Public Republic

Claudia Serea Photo: Rhys Asplundh I follow orders to hit/ push/ shove/ those who couldn’t possibly be my mother/ brother/ father. I pluck and gather men and women at gunpoint, tulips of tears. I squeeze the trigger gently, gently but their bodies aren’t worth my bullets.

Allen Qing Yuan Photo: trioptikmal He surges beyond the clouds Breaking the puffs of dreams He detects the mocking laughters of clowns But furiously, pushes the jesters away

Changming Yuan Photo: inajeep Leaves hip-hopping to the music of early summer One long branch flirting with every passer-by Trunk shaking with laughter from last spring But behind the fence, your roots remain firm Never budging a single inch, between day and night

Photo: dawn’s point of view Dear Poet, SPRING POETRY RAIN in Nicosia the capital of Cyprus – the last divided city in Europe in May, 26 at 17.30 We are two cultural organisations, Ideogramma and Sidestreets, each based on either side of the divided city, and with this letter we are inviting you to participate […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: Logan Brumm Photography and Design I have spent an hour lying in the sun on Joe Brickle’s farm waiting for Pedro and Pablo to fetch Little José with his sickle and scythe to cut down the high grass so Pedro and Pablo can gun their mowers over the cowlicks.

Donal Mahoney Photo: ruresolitude In 1948 Booger McNulty’s coal yard stirred constant gossip among the citizens who lived in little bungalows on narrow blocks in my far corner of Chicago. That was more than 60 years ago, a time when families took Sunday walks and went back home in time to hear Jack Benny on […]

Simeon Gasparov Photo: Loop_oh The scrawny sun in the crisp tenderness of telegraph wires has tripped while chasing its newborn inspiration. And remained there, hanging as a shining ball, until the end of Indian summer. After the first rain of October quietly Rolled back on our last, dusty, southern, lost highway… …One homeless dream barked […]

Roman Kissiov Photo: (cc) Chadica “…You must have surely understood by then what Ithacas mean” C. Cavafy I am Odysseus, too, but unknown. No one ever heard of me, nobody knew about my shrewdness… Because I never left Ithaca. Never in my life did I meet Cyclopes, Laistrygones and Sirens. I did not build a […]

Kenneth Pobo Photo: angelandspot It’s not safe playing gigs in rotgut bars in small towns. I’m told “Be careful, Dindi.” I’m careful, though I gladly invite black cats to walk across my path. A metal infant, the gun sleeps in my purse. I’d never be a good mother. Too much of my own mother in […]

Sheri L. Wright Photo: Sheri L. Wright I follow the moon through Spanish moss and cypress, the song of nocturnals rippling across heat that stews summer long past its season. The eyes of shades – those of the lost and discarded – peer from underneath centuries and secrets stained black with death, trail after me […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: pancakeplan Forty years older than I, Charles, in his tweed cap, stands starched in gray chino and blue chambray. For more than a year his broad tie has let the same iridescent duck fly against a vermillion sky. Like a Vatican Guard he oversees the parking lot I cut through each morning […]

Sheri L. Wright Photo: “Who Are You?” by Sheri L. Wright He set Beargrass Creek in flames with stolen whiskey, something about fire-water, making a point, daring anyone to try and drink it now, but all he got was six months in jail for vandalizing public property. He told the judge that was the funniest […]

Allen Qing Yuan Photo: minds-eye It is his spirit’s secrets That makes him bluer than blue A branch longer than the root A banana unlike any other fruit But my growth has been Bulged, blunted Like a scale unable to measure The weight of my quasi white soul Is melancholy, ever depressed Flapping against evening […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: Crunchy Footsteps Sue phones the hotel around midnight. Two weeks earlier, at her request, I took a room there. Three bags, half packed in the corner, are ready to go back. “There’s been a fire,” Sue says. I ask “Is everyone all right?”

Daniel Beyer **Author’s note: I recommend listening to, “First Floor People” by Barcelona, in order to get the full listening experience for the work. Please say your final words to the deceased and then we will close the casket for the last time – – – And then I watched them all walk by. I, […]

Dimitar Ganev Photo: LauraLewis23 And it was February (I remember), the cold outside was too close for me, the walls of the night could not take me and in their angles I found the dust from my own collapse and I put it under the carpet. I was trying to live with myself, the cold […]

By Mariana Velichkova Photo: derekGavey To E. The guitar untouched stands in the corner filled with unheard music galaxy of notes The guitar untouched stands in the corner dreaming of soft fingers, a heart without knots The guitar untouched stands in the corner Through the open window pierced with rays of hope

Donal Mahoney Photo: iwona_kellie Odd the way the very old pick a winter day to fall, break a minor bone, be assigned to bed and death a bear napping out the winter

Dimitar Ganev Photo: Wonderlane Look, honey, I love not only you, I love so many other women, so many other girls, that my blood is never calm. Nothing makes them similar except the womanliness. With some of them I have been one year, with others one night, with others I will never be in any […]

Roman Kissiov Photo: (cc) fdecomite The sky is dark. The sky is heavy and leaden. The sky is awesome. It is shaken by thunder and lightning. Oh no – just do not think that these thunders and rumble are the natural phenomena already explored by science!… These are the pounding heavy fists of the blessed […]