Public Republic

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 […]

An Interview with Poet and Photographer Sheri L. Wright by Jasmina Tacheva Pushcart Prize nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of five books of poetry, including the most recent, The Slow Talk Of Stones. Her works of poetry appear in numerous journals including Out of Line, Chiron Review, Clark Street Review, Earth’s Daughters. She […]

Sheri L. Wright Photo: “Ladder” by Sheri L. Wright In 1942, NAZI propaganda spun from a reel of film shot in the Warsaw Ghetto, using the least emaciated prisoners as props to divert rumors of The Final Solution. They pose us together, I in my linens and plump cheeks with her, whoever she is – […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: Poppy Photography “On the sill today the sun’s pure white. Usually it’s gold,” says Nell, propped in a smock, all frills, sipping tea turning cold as she braids white ram horns of hair high and tight to the sides of her skull.

Allen Yuan Photo: takot Red, Yellow, Green Drive Turn Hastily, aggressive people swerve from Lane-to-lane, searching For any & all shortcuts to one place Others are spread out like runners on a track Accelerating straight ahead, avoiding or jumping over obstacles To their destinations Whether it may be escalation or annihilation But I wait, behind […]

Kenneth Pobo Photo: angelandspot I spread it thick on toast, pour coffee, almost ready to face crabby tourists, grabby fishermen, snowmobilers who blurt “Wanna take a ride?” Later, for dinner, probably alone, a Yooper pasty, venison’s better than beef, though mom says the chicken’s best. And

Photo: Calliope Diavolo I am the only stage director and I need to: gather all my unconscious perceptions and form them in words; my whole life – I need to hang it out like washing to dry in the sun of my mind. With my imagination I stage a “Tosca”. My sole audience – sensory […]

Changming Yuan Photo: Auntie K When I heard that bold yawing Knocking at my double-glazed window A sound in the mind echoed From an unknown voice

Donal Mahoney Photo: zigazou76 The indications used to come like movie fighter planes in break formation, one by one, the perfect plummet, down and out. This time they’re slower. But after supper, when I hear her in the kitchen hum again, hum higher, higher, till my ears are numb, I remember how it was the […]

Simon Perchik Photo: visualpanic This grass left for dead, the mower idling into its slow descent the way pilots are still trained to roll and up-side-down in the reflection you can recognize the bridge being bathed in a river older than those songs that help you forget

Kenneth Pobo Photo: oedipusphinx — — — — theJWDban Remember how you cooked up a warm plate of forever, served it with candlelight, and on the porch we listened to locusts warning us Stop! Stop! Stop! But we ate heartily and when you moved in you were already hinting about moving out.

Simon Perchik Photo: yourbartender You shave so the rain can’t stop –twice every day as if the sky were twins half shoreless, half too heavy and these rotary blades reaching take-off speed –you climb the way this mirror