Oracles Lament, Nicksha T. Mwanandimayi

A lament to a fallen nation
A race of relativism with a finite battle
Deluded by the enlightenment of their great sages

When the sun shines in winter they call it summer
When the temperature drops in summer they call it an ice age

No wrong and right there is no canon
Absolutes are an abomination
Red can be blue and indigo isn’t purple
Lime and green have infinite variants between them
I love my Rottweiler so we can get married
An amphibian and a mammal can cohabit
The badger proposes to the beaver and adopt a squirrel.

Forget the sun the moon signals our dawn

Twilight is the noon of the former ages
In this age we are all Demi-theos
An oxymoron can be read in everything

Forget the wine blood is richer

We tried the absolutes and lightning didn’t strike

No holding back restraint is for the placid
Nietzsche proclaimed its epilogue and maybe Marx was right

Extermination’s weren’t the beginning but the microcosm

What is crime when murder is the greatest purifier?
A finite age with infinite possibilities.

Like a tightened bow my heart wants to rip
Like a sniper ready to pull the trigger I feel the emotions swelling
With none to comfort and appease my heart the world is getting lonesome

In the midst of tumult the silence is deafening
In silence solitude is at its loudest
I see the fear creeping in
I sense a cold chill behind my ear
The whispers of a defeated foe
Can anyone set me free?
I dream of a brumby free in the wild
A friend of the wind
A spirit roaming so free
Chester asked, can someone save me from myself?
Robin smiled yet without a word his farewell he did not bid
A chef from Bordeaux called it quits
Van Gough a genius who found the voice too overwhelming
The Montagues and the Capulets their story’s end we all know

Bennington repeated the words, leave out all the rest,
My heart beats like the pulse of gazelle running away from a predator

Unlike a babe in arms mine are silent tears.

Where is my buckler and my shield?
In a carnivorous world is there a place for the herbivore

Can the slowest gazelle outrun the quickest lion?

Can the moon compete with the sun for radiance?

The bow tightens yet the archer relents not
The sniper has his target yet he hesitates
Stand watch with me says the blind man

Give an ear to me says the deaf man

Listen to my words says the mute

Nicksha T. Mwanandimayi, @nick_mwana. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, a recipient of the

Junior Budding Writers Association Award, he was featured in local magazines and was editor of The Johnian Echo. He published Epitah: Memoirs of a Cymbal, which was ranked 16th in the Poetry genre on Amazon on 6 January 2020.

A bridge to Dusk, Reham Emam

Pass the cries, screams, sweat and dust

Amid the endless fog ahead

The sighs and thrusts

Lay a bridge to dusk

No flashlights…no bleak altars

Nor an arrogant old man

To breach me about

Salvation

And curse my fleshy

Lust

Behold my fellow

Friends

For today I walk

Alone

No shame…no regret

No heavy shackles tying me

Flesh

To a false myth

That commends me to

A sin that I don’t

Recall

Or else I’m to be

Doomed

Alas, I shall bend not

Night is thickening

Dawn is approaching

A demon at the bridge to

Dusk

Patiently crouching

Awaiting my missed arrival

But tonight, I walk towards

A dreary scent of

Rust.

Reham Emam is a writer, photographer and independent filmmaker. She works as a freelance photographer and writes film related articles. She published a collection of short stories titled No angels descend tonight and recently won the Madelyn Lamont award in writing.

What Came After, Heba El-Saghier

ماذا الحدث بعد

ماذا حدث بعد انتهاء العالم؟

تبدو الإجابة سهلة ومعروفة "لم يحدث شىء".

انتهى العالم وفقط.

كيف بعد انتهاء العالم تبدأ الأحداث!

سأقول لكم، ودعكم من التعجل، لكنى كذلك سأسرد باختصار.

بعد انتهاء العالم، صعدنا جميعا إلى السماوات السبع للمحاسبة. موازين الأعمال افترشت السماء. والمحكمة العليا حكمت بمن سيدخل الجنة ومن سيدخل النار.

ثم ذات يوم، تخاصم اثنان من أصحاب الجنة، رغم مكوثهما الطويل فيها دون مشكلات، بعد أن وسوس لهما شيطان كانا قد ظنا موته. كذا حدث ولا تسألوني كيف، لكن حكم عليهما بعدها بالطرد من الجنة. ولكن إلى أين؟ هل إلى النار؟

الجرم لا يرقى لمرتبة السقوط فى النار، كان لابد من مكان محايد لا يرقي إلى مرتبة الجنة ولا يسقط فى مرتبة النار، وهكذا بدأت الدنيا من جديد بعد أن كانت قد انتهت...

What Came After

What happened after the world has ended?  ‘nothing happened’.

It is not necessarily true that the world has ended… Let me explain, I will be concise.

When the world has ended, we all ascended for judgment. Scales weighted our deeds. A verdict was settled, and the gates of heaven were released. Nobody bothered to ask about the devils. They were surely all dead by now. That’s what everybody thought. One day two of those in heaven quarreled. An unexpected devil drove them to the bind.

Their deeds didn’t qualify for hell; their desires didn’t belong to heaven. Another land urgently rose, a land that they later called Earth. The world started only after it ended.

Heba El-Saghier is an Egyptian writer, novelist and researcher. Her first solo novel is titled ‘دودة القز’. She loves playing the guitar and writing songs. She has a master’s degree in journalism. Currently, she is a university TA and freelance writer for different literary and journal websites.

Innocence, Shannon Malloy

it felt just like childhood
protruding pending puberty
hints of body odor in sweat
a training bra
the first hard-on
pre-ejaculate stains
cigarette smoke
blood stained panties
syphilis and gonorrhea.
feigning grown-up tears from
adolescent eyes
and hiding date rape
in ice cream and cotton candy

Shannon Malloy is a poet and writer living and working out of Aurora, Colorado. Her work revolves around the darker compulsions of humanity and explores the body and disfigurement. Shannon is one of few survivors of internal decapitation and she uses language to highlight the physicality of trauma. 

Molding Clay, Gabriel X. Hendrix

I have set out to build my own Rome

To use saliva into my living,

To hum another heart once the old is gone.

Learning the recipe

that started with salt and vinegar, 

with nothing left,

but fire from a candle,

the air from a balloon,

and a piece of Eden.

The challenge

is to create harmony

from inside,

it would sting

without warning

to begin by resting and growing

in the ocean’s womb.

Drinking the clouds

painful sanity

I have used my blood’s

own name;

my words are

freshly hand made.

I gather animals from

imagination.

To then be in this haze

that desperately wants a host,

a body within another

as a doll filled

with cotton,

The organs are placed on the table

and the feelings begin to be nothing

more than a mystery.

The colors of tone decides to hide

from the

outside curtains,

like the array of anger

in the dim of one’s eye.

It is hard to see where one can go,

the mountains are far,

The road begins to duplicate,

reaching out to stumble

to then hear pounding of drums

that awake crows

hidden in trees.

The lights would soon

fall and like the stars

dipped in fire.

Land would finally sprout

from one single seed.

Gabriel. X. Hendrix is a poet & writer, born in Miami FL and currently attending the University of Central Florida. Hendrix will earn his B.A. in English Creative Writing. Hendrix explores the layers of grief and the struggles of identity through his writing.