will open a vein and the words
that tumble out
will redefine me; 
but until then I am mute, 
hollow and pained.

#10
the mattress is gone.
one less memory of her 
blue-lipped breathless flesh

#16
he burns a candle
we bought a lifetime ago 
when love forgave sins

Angel Ackerman has studied world history, specifically post-colonial Francophone Africa, Muslim relations, and contemporary Western politics. Her publications include the poem This Paris in StepAway magazine, an essay on the weather and travel on the Horn of Africa in Rum Punch Press, academic encyclopedia entries on Djibouti, a review in Global Studies South on a book examining famine in Somalia, and Stoicism, a ten-word story in Dime Show Review.

By Catherine Zickgraf

Like threaded grooves of a clock screw,
ramps channeled rocks to build up walls.
I´m folding towels, a spire falls.
The centuries are not coming back.

Nothing lasts forever,
I shiver as CNN shows the fire.
Churches of trees will burn-
but only burial can melt the stones
when the earth takes back its own

Catherine Zickgraf´s main jobs are to write poetry and fold laundry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com.