Offshore Sakhalin Island
At last Februus reaches the cosmos of cobalt
and white laid out on the mosaic sea with frosted shards.
Drift ice after drift ice brought by the Amur river
that advects seaward Siberian memories
By Hideko Sueoka
She Looks (A Sestina)
She has looked at them from both sides now, in all their colours,
as Joni Mitchell advised. First time in a plane she marvelled at clouds
unknown before, sparkling in unhindered sunlight, believing a refresh
could reset each day. A myriad of paints on her palette offering a scent
of essential oils to enliven all detail and also set a clean slate. A new regard
she had for life itself, up here, eager to sign her canvas with a flourish.
By Nicki Hastie
Stigma
Sometimes you must take the medicine
though there is shame
that I can’t pray the dark away
but when they took my friends…
By Abeer Ameer
Lassaba
if I come to visit calling her name
from the other side of the locked gate
would she whisper back
while unhooking the rusted padlock
By Lisa Kiew
If Fong Has Already Been Born
The city sirens sounded in Chinatown as Hattie Fong slurped up the first steaming spoonful of spicy pork noodles from the large black bowl—the Li Po Tuesday lunch special and Hattie’s go-to comfort food on blustery winter days. She looked up uneasily through her fogged up glasses at Lei Jing, her waitress, who was busy unpacking a box of fortune cookies at the counter, then suddenly remembered what day it was.
Noon on the dot, she thought, looking at the clock on the wall. It’s just the doomsday department testing its Cold-War-era air raid sirens in case of a tsunami or if N. Korea decides to drop an H-bomb on our fair peninsular city. Nothing to worry about, unless of course the sirens do not stop. Then logically we are all as good as dead, in which case there is really nothing to worry about.
By Alberto Ramirez
Mother
Things she took with her:
Homemade dolmades
Songs of kookla-mou
Village dancing.
By Georgina Norie
Eating History
On the flight from Douala she says I can choose
African-style chicken or fish with basil and thyme.
By Clementine Ewokolo Burnley
We Are Now Beginning Our Descent
I have always dreamed I would die in an aeroplane crash.
It will be a big plane. A commercial flight. I will be seated in economy as normal, I have never had an upgrade and I have never expected to deserve one. On this flight, the dice will have rolled against me and I will be trapped in the middle of a row. There will be a businessman on my left: he will be portly, balding, busy with a briefcase. His tie will have been loosened with a nervous tug of a crooked finger, and beads of sweat will have started pebbling his forehead before the cabin doors have even closed.
By Malcolm Devlin
Setting Free the Spirits
She craves a fresh egg, clear and warm and slippery. One that she has picked from a clutch in the hen house, a feather still clinging to its shell, the sharp stench of bird emanating from it. She craves sitting in the courtyard. Her fingers encircling this egg, salivating as she anticipates the moment she will crack the shell over her mouth, the liquid slipping in and the golden yolk coating the roof of her mouth.
By Susmita Bhattacharya
What Country’s This?
I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more.
I fell here when she died. That much I can remember but there’s a haze around everything that’s happened since. Time runs differently here; and I can’t work out how long I fell for, nor how long I’ve been lying here. Sitting now. I know I fell for long enough that something should hurt. I think so, anyway, but feeling along my arm, my ankles; tracing around my head, everything seems to be in place. My hair feels dry (though the air down here is damp) and it’s too dark to check my hand for blood by sight. All things being even, I will have to trust no injury, for now at least.