We’ve all just been playing with the carnival knives
laughing through the makeup.
Slashing time into ticker tape illusions
as another carousel spins
as a ballot rigged in reverse.
The ringmaster wears a corrupt senator’s smile,
he has a mustached inked with lobbyist grease,
the clowns begin to bite their tongues
into bleeding treaties dancing in their oversized shoes.

Here there is no trapeze,
just an illusion of flight,
a mid-air contract that dissolves
before your signature dries-
and we are still juggling,
we applaud the dangers and the creepiness,
Our dignity sliced like candy apples,
caramel hands stuck in the applause of wolves.

Behind every curtain,
the mirrors cracked and slimy
the knives twisted as if the stabbing has been done.
The air is heavy in ghoulish whispering
‘You signed the waiver, kid-you bled like the rest.'

Man, who later
would never have been your lover –
my second or third father –
his own, stepping out from a hospital window
fell from the ledge into free nothing
that not-real father saw.
It was down to this you applied his weirdness.
Did every adult then feel the same
about how I picture you now?

Kitchen in Rome, Flaminia,
plastic picnic plates, plastic tablecloth
checkerboard, red/white, and that foaming antacid –
Disney illustrated tumbler, more plastic, the lid –
one thousand Lira from the corner shop.
Pass on the main, have full handfuls of the stuff, tiny walking sticks
of crusted moon surface, interplanetary e-numbered dust.
Pushed into my cheeks, fizz up my eyes, block out my ears
turn down, tune out, fade away.

At night in the bedroom too small for him to sleep in
I stared at the dancing ceiling shadows
of hand-me-down Italian lace curtains
fleeing families, splintered chest crates, plates, shattered.
I saw hunched creatures move in the half light,
me, cowering petrified, undercover
from merciless dive-bombing mosquitoes.

We went out to the sea in a speedboat, with strangers
I knew those people thought I was vetted
on what to say, when, to whom, and who mattered.
I was, and made sure not to let slip,
“No, I don’t have a father, why would I?”

I remember all the places we visited without even trying
now they are part of my skin, bones, hair and teeth
you have moved on like it didn’t exist.
My formative years, my object relations,
it’s what’s known as the binding, the glue that finds me
thinking nothing means quite what I thought it did.

Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, The Chiron Review, IceFloe Press, Variant Lit, Sontag Mag, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Ink in Thirds, Dark Winter Lit, Resurrection Mag, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award.https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

I was sitting at my dining room table
working away, door open to the world
while late May cool morning air chilled
my arms. Day sounds drifted, puttered,
then dissipated to wherever they go.
Then a robin landed at the birdbath.
I saw him out of the corner of my eye,
gliding down from the silver maple tree.
Looked left, then right then descended
into the cold, calm water. Songs lifted
to the sky, while splashing; ducking under
flapping wings, looking heavenward. I
watched; not distracted, but entirely
enjoying this small bit of happiness and
thinking we all need to be a robin
at a birdbath on a sunny Tuesday morning.

There are holes we see, obvious
or creases of pain carved into
souls that are carefully concealed.

Judgments are rendered, silently
or words of scorn nailed onto
those who must bear them bravely.

Wind and rain erode, weather
freezing words push against
tiny clefts; enlarge, expand.

Are there not enough broken
vessels sailing oceans of despondency
and tribulation; chipped, cracked?

The time is now to heal, mend
together and build community
once again; renew, restore.

Revive each fractured piece, reclaim
for there is much life to be lived
in embracing our flaws; Kintsugi.


Editor’s Note: Kintsugi (/kɪnˈtsuːɡi/, Japanese: 金継ぎ, [kʲint͡sɯɡʲi], lit. "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"), [1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. (Source: Wikipedia)

She’s a good girl.
The quiet type.
Poised and gracious, eager to serve.

Hair coiffed,
face softly powdered.
She’s a lady demure.

Respectable, articulate,
hard working,
humble and obeisant.

She arrives 5 minutes early,
is never in default,
apologizes for your misdeeds.

She’s a beauty, a keeper,
a diamond, buffed and polished.
The girl next door who aged well.

She remembers birthdays,
sends bouquets, bandages elbows,
bakes a quiche at 8 am.

Insists you take the best piece,
the last piece,
the one she wanted.

She bows her head when praised,
smiles sweetly, laughs quietly,
speaks a lexicon of yes, please, thank you.

She’s a woman who hides her sorrows.
Bundles them in platitudes,
buries them with gratitude.

She’s thick-skinned yet soft,
sensuous yet modest,
character shaped by the sharp chisel of propriety.

But what they don’t tell you
is that a lady demure
is a woman to be feared.

She’s a flight risk, unstable,
liable to burst into flame
at any given moment.

She’s a lady in coat sleeves who longs to bare all,
show you scars, rippling ink blots of metaphor
that refuse interpretation.

She has visions of shedding her skin,
bloodletting her shame,
blotting the lifeline to her unyielding gods.

She’s a dreamer, lucid waking,
a crusader with armor disarmed,
a constellation of compromises ad nauseam.

She fans a litany of passions,
longs to make love to the broken years,
caress the exit wounds of the abandoned heart.

She aches to reach inside
and swaddle the quivering child.
To cherish the most unlovable parts.

If I were her, I’d tell the world my darkest secrets
until all that’s left is the sound of honesty.
Soft scraping of ink against pages of decorum.

My mother never used a cookbook for baking.
Every fall, the cool, dormant kitchen transformed
into a warm melange of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove,
tables overflowing with pumpkin, pecan, mincemeat.

In swift, deft motions, she cut flour with shortening,
dusted the countertops with powdered hands.
She flattened thick mounds of dough into discs,
rolled thin, stretched taut across the tops of
pie plates, edges trimmed and crimped.

I watched as she commandeered the knives,
oven racks, bowls and whisks, as in silence,
I imagined blending cup after cup of bitterroot into
sweet folds of pastry, buttered and flecked
with aromatic cinnamon and brown sugar.

And I sat this way for years, pressed beneath her shadow,
as mom held a blade to the pinwheeled dough,
generations of sadness exquisitely sliced
into perfect parallels.

Everything here is ordinary, you say.
At 43, there is little that surprises you.
The bright stars of years are sagging,
slipping into a wrinkled sheet
of dusky yellow.
You come and go
from the same ranch rambler
with its cracked siding,
wind blown shutters, bloomless azaleas.

You gather scattered shards of happiness
and arrange them in a vase.
Memories like a lost Eden,
sun bleached and held loosely
within the peeling veneer of time.

This is how it is with love.
You think you own it, but then it slips away.
And you pray to it, beg for its return.
Bury your wilted heart
in the cool damp dirt.

Then after years, you unearth it.
Hands like shovels, you cut through
the hard strata of loneliness,
mounds of bones, brittle, decomposed,
digging deeper, all the while filling
gaping holes, burying tracks,
desperate to salvage your complacent life.

Then it happens. You strike gold.
You lift it to the blinding light,
admire its fire, arcane aura.
Enchanting, you say, clasping it
inside your palm,
its edges roughing your skin,
cleaving a jagged cut
through which you squeeze
the life into your blood.
A sliver of the sweet sharp furies
of ages past.

You carry a flame inside your steel veins.
A metal of bravery.
A vice grip of rebellion.
A scar in a shape that only you can recognize.

Wildest grief grew  
inside falling  
outside of my 
sun soaked jelly  
eyes ribbons of  
tears weaving into  
maypole tethers flashing  
in the wind cracking  
into lightning pulsing  
into sandscapes  
rivers of glass  
rooting deep  
into the 
visceral 
violent 
umbilical snap 
of a severed  
timeline.

The orange was a festering wound  
that day, not a sunflower nodding  

in the wind, not a plump koi mouthing  
for food or a ready sunrise rolling  

over the hill, but a weeping gash, an angry  
coal ready to spit, something visceral  

to crush as it explodes under a sharp boot  
and lays wasted under the sun. I prefer  

a mouth full of juice and zest and whimsy, 
but on some days, I am angry.

when the air cracked open. 
The thunder made children  
of us and the lights blinked  
out quietly like a haunting. 

The cottonwood tree caught fire, 
a faultless witch burning 
as the neighbors watched on 
and the fire department advanced. 

You’d have thought it was beautiful, 
the way our secrets went up in smoke  
like a prayer; the way life went on  
when they were gone, light suddenly  
pouring in through the front window.

where once they spat fire, 
polished to a blaze, 
rang with a vengeance, 
set the world spinning 
on its fabled trajectory.  

Now crusted in red iron, 
a corrosive belt in the digestive  
tract of the universe,  
fading out like the last 
dying stub of a wick. 

Had I known 
I would have lent you  
the silky polish of a tangled  
jellyfish or a dizzy firefly,  
dug out the core of the earth  
myself, coaxed Yggdrasil  
from its ancient chamber 
to find you what you needed. 

You only had to ask.

Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Slice the bread.

Tear yourself in half.

Tuck the rainbow pin in your apron pocket, your hair back in a bun.

Watch the edges while you toast the ones of sourdough - his favorite.

Resist the temptation to stick them in your shirt - to coat them in sweat.

Remember I don’t have a lot of teeth anymore
and the classic He was raised in a different time.

Roll a delivery cart past a wall of ghosts,
faces that were flushed not even two days prior.

Stop at the door decorated in truck bumper stickers. Honk if you like honkers.

Pretend the vinyl-covered wood is his flesh when your knuckles rap on it.

Prepare for the spit as the animal opens his cage.

Spare a thought for the lovers and poets
repencilling plangent opuses
with the dustman's reluctant rise.

Our passions belying ours fears,
it has been years since this started;
still years till it ends in tears.

You gobbling up your breakfast,
we regathering fading wits
for a final reckless assault
on the opening stanza.

Now waking
to weightless pages,
more asleep,
no less obliged,
watch these empty words run
for that other world some
call progress.

Late morning filled by daily jobs routine
(two pairs of hands, eight pussycats between),
round Baffin's Pond to feed the ducks come twelve;
I've nothing more to offer than myself.

Mid-afternoon endeavours mostly through,
shared coffee, choccy biccy, maybe two.
Potatoes, veggie grills fuel final third
(if news depressing, Hollyoaks absurd).
A pause to kiss. Six dozen things to do;
evening's procrastinations, then some words.

The weather man ‘Ahem’s like something's wrong,
in tones apologetic, drops his bomb;
‘Another week at least till skies of blue’.
Let's button up our coats and see this through.

Some souls will never step outside again,
beam countless nightmares seldom ascertained,
see spectrum stained in narrow shades of black;
our lives weren't made for ‘Nay, alas, alack’.

I fancy that we shall grow to like the rain
on sipping glass of wine while glancing back.

I picked you up from off the grounds  
In the woods behind my grandparents’ house 

Broken and bruised and lashed away by the gusty 
Winds blowing from the yesterday’s storms fiercely 
Snatching you from the snug comfort that you knew 
It happened so very fast you had no time to say adieu. 

Floating endlessly across the raging streams of water 
Hurled against the sharp and edginess of the border 
Cutting through membranes leaving you less of a twig 
That leaps on the dance floor with the rocks dancing a jig.  

I did not know what kind you were from 
So I found you a dry space in the basement for days to come  

Layer by layer, those brittle barks are torn apart 
Stripped away from the very core of who you are 
The armour striped and patterned and indelibly etched 
With the dangerous journey and conditions of wretch. 

The gritty sound screeching like a nightingale on a branch alight 
The abrasiveness intensified in the void of the sleepy night 
From the 80-grit to the 300-grit going through the sanding pace  
Polished with sharp edges of sandpaper that cut away at the surface. 

       How long did it take you to emerge out from above ground 
       The tiny speckle of a two-leafed flat blade green pale brown 
       Towering gracefully over the tall elongated slender fragile stem 
       Did it take 30 days to stitch together O2 and H 2O laces like a hem.  

       Was the blazing light that you encountered as you spruce out  
       From the darkness of the shadowy underground world too loud 
       And bright and blinding that it shook your entire shooting system 
       A pause for a second and a time and a while you kept your distance.  

       Yet your inclining towards the sunlight as each day passes by slowly  
       Tells the story of your roots remaining grounded and founded firmly  
       In humid soil, cold and chilly leaves leaning to reach out into glorious warm rays  
       Absorbing the solar radiation then creating energy and providing nurturing ways. 

A brush stroke a generous coat of oil-based stain in rich dark colour 
Enhanced the natural beauty of the wood grain enliven the character 
Glossy and shimmery capturing the every glowing move of the moonlight  
A reflection of the resurgence of favoured restoration from places of plight.  

       I will return to the house of my grandparents 
       To the strength and everlasting beauty of you that gives me assurance.

Melanie Lam is a London-based creative, from Mauritius of Chinese heritage. She is a qualified accountant, an actor, a playwright, and a poet. Sharing a poem publicly for the first time with Creating Apart in 2021, motivated her to further develop her craft. Subsequently, she contributed to the limited edition anthology of the Chinese Write Now 2022 festival. Her writing delves into themes such as feminism, migration and displacement, and loss and hope. Her instagram account is MelanieLam_UK.

“Lord Shiva does not care about human suffering.
Shiva’s dance starts in a frenzy,
whirling through 1937.”

Soft soil / scattered with bones,
submerges beneath time /

Violent laughter joins them /
Young girls elude fresh tombs,
learn to disguise themselves / as muddy-faced boys,
dodging Type-38 bayonets / hunting their wombs /
Elders wisely modify mazes / in tunnels,
emerge like pangolins / at secret intersections,
craft telegrams / into riddles /
Arms break on the ground,
like full stops / bearing the mark of Shiva’s dance,
assimilating darkness into the weeds /
I am the only survivor,
find my breath / in the soil of the mass grave /

In this dark winter /
only the burst blood of the dead stays warm.

Only the Destroyer — Shiva,
neither laughs / nor cries,
his footsteps crush
every inch of this scorched land /

In the pit of death / what can one do? /
The invading army destroys homes /
Shiva destroys everything
when people are cowardly /

I, as a human,
cry in this moment, wondering how to
mourn the dead.

Yucheng Tao is a Chinese international student based in Los Angeles, where he studies songwriting. His work has appeared in Wild Court（UK), The Lake（UK), Red Ogre Review (UK), Aloka Magazine（UK), Cathexis Northwest Press, and NonBinary Review, where he was also interviewed. He was named a semifinalist for the Winds of Asia Award by Kinsman Quarterly. His work has been featured in over twenty journals, including Apocalypse Confidential, The Arcanist, Waymark Literary Magazine, Yellow Mama, The Mixtape Review, Down In the Dirt, Academy of the Heart, AIien Buddha Press, Ink Nest, Piker Press, Synchronized Chaos, Spillwords, Poetry Potion, Literary Yard, The Creativity Webzine, Moonstone Art Center, Wingless Dreamer, and Authorspress.

Autumn is a hot planet
& the sex workers fly East
Autumn turns some leaves orange
but not others
I had an autumn flu shot,
an autumn COVID booster
Now I feel horrible
- memories of
The Autumn People comics
Cheyenne Autumn movie
Autumn is a harsh planet
because its breath is labored,
it has trouble with the stairs
Autumn soon just a memory too
on this hot slag rock

The city was on fire and all
we could think was the invisible ink
to write love poems to be read
by flames under the paper. 

We were calling the souls
of dead poets in that long summer
with a spirit board but no
one was coming.

Apart from the helicopters
dropping flyers to tell us to leave
the city immediately or we
would be left all alone.

We watched a woman
with thin tulle wings running
down the street naked
to fly into the fire.

Being alone with you
when the world was burning
was more than I could
ever dream.

Love was the thing
that was combusting us inside
while coughing the pinkness
of our lungs.

Fairy tale ashes were snowing
when I realised that woman
was me but how could I watch
us disappear?

Özge Lena is an Istanbul-based poet. Her poetry has appeared in many countries, including the USA, UK, Canada, Iceland, Singapore, Spain, Serbia, France, etc. in distinguished publications such as The London Magazine, Hunger Mountain, The International Times, Sky Island Journal, The Trumpeter, Cambridge Poetry, and The Madrid Review, along with many anthologies worldwide. Özge's work received nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in 2021, then for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023, and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024. Her ecopoem "Undertaker" will be featured in the forthcoming Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War Anthology (Scarlet Tanager Books, US), and her poem "Here Is a New Heart For You" was featured in the storefront of Barnes & Noble in Dublin, California, for National Poetry Month 2024.