Twisted alphabets of winds and forests slightly change with each mile one walks until they become pure nonsense like time and space in the twilight composed of countless suicidal bicycles. Clouds and leaves cover the sky like too many slovenly mothers, and travelers happily discard their pasts absorbing the dreams of bottled water.
Bio: Ivan Peledov lives in Colorado. His poems have been recently published in SORTES, Mad Swirl, Arc Magazine, and Angel Rust. He is the author of the book Habits of Totems (Impspired, 2021). He can be found online on Twitter @habitsoftotems or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ivan.peledov.
Margaret Viboolsittiseri (aka Maggs Vibo) works in print, broadcast, special events, glitch media, and online. She is a contributor for Poem Atlas and has experimental art in the winnow magazine, Coven Poetry, Ice Floe Press, The Babel Tower Notice Board, ang(st), The Wombwell Rainbow. Recent anthologies include Poem Atlas ‘aww-struck’, Steel Incisors, Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020 (January, 2021) and ‘My teeth don’t chew on shrapnel’: an anthology of poetry by military veterans (Oxford Brookes, 2020). She tweets @maggsvibo and her website is https://www.maggsvibo.com/
There were eleven lights in the ceiling and five trains went past the window. You told me to be silent. Not one word or your violence would speak a thousand. It turns out you wrote a novel all over my skin was a map of the places you had been uninvited. Watercolour bruises I could not dilute with bleach. I cried to the police reliving that moment once again. The examination was filled with swabs and humiliation as a male doctor went near my wounds. I feared men for a long time after, I would even flinch at my brother’s touch. I’d often see red and lash out, like a bull I would charge at whoever told me “I would be okay.” I can’t even look in the mirror without seeing shame! I scrub my skin until it bleeds and please don’t patronise me with so-called kindness! I’m damaged, disgusting, drowning in pain, I can’t bear to wake up and feel this again, I – realised I still have breath in my lungs. When I shut my eyes, I feel at peace. I’ve learnt that quiet thoughts speak volumes. That love doesn’t shout, it whispers. That hands are to hold and not to make fists with. That for a moment I was hollow, a woman who would wallow in self-pity until I remembered who I am – A lioness with courage. So, to ‘he who must not be named’ watch me as I push out my chest and fear the roar that comes from its depths.
Featured image from Unsplash.com from Neonbrand
Faye Alexandra Rose is a UK based writer studying English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Worcester. Her work has been published in several online magazines such as; Mookychick, The Drabble and the online project Poetry & Covid. She is also a Poetry Editor for small leaf press – a magazine dedicated to giving a voice to undiscovered writers. She can be found on Twitter: @FayeAlexandraR1, or via her website: fayealexandrarose.wordpress.com
Paul Brookes is a shop asst. His chapbooks include The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Recently had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb. Paul also runs a poetry blog site http://www.thewombwellrainbow.com for book reviews, art, poetry, and more! Follow on Twitter @PaulDragonwolf1 “Curator and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Book Interviews and poetry and artwork challenges”. YouTube site: “Poetry Is A Bag For Life”, Soundcloud is “The Wombwell Rainbow” Facebook: Paul Brookes – Writer and Photographer
What if you knew that the dream is only a dream upon waking? The night’s stories post-hoc assembled from the first fragments of consciousness, from the returning of the light and the regaining of the senses? Everywhere you’ve been and all the time you’ve been away invented in the slightest seconds of reboot; non-memory rewritten, non-existence papered-over with an illusion that you’ve been somewhere and the story has continued, when – in truth – there’s been no you and no story and no dreams at all in those absent hours. What if you knew that for sure? Should that scare or comfort when contemplating the deeper sleep? That we need to be conscious to be conscious of ourselves and what we’ve been? That non-conscious means no self to dream, no past to haunt and no future to fear? What might you do then with the moments to come?
Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including 2018’s “Not So Funny Now” about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. He has recently been published in EllipsisZine, Dwelling Literary, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brown Bag, and Safe and Sound Press. His co-written, completed six-part BBC radio sit com remains unproduced but available to interested producers!
Fevers of the Mind 