Five Poems by Edilson Afonso Ferreira

 

On a Current Theatrical Season

 

There is a world waiting for its time to happen.

It waits, attentive to the counterpoint marker,

its turn to enter the scene.

Eyes open, anonymous among the spectators,

an envoy, an emissary and plenipotentiary 

of the author of the play, so that each speech,

each act, mainly unwanted and unexpected,

do not become lost.

The author, at home and even more anonymous,

did not want to witness the event, surely regretful

and disconsolate of the rawness at times

he could not avoid in the unfolding of the plot.

And so different worlds overlap,

at its due and exact time.

And the author, in his forced retreat,

his decaffeinated coffee and non-alcoholic beer,

a cloistered five o’clock tea, 

a sad and lonely heart. 

 

 

Hidden in the Depths of Time

 

Suddenly, on any given day, walking up the sidewalks

   became more difficult, it looks like they got taller;

the noise of children and teenagers became louder,

   it started to bother you; 

your children have passed the line of youth

   and you see them as middle-aged people,

   almost elderly;

that book or movie everyone recommends to you,

   and after fifteen minutes of reading or watching,

   you get bored because you have already guessed

   the ending it is proposing;

you have become different, more reserved, quieter,

   looking suspiciously at everyone around you,

   even old friends;

Even worse, and it hurts my heart,

   that young and beautiful woman,

   you never fail to notice and see in the eyes 

   of rapture and admiration, even desire, 

   you note she withdraws, does not reciprocate; 

then you ask yourself – do people think I have stopped

   loving what is beautiful in this world?

despite everything, you maintain your vigor and fullness,

   which they seem to ignore, so you have to learn to live

   with a new status that has been granted to you;

allowing them not to know or suspect you had a youth

   much happier, one they will never have, because time  

   and wind took it away, being hidden, forever and ever.

A Recurring Dream 

 

Sometimes one of us rises to the surface,

taking flight from the depths a dark sea,

where, exiled, we have stayed for so long.      

Defeated in old battles forgotten in time,

sentenced in absentia by a merciless court,

clearing debts of incautious ancestors.

Our vision accustomed to the shadows,

our body surviving with minimal breath.

When the one who adventures the climb

arrives on the shore and breathes full life,

he is abruptly sunk again by diligent guards,

those armed cherubim at Paradise Gate.

Has our penalty not yet lapsed?

Has the reparation of the beaten not yet been paid?

Could we endure light by the day of release?

Perhaps, then, with a pledge of the dark days of yore,

we may, sharing beloved Earth with the Almighty, 

build a new light; friendly to the human nature,

openhearted, unabrasive, and compassionate.

 

First published in Galway Review, August 13, 2025 

 

 

Rebirth

 

I sleep in a dream generated by the nightmares

and eat scraps of hope, milled in the impersonal

and mechanical time machine.

Scraps that feed me to be no more than a dry tree, 

searching for pulling and unwinding roots

that capture me on the ground.

I prevailed over fate that once deceived me

and now walk and will spread my life around. 

I wish distemper, hallucinate, and extrapolate,

horrifying who has enchanted and eluded me

in that dark and deaf land, that was not mine.

I will go, doubtlessly renewed man, in search

not of a drop of water but of one rain that rains

thunder and lightning, the same as the flood

that has baptized our era.

I will reap fruits that, blessed by my hands

and hard a toil, 

It will make me stronger.

I will make love to my wife in sheets of soft Chinese silk

and we will be asleep in a bed of fragrant Lebanon woods.

Not that I deserve more than Abraham,

who only had a glimpse of the Promised Land,

but, of this new one, God willing,

I will take secure possession.

 

First published in the Gambler, April 2015.

 

Cherished Desires

 

I feel I could never be related to owls, bats 

and wolves, or other nocturnal animals.

I love at daylight to stare at the world face to face,

entirely visualizing all its beauties. 

I love the sunrise that dispels the blackness,

exposing and revealing everything,   

without shame, measure or prudence.

I love to feel that we’re on the road again, 

to a future we aren’t aware of, but confident

in one Almighty who, closely and amorously,

hidden and discreet, maybe even shy,

drives and guides all of us. 

I love the noise of people on streets and alleys,

corners and places, 

jointly seeking to move the hard wheels of time.

I prefer love vows made clearly under the sun

than those made in the rapture of night passions.

I must confess that, on some sunny days

and a blue sky,

I dream of riding the winds high and high, 

looking for the lost realms of Paradise.

 

First published in Indiana Voice Journal, Sept/Oct. 2017 issue.

Edilson Afonso Ferreira, 82 years old, is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than Portuguese. Has launched two Poetry Collections, entitled “Lonely Sailor” and “Joie de Vivre”; has 200 poems published, in 360 different publications, in selected international Literary Journals. Has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. 

He began writing at the age of 67, after retiring from a bank. He is always updating his works at www.edilsonmeloferreira.com.    

 

 

Five Poems by Wendy Webb

 

A PANGLOSSIAN DAY BESIDE THE DEBEN

I know it's too late to enjoy a. Birthday treat:

mudflats spread light across the river

but who resists a free bottle of prosecco,

haze of light on water near the Time and Tides.



Mudflats spread light across the river

to Sutton Hoo where Vikings rest masked pieces:

haze of light on water to the Time and Tides,

houseboats wait the buoyancy of water



To Sutton Hoo where Vikings rest masked pieces

two days before its expiry date, happy days.

Houseboats wait the buoyancy of water

rolling dreams course downstream into ocean.



Two days before its expiry date, happy days

coffee drinkers watch the passage of clouds.

Rolling dreams course downstream into ocean:

next year the longboat’s launched past time and tides...



Coffee drinkers watch the passage of clouds

but who resists a free bottle of prosecco.

Next year the longboat’s launched past time and tides,

I know it's too late to enjoy a Birthday treat...

 



DRAINING PARADISE



Your dying was impossible to know,

explored in little bites that did not tell

exuberance of life-drained overflow.



Consuming it so slowly did not show:

in eyes, or cheeks; nor shoulders proudly well.

Your dying was impossible to know.



In feet, in knees, in chest; no blood-course flow.

Your brow and lashes, stubble chin – a shell.

Exuberance of life-drained overflow.



No burial nor wake nor flowers bestow

knowledge of that absent smiling spell.

Your dying was impossible to know.



Ghost of the Devon coach? Though no great blow,

can Christmas past/the room he died? Nothing, never quell,

exuberance of life-drained overflow.



Such stillicide of heaven’s eternal woe,

bordering paradisal pity, so...

your dying was impossible to know.

Exuberance of life-drained overflow.

 


TIME FOR BED, SWEETHEART



Crawling slowly along the path

past two teens – like angels at the tomb

of a busy gardener, long ago.

Busying with concrete, and a white van

crushed between a tree and passing place,

until I sighed the engine silently, alone.

And there, broke bread, watching pairs of

butterflies in flight,

synchronised by brokenness of air.

Unloading self and stripping of tyred wheels,

I eased along a parallel world in bloom:

and there the gardener paused (from UEA),

retired and satisfied by grief – so hard –

and three times every day he petted, watered

and tidied like a corporation lawn.

Beds; so many beds; all angel-groves;

and every petal sang of greater love:

that tended, nurtured, every day.

   His wife. Grief-stricken by

the stillness of departure

to motor-neurone disease...

the last great pain? Of swallowing;

the time; the waste; the loss.

Every day, for over twenty years,

he’d tended, nurtured, bloomed – his lovely wife.

Until I dragged away; his words, like air,

dancing on my currency of departure.

Then, as I passed on by – those careless lads

had vanished in their white van; back to work.

What lesson for such youthfulness? To place

a gravely laden message, set in stone.

My son, memorialised for passing care-

LESS-ness; where his muchness was laid to rest.

No gardener to tend an empty tomb...

so, butterflies, wing petals for his kisses,

to nectar sunshine in this great abyss.

 


HEAVENLY FLIGHTS OF FANCY CHRISTMAS EVE

Persimmon is the Cruellest Month/2024



Remember plucking that chicken without an inch of its life...

it was dead, then, like you are, now.

Doorbell ringing, out the back, as one man went outside

to wring another neck. Feed the village, way back when

Jack wasn’t old; I wasn’t born; my Dad a scrap of a lad

at the kitchen table with his Mam. She pulled out the innards,

prepped the last bird for her joyous Christmas Eve, after

the plucking. She was plucked first at Kilby Bridge

along the Grand Union Canal, birth certificate proved true

after he’d gone. Plenty of feathers, back of the throat,

up the nose, fingers raw, smell of blood, cold chicken.

Stories passed down through generations, remembered

like it was yesterday. So when you say your loved one

passed by leaving bird feathers/darted across redbreast

bright as the morning star/seagull-called to chill bones

white and dead; I won’t. Maybe, a little.

Not immune from allegories, phantasmagorical tales

of bravado and dreams. Heaven’s like that.

Don’t want Jack walking past, dropping dead chickens;

plucking future Grandma at the Boarding House.

Awaking my Twenty-First Century Woke,

that Dad stayed up late, put out no stocking for Nicholas

and may have received an orange; or black coal.

Cannot deny birds’ feathers on the lawn;

robin redbreast every year darting past, awaiting worms,

or berry-brash crows/rooks/magpies/wood pigeons

remaindered on the bird feeder.

Gladys possibly left forget-me-nots around our garden,

like those at Enderby, across a brand new motorway,

a farmer’s barren field. New housing, edge of village?

Flocks of birds proved a genesis: none flocking

at Eden-time, among flowers. Heavenly scents

of raucous seagulls above brash petals; cold chicken

uncanned to the oven for Sunday roast with all the trimmings.

Is there a heaven beyond darkening clouds?

None of my dead have returned, plucking harps nor birds.

Remember that day: a fully-plucked wood pigeon on the lawn?

Feathers snowy as Christmas angels in brash dresses,

half the heavenly host singing Gloria. Or Grandad,

off wringing another neck for Santa Claus.

 



PULLING PINT AND PUNTER FAMILIES



Wait for miles of tyre burn

to iron away news and ponder

across that desert of a red tie

and Sahara sizzle empathy put into

a fresh row of ironed shirts

from Berlin to Montreal.



You watch the bar pulling pints

and punters on a Saturday afternoon

asking the waitress to switch off TV football

louder than a MAGA hat rally

while grating table legs and chairs

and handing out gene-pool goodies bags.



Move empty plates and glasses’ dregs

and leap up metaphorically into welcome hugs

dive-bomb conversations of a seagull beach

scrap for morsels of food or gossip gassing

as children bore and blitz the outdoor playground

and loud goodbyes promise barbecue or bottle.



You make friendship bracelets of birth and death

transcribing your heart’s hidden script

of dust or books or charity piles of clutter

exchange cuppa tea and cake and selfies

send texts and jpegs, emojis, safe ETAs

as updated SatNav grumbles miles back home.

Wendy Webb loves nature, wildlife, symmetry and form and the creative spark. Published in Reach, Sarasvati, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Dreich, Seventh Quarry, The Journal, The Frogmore Papers, Acumen, Drawn to the Light; online in Littoral, Lothlorien, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Atlantean, Poetry Kit, Amateur Gardening, Leicester Literary Journal, Drawn to the Light, Poetry Wivenhoe, Seagulls (Canada), forthcoming: Poetry Breakfast; broadcast Poetry Place. Book: Love’s Floreloquence; Landscapes (with David Norris-Kay) from Amazon; free downloads of other poetry from Obooko.

Love's Floreloquence: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Meek, CT, Meek: 9798850867003: Books

Landscapes: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Norris-Kay, David, Meek, CT, Meek, Norris-Kay, David: 9798851001659: Books

 

 

Three Poems by Tony McMahon

 

Space Invaders

Coin slot empty,

still I play on.

Frantically pressing the red button,

sweat slithers across the joystick,

like wet mackerel.

 

I ponder what it would be like to be

No longer chased by a hungry alien,

teeth penetrating through the screen,

rising like an alligator in a Florida swamp.

 

I play on.

Even though the threat has gone,

a blank screen provides little comfort. 

 

 

The bus stop

Stood stationary at the bus stop,

with shackled feet.

Solar plexus vibrating in beat with

the heart.

Sweat sticking to the upper lip,

failing to dry,

guided by a broken egg timer.

 

A pocketful of pence dangles,

as hands leave the pocket.

Waiting for the doors to open.

Thoughts arrive like scud missiles,

how many will detonate?

 

Eyes meet with the bus driver,

he looks away as the bus doors close

and the bus drives away.

Passengers stare out of the window,

viewing their own world.

 

Stood at the bus stop,

 a 5 minute wait,

 for the next bus. 

 

 

O’Meara’s pint

An overflowing glass with cream dribbling.

Settling, as colours become divided and defined.

O’Meara huddled in the furthermost part of the bar.

He takes a sip.

A cream coloured moustache forms

over protruding white hairs on his tired skin. 

 

A Seanchai in a tiny part of north London,

he’s been sat daily in the bar for 50 years.

He talks of ration books and remittance

that the family farm needed.

Of priests and nuns who watched their flock

arrive freshly off the boat.

Digging holes in each borough of London

and which one his heart found a home in.

Letters home that dwindled over the years,

as ink blot was replaced by headstones. 

 

The pint dwindles to white cloud;

he contemplates returning home

to the black mould which has formed above his bed,

believing his youthful dreams of a pocket full

of the Queens head are gone. 

 

Looking out at the empty seats, that increasingly

provides his audience,

he recalls Cronin from Cork and Clancy from Clare,

who enjoyed a pint and the craic.

When he shuts his eyes he can see them sat with

a pint listening intently,

he ponders briefly

what would happen if he never opened his eyes.

Tony McMahon is a published poet from Islington in London who is of Irish descent. Tony enjoys writing about a number of subjects, notably identity and the Irish diaspora.

 

One Poem by David Harker

 

When Your Silence Filled The Room

It was in the hollow pause after your sentence,
when the air thickened, and the world waited.
No flutter of apology, no hurried explanation.
Only the gentle throb of meaning, suspended between us.
 
A clock ticked somewhere behind the wall,
measuring the stretch of nothing that grew vast.
An unspoken truth swirling in the quiet,
heavier than any phrase you could muster.
 
I watched your hands, still and uncertain,
your gaze lost in a window’s grey reflection.
In that hush, I learned the shape of your regret,
a confession carried by the echo of withheld words.
 
There was kindness in the silence too,
a gentle mercy that language could not bear.
The calm between storms, a peace we did not name,
where forgiveness lingered, fragile and unclaimed.
 
Later, when voices returned,
their syllables felt clumsy, rough, inadequate.
For I had already heard everything
in the moment when your silence filled the room.

 

David Harker lives in Whitland, South West Wales, with Helena his gorgeous wife. He has been writing poetry and flash fiction since 2012, and love the way the written word can evoke feelings and emotions.

One Poem by Reed Venrick

 

Apparitions in a Lemon Grove 

 

In this series of gallery paintings, we see

Rene Magritte strolling between rows of trees,

Sketch paper under one arm, easel on

His back; around him stands a plotted

 

Grove of lemon trees growing between

A beach shell road and the Mediterranean

Shore—he shoves hIs easel deep in soil

And works quick—draws, sketches in hope

 

Of getting on paper the unique designs

He visualizes and senses in the trees.

The images he wants most are those

Of fantasy animals—ones he’s seen

 

In clouds above the Rub-al-Khali, or Chile’s

Atacama, or the steamy forests of Marajo

Island. In the succulent leaves and boughs

And arcing trees—he sees heads of parrots

 

And diving hawks with bodies of tigers,

Or crocodile tails. He turns down another

Sandy row but pauses at the dramatic

Sight of a galloping horse with branching

 

Pegasus wings. Asking himself: what are

The implications of animals manifesting

Their images in trees such as these? Do

Designs show souls of fossilized animals

 

Caught in a time warp? Animals gone extinct

Millions of years before dinosaurs? Or does

He sense future forms of animals thrown

Into the present in a reverse time warp?

 

Birds and mammals that will appear on earth

Millions of years after the thin page of human

History has eroded into the salty, coral sand

Of the French Rivera? Magritte’s fevered

 

Mind ponders such obsessive questions

Of metaphysics, but he knows he must hurry,

For the light and the twilight fades fast here

At latitude 43—little time remains to record

 

The menagerie of fantastical birds roosting

In a citrus grove, so he dumps his easel and

Quick-photographs with his I-phone. Magritte

Knows the day’s viewing is a once-in-a-life-

 

Time event—he knows that with tomorrow’s

Dawning light, the animal spirits that roosted

For a night in the grove will fly on over

The sea to join the transient clouds and

 

Evolve into new designs before returning

Another season to roost in evergreen trees.

Reed Venrick searches the museums of France for Rene Magritte poems.

Two Poems by Ken Holland

 

Favela 

 

You handed me your glasses and asked

that I look inside your head.

 

So I did.

 

I peered in closely, as though reading

the small font of footnotes.

 

And my god, the squalor.

 

The topography of your thoughts

was a tent city of poverty thick as paste.

You were everywhere within, and held out

your many hands to guide me over

viscous runnels of jellied-water.

Weak planks of wood held our weight

as we crossed amid a scent

that flowed with the flush of an abattoir.

Your hundredfold fingers caressed my face

and reshaped it as your own.

I was bitten by the malaria of your mind,

its fever hugging me with a heat

that raw enwrapped my neck.

I collapsed onto one knee and felt the sludge

slick about my shin. A gray vapor melted

over my eyes. I pulled your name

from the trench of my strangled throat

and flung it into the fetid air.

 

What? you asked, hearing my voice.

What did you see?

 

I handed back your glasses. Ran my hand

through the waves of my hair.

 

Don’t be foolish, I replied,

I never opened my eyes.

And the First Line Is 

 

I opened the door.

            What a hideous first line for a poem.

            “I opened the door.”

            “I opened the door.”

How about this:

            I put my fist through the wall.

            I punched my fist straight through the wall.

            And there my hand closed on something unseen.

            And I pulled it back through the wall and flung it to the floor.

            It may have been breathing. It may have been feigning death.

            It may have been anything at all.

            Whatever it was, it was lying on the floor of my room

            Like a thought barely formed

            Like the intake of breath before a scream

            This thing I’d pulled away from where it had been

            And to show it where now it had come to lie

            I swept my hand through the air, to accentuate

            The four corners of despair, and whispered to this thing

            As if a thing that could hear: Welcome to my world

            And said it twice more just to be clear.

Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Atlanta Review, and Pedestal Magazine. He was awarded first place in several competitions including New Ohio Review, Kim Addonizio judge. His chapbook, “Rust and Slag”, was a finalist in the 2024 Concrete Wolf competition as well as the 2025 Moonstone Press competition which Moonstone subsequently published. His poem, “Sepia Life” was a finalist in Bicoastal Review’s 2025 contest. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting: kenhollandpoet.com

 

Two Poems & One Haiku by Elizabeth Marino

 

FOREST OF WE

In the forest of we

Your hand reaches out

Touches a limb

But not flesh or bone 

 

Deep indigo blue

A star shower tonight.

City lights gleam bright.

A step away from you

I, too, gleam in the night.

Previously published by Highland Park Poetry (USA).

FLIGHT

Did you run before you walked?

 

Toddler grin snaps open

Before she discovers flight.

 

Mira! Mira! Look!

The chair – as if across an ocean.

 

Crumpled eyes as she wavers

Then the excited cries land

 

Doubt against doubt

Then a moment of risk.

 

They will tell her later

About the time

She first took flight.

Previously published by Highland Park Poetry (USA).

HAIKU IN BLUE

Dust storms of charred leaves

Carried by clouds floating by

Azure lake shadows.

Elizabeth Marino is an American poet, actor, and educator based in Chicago. Pushcart Prize nominated, her poems and short memoir pieces appeared in the 2020 collection Asylum, as well as two chaps (Ceremonies and Debris) and over 25 international print anthologies, most recently Riders on the Storm from the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. She is a member of Circulo de poetas & Writers, TallGrass Writers Guild, and SAG-AFTRA. She also co-hosts a classical ballet film series at a local library with Mme. Elizabeth Boitsov, of Boitsov Classical Ballet Productions.