POEM BY BYRON BEYNON
CARAVANSERAI
Even from here
inside the sane oasis
of a courtyard
life can still be furnished
with credible hospitality.
We travelled with a phoenix of years,
found ourselves listening
to the whisper of strangers.
Already we have witnessed
that the midnight and noon
hours are the same,
and the skin seen fleetingly
opened like an insect’s case.
Byron Beynon lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, Worcester Review (USA), Poetry Wales and Written River (USA). Recent collections include Human Shores (Lapwing Publications, Belfast) and the The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).
*****
POEM BY VALENTINA CANO
IN PLACE
My hands are stretching
themselves thin as pastry dough
reaching for you.
You are out there flickering
like a light through leaves
and I am locked in place,
heels growing roots
right through this concrete.
Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, A Narrow Fellow, Super Poetry Highway, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Rem Magazine, Structo, The 22 Magazine, The Black Fox Literary Magazine, Niteblade, Tuck Magazine, Ontologica, Congruent Spaces Magazine, Pipe Dream, Decades Review, Anatomy, Lowestof Chronicle, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lady Ink Magazine, Spark Anthology, Awaken Consciousness Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, Caduceus,White Masquerade Anthology and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel is The Rose Master, 2014. You can find her here: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com
*****
POEM BY HENRY KEARNEY
A CONFLUENCE OF GUTTERS UNDER A WITCHES' MOON
In the Café of the Two Realities, you sit by the window
and watch the streetlights die. Coffee in one hand,
absinthe in the other, you want to be awake to witness
your own oblivion. Here, the heroes are never saints, and the buzz
of tattoo needles bleeds through from next door: jade green dragons attacking
unsuspecting shoulders, the forever question of words in languages the bearers can’t read.
You are waiting for someone to come. You are anxious to leave. You do not understand
how anything associated with human skin can be considered “permanent”.
Outside, the streets put on their show, a vagabond theater
you vaguely remember having performed with long ago.
Many things, now, seem long ago, the notion of your True Identity
being one of them. This someone you are waiting for is a stranger, and
you have never been less certain of an arrival.
Henry Kearney is from Robersonville, North Carolina. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as: Another& Another: An Anthology from The Grind Daily Writing Series, New England Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Collagist, North Carolina Literary Review, The Cortland Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and Spoon River Poetry Review.