Public Republic

Yassen Vassilev To Ajabez your voices cross my head sift the holy out of the world possess mountain peaks biblical cities and the three crosses of golgotha echoes from the rocks of kamen briag and somehow I know that I will never ever walk alone

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: Ctd 2005 For Krassi I The rainbow loses all stability if you hurl it belly down. II The street was expressive – with shades in the eyes and the spilt over skies. III A talking olive tree. Translated from Bulgarian by Valentin Krustev

Simon Perchik Photo: ` TheDreamSky Waiting all afternoon the dark is treated the way a parasite dreads shells and emptiness though a blue residue cools the sky spreads out so its light everywhere can run just so fast from the blindness children still count on their hands

Roger Craik Photo: .beth That winter, four years after your marriage broke down in all but name – but name to you was everything – and you were dithering still, unable to divorce or even to discuss divorce but marveling, instead, at each succeeding apercu for months – yes, months – on end for what […]

Roger Craik Photo: Untitled blue Today you leave (I’ve known of this for months and therefore can’t complain) For the beach house by the sea Where he will pass the days and evening with TV, And you with books, Or so you say. You will go for walks, together. You will never be alone. Perhaps […]

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: normanack Carmen looks like a little old wife now used to what comes in her life. But her turkey mate stomps, he’ll split the earth because that’s the way he makes love.

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: Joe Shlabotnik Across a well of autumn rays The street sets out For the sky. The trees stream down molten. Homeless dogs Warm the sidewalk. The shadows vanish.

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: dawnzy58 On Friday evening, on my way home where someone is waiting for me my wings grow out and I become a swallow. Perhaps birds have their hidden compass: they know exactly when to return, where their nests are.

Simon Perchik Photo: trialsanderrors What you hear is one winter to another, heads or tails one side staggering the other moving closer though it will rain soon –midair the way you clip some dazzling jewel and your dress blossom while you are still inside covered with snow, the sun half struggling, half underwater toward the […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: lepiaf.geo Stunned by July in a hammock he remembers the apricot wife no longer here one curler more and the flutter of leaves in the orchard the sound of trees

Barry George Photo: kennymatic This morning he stretches out, yawning and wagging his tail for no reason; for every reason— for the One reason. If I could put it into words I’d be a cat.

Mariana Velichkova Photo: ricardo.martins Do not let our lives pass like a river flowing calmly… We should be drawn to the water that in its rush has hidden in itself innumerable broken drops and…strength.

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: jenny downing He left his dreams in the neon city inhabited by gilded statues with sick light in the eyes. He closed his suitcase, locked the door and went. At the bottom of it he has thoroughly folded the melody he bought from a street musician on the pier;

Yassen Vassilev Photo: orvalrochefort in a city under glass lid chafed knees will rub the rails will print the map of the net she-wolf romulus and remus synchronicity and constant the neon eyes will blink rails and tunnel through time metro tomorrow yesterday today

Roger Craik Photo: Jaci Berkopec On the day that all the world had died, Standing on my front door step With coffee in the dark blue mug I’d bought In Hartford, at some wordy conference, I idly pressed my bell

Donal Mahoney Photo: giuvax In my hand, I squeeze this trinity of walnuts tighter till louder than the tot who’s rapped her elbow off the radiator, I can hear clearer than the sirens I’ve heard all these years real fear as walnuts whimper

Rosemary Royston Photo: jenny downing Could it have been a three-day headache — the kind with the relentless throb and slam of the sledgehammer, the sick roll of the eyes, the ache in the base of the neck, that drove someone into the woods shrieking in two parts pain, one part delirium just mad enough […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s interview with poet Sherry Chandler Sherry Chandler is the author of two poetry books, Dance the Black-Eyed Girl (Finishing Line) and My Will and Testament Is on the Desk (FootHills Publishing). Her work has been nominated for the Kentucky Literary Award in poetry, and she has won several local prizes, including the Betty […]

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: shinealight Men, somehow, Don’t call forth memories in me. Diligent, obedient, Devoted. Counter clockwise.

Katherine Van Hook Gulley Photo: Koshyk He shoves his hands into his pockets, for they have no where else to go. The years of chalk dust and the smell of old volumes of Yates, made a powerful cocktail that he drank even in leisure.