Fiction: “One of the guards tried to calm me down. ‘We’re just doing our job, following the rules. The ladies have complained.’ And then he added jokingly, ‘dear engineer, you do know this place is not completely private, it’s ‘privastate’ as we call it…’ and then burst into laughter at their own stupid wordplay, spraying his saliva on my face. Last year, they also harassed me for wearing sandals with no socks.”
“What is happening in Iran is heart-breaking, and this poem is testament to that, it is also paying homage to my Father and my Persian heritage, of which I’m so proud.”
Fiction: “Hands clasped at me as I pulled you through the room, and I smiled and greeted and smiled again but I never let go of your hand, do you remember that? I kept you close to me.”
Fiction: “I can see your foot, your scuffed cool-kid sneakers, laces undone, next to my seat. You are sitting low in the chair behind me; I can picture you slouching without turning around. ”
Fiction: “He’s rolling up a ten foot length of astro turf into what looks like a giant sized spliff of fake grass.”
Fiction: “So this afternoon, this fantastically, impossibly unlikely configuration, will not come again.”
Fiction: “A memory. Me, as a child, grease-and-salt-stuffed air. The verdant slime of the sea-weeded shore.”
Fiction: “Went in for our meat license today. Never been so excited. Two years since I last ate meat and I still hate the substitutes.”
Fiction: “Went in for our meat license today. Never been so excited. Two years since I last ate meat and I still hate the substitutes.”
Creative Non-Fiction: “We bought our last candle on the coldest day of the year. I remember because the weather man warned not to travel that morning, but we went anyway.”
Short Fiction: “Grief takes different shapes they say. At times my imagination wanders as I lie awake in the early hours. When a tree branch taps my window I believe it’s Stephen out there, waiting to come in so we can lie once again, safe in each other’s arms.”
“What is happening in Iran is heart-breaking, and this poem is testament to that, it is also paying homage to my Father and my Persian heritage, of which I’m so proud.”
A poem by Mark Czanik
I left Donetsk when it started there. Escaped with my two children. My ex-husband’s on the other side.
the small village where I spent the months from June to August as a child is now occupied by Russians
Fiction: “And as my body lay still, waiting for my heart to be healed, the mist, the lonely shivering feeling of being lost, huddled together, looking for a way out, came to me.”
Creative Non-fiction: “People have got their corner here, however modest, and they get on with it, despite all that is stacked against them, all that is thrown at them.”
“I’ve been in prison a week and a stranger keeps telling me he’s going to kill his wife.”
Whatever we feel as human beings, some poet down the years has distilled that emotion or experience into its elemental form. Poetry is language at its most perfect, the ultimate diviner of the human spirit. If we need solace, poetry will console us. If we need joy, poetry will take our soul and let us fly.
“Ukraine has been the first to face and, at times, set in motion, processes tray have worldwide consequences.”
This is how they steal your hometown from you. This is what they did to your Luhansk.