Category: Journal

bridge becomes sky | A J Wilson

November 10, 2025

somewhere between root and heaven
lies a river of dreams
trees unbutton their shadows
and i tread carefully in the stillness
of yesterday’s rain
listen –
earth is almost remembering
the forgotten footsteps
and my bridge becomes sky

A J Wilson, was born and lives in North Wales,  she wrote her first poem at nine, her pen was left dormant for decades, until the pandemic, when poetry found her again. Her poetry has been published in numerous magazines and journals,  and her short stories have featured in anthologies.

Plaintive Time | Kristen Thomson Sheely

November 7, 2025

And there is my mother and the watch she wore even though it stopped
for good when she was still wearing it. I like the way it feels on my wrist,
she’d say. I have it now. Sometimes a sweet memory like this suddenly
turns into something else, something unexpected, and all the words
I want to say are hidden in my ribs, and it hurts to remember, it hurts
to write, as if ink is blood and syllables are pieces of me and pieces of her
strung together, held fast with whatever I find lying lost on the ground —
what was it that I meant to say? Write anyway. Write it down
before it’s lost forever, and stop worrying about the ink,
the blood, because there’s plenty.

Kristen Thomson Sheely is a writer and the Executive Director of The Derek Sheely Foundation, a nonprofit that honors her son. Her blog, No Name for This Grief, and her forthcoming memoir, Very Dark Places, explore the sorrow and pain of loss. She and her husband live with their greyhound in Pennsylvania.    

Link to blog: www.nonameforthisgrief.wordpress.com

Link to website: www.thedereksheelyfoundation.org

To Meet Myself | Crispina Kemp

November 5, 2025

Broken
The treads fall away
Leaving my foot unshod
Leaving me unbalanced
Leaving me tumbling
Into the water
Deep
Dark
Swirling
To meet myself

Crispina Kemp Biog

Crispina is a writer who by her own admission is obsessed with the weird, the unlikely, the mythical and paranormal. She also has a deep love and respect for the land of her birth where she’s often seen ‘walking her camera’.

https://twitter.com/ineebrown51

https://www.amazon.com/author/crispinakemponamazon

weathering | A J Wilson

November 3, 2025

creaking weathered limbs
the forest cradles the weight
time and steps collide

A J Wilson, was born and lives in North Wales,  she wrote her first poem at nine, her pen was left dormant for decades, until the pandemic, when poetry found her again. Her poetry has been published in numerous magazines and journals,  and her short stories have featured in anthologies.

Keepsake | Kristen Thomson Sheely

October 31, 2025

Tossed aside: tarnished glitter — now litter
A lipsticked crumpled napkin of profound promise fills a pocket
and on the way home the smeared window is fogged with
yesterday. I have to see where I’m going
so I pull the napkin from my pocket and smooth the wrinkled wreckage
between my hands to make it new again
But that’s like unringing a bell, isn’t it
I sweep it across the window and erase the blur, erase every trace
And yet. I tuck the napkin back into my pocket and
save the litter, to save the day.

Kristen Thomson Sheely is a writer and the Executive Director of The Derek Sheely Foundation, a nonprofit that honors her son. Her blog, No Name for This Grief, and her forthcoming memoir, Very Dark Places, explore the sorrow and pain of loss. She and her husband live with their greyhound in Pennsylvania.    

Link to blog: www.nonameforthisgrief.wordpress.com

Link to website: www.thedereksheelyfoundation.org

Hello | Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

October 29, 2025

The color is gone, sucked away by despair. The bridge once festooned with bouquets of bougainvillea, hibiscus and sweet smelling gardenia, now lay barren and alone.   

Step, one step onto the previously sturdy bridge, is followed by sounds of snapping and cracking and decay beneath tentative feet. 

This world is gray, desolate, parched by neglect and careless, carefree use. Not use, abuse. The heavy logs lay in ruin beside the swaying walkway. Once they were the sturdy foundation of all that was healthy and beautiful. 

Midway along the trestle, connecting what is with what was I stop, calling out, “Hello?”

Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris lives in Southport, NC. Published in Whisper’s & Echoes, 50 Give or Take, Visual Verse, Spillwords and in Wounds I Healed. Honorable Mentioned in Tales from the Moonlit Path 2021 Halloween Challenge. Gypsie-Ami has recently completed a chapbook merging her poetry and photography titled, Reflection’s of a Woman’s Life.  

https://gypsieswritingmusingsquotesgripes.wordpress.com/

Names | Crispina Kemp

October 27, 2025

I have no name and yet they seek
Rummaging through the ancient texts
Digging into ancestral myths
They throw at me this, and this, and this
But every name is a distant miss
I have no name
I don’t play that game
Names belong to their dumpster world
Yet ever at me their names they’ve hurled

Crispina is a writer who by her own admission is obsessed with the weird, the unlikely, the mythical and paranormal. She also has a deep love and respect for the land of her birth where she’s often seen ‘walking her camera’.

https://twitter.com/ineebrown51

https://www.amazon.com/author/crispinakemponamazon

Home | Egerue Chioma Jane

October 24, 2025

Of everything real, you were the most—most of all, the first.
Inside the time of absolute, and of everything safe,
where cold dull tiles feel like green grass.
The sun staggers through your window, you like it,
its bright, blissful burn tainting your skin.
Its walls shield you from the world, calm and peaceful inside.
Where you can be you again, for real.
No beautiful masks of people you like or don’t.
You call it home.

My name is Egerue Chioma Jane, a 20-year-old Nigerian poet, writer, and storyteller. I love to read and write — it’s where I feel most at home, surrounded by words that let me be myself.

I Dance | Crispina Kemp

October 20, 2025

I dance a trance to the beating drum
I tread the threads, I circle around
I weave in and weave out of the yawning years
I dance to that drum and have no cares

.

My feet drum the ground
An ancient power to be born
I call forth the bear, my spirit, my guide
I change my steps, no stumble. I glide

Crispina is a writer who by her own admission is obsessed with the weird, the unlikely, the mythical and paranormal. She also has a deep love and respect for the land of her birth where she’s often seen ‘walking her camera’.

https://twitter.com/ineebrown51

https://www.amazon.com/author/crispinakemponamazon

Where Is Reality | Lynn White

October 17, 2025

In my sweet dreams

I can float and swim like a fish.

Can extract air from the water

and breathe it out in bubbles.

But in my dark dreams,

the nightmarish ones,

this is just a pretence.

The only air is within me

and the bubbles are lost to me

as I am lost then.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. 

https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com

https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/