WHEN DEATH PILES UP
They should not have piled those dry branches up here
It is midday and the crowd
Will soon pass by them
The forest ghost will terrify the Dead
With the marrow dried in his bones
Then he will convey the crowd’s death
Like an electrical conductor permits a flow of energy
They should have piled them up in the heart of the Bazaar square
But no, by no means
At midday
THE DEATH’S PAWS
Death has white paws
With the hare’s soft fur
And blinding whiteness
Like that of the tiger’s teeth
With the hare’s soft fur
We rub ourselves
On meadows
Growing narcissi flowers
But the lake in the middle of them
Never shows us
The tiger’s reflection…
INCENSE
I pray again after hushing or I hush right after praying
The lily of dreams has long ran away from the white colour
The whiteness of the snow, the whiteness of the petals, the whiteness of the egg
A raven black as death flies around the lily and fades away falling in the hands of the storm
The incense’s smell piercing through smelling…
DISTANCE
He is three hours away from the Swan’s Neck.
The screams of the bird have been staying frozen on those shores since the midnight of the last song.
He is three nights away from the songs and a life away from the screams.
Alisa Velaj has been shortlisted for the annual international Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in UK in June 2014. Her works have appeared in more than eighty print and online international magazines, including: FourW twentyfive Anthology (Australia), The Journal (UK), The Dallas Review (USA), The Linnet’s Wings (UK) The Seventh Quarry (UK), Envoi Magazine (UK) etc etc. Velaj’s digital chapbook “The Wind Foundations” translated by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj is published by Zany Zygote Review (USA). Her poems are also translated in Hebrew, Swedish, Romanian, French and Portuguese. Alisa Velaj’s poetry book “With No Sweat At All” (trans by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj) will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2019.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals
art music poetry
Everyday Russian family in the View of Americans | Poem by Vladimir Tayninskiy
Everyday Russian family in the view of Americans.
Vladimir Tayninskiy
I’m home!
Why so late?
On the way to bear I was detained – I gave him vodka!
Everyone at the table !
Let’s drink some vodka.
Mom, I’m gonna go play with the bear.
He was already drunk and happy!
OK, only first you son have a drink vodka.
Where’s grandpa?
It is the second week in a queue for coupons on coupons for vodka!
Well, before that he drank vodka and not sleeping.
Okay, go for a walk, son, and don’t forget to write a report to the KGB tonight!
We don’t have food,but there’s a box of vodka.
That’s 30 bottles.For a month.
Honey, something’s boring!
You drink vodka and play the balalaika.
I’m going to dance.
I’m already drunk and funny!
And so on…
what do you really think?
Like a Pea. A Poem by Fabrice B. Poussin
Some die of a heart frozen to ice,
broken in shatters on a marble tombstone,
others suffer a heart so enlarged,
it cannot find a home in its cage,
I hear many live to such excess,
it just gives up in disgust or disease,
a few leave it behind, abandoned,
to be trampled under the feet of masses;
on occasion the cherub with arrow and bow
smiles at the agony left by his piercing blow;
millions saw their last sunlight in a trench,
when their insides were sublimed by copper,
now I wonder is it possible also to expire,
from a shrunken heart the size of a pea?
I ask why in this land of dreams among us all,
there would be no nurturing to this one,
littler, shier, out of place among the giants;
its faint beat, unperceivably, becomes quieter,
pea among peas, soon a little it shrinks again until…
finally it vanishes, forgotten, invisible and alone…
Fabrice B. Poussin
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry,
his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography
has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .
Howling under the Porch Poem
You’ve been quiet
I’ve said too much
You can’t take it back.
The dogs howl under the porch.
The cats fight over entrails.
All is confused.
The dogs under the porch are ghosts.
The dogs are walked and their poop is gathered in the twilight.
The ghosts of the dogs howl under the porch and the cats are spoiled.
Did I say the wrong thing?
It would be good to say the wrong thing,
to say anything is wrong
when
all
is
wrong
and I howl under the porch.