January 23rd

-Marcel Herms “Die Zellenturen sind luftdicht”

-Kerfe Roig “Owl Moon”

-Christine O’Connor

Owl Moon Mystique

First gentle breeze of the year
Sweetly stroking my cheek
Whispering your faith and encouragement in my ear
Strong beacon of trust when mine grow weak

The brilliant sun melting all fears
As hearing your safe voice speak
Like your steadfast presence near
Hope souls curiosity peak

Pale Selene shines shadows clear
Illuminating connection both seek
Warm care battered hearts elixir
Singing owl moon mystique

-©RedCat

Responding to KR Owl Moon

Owl Moon

Full and bright, the night alight
with skittering scatters and chitter-chat
of sated rat. The vixen barks to her mate,
and beneath the walls, creatures slither and crawl,
while mice and voles in the shadows hide
as feathered wings outstretched glide–and bide.

And shall I call it owl moon?
A moment in time, perhaps not real—
Imagined flights, unseen sights, but
the planets spin, the stars glow and go
about what they do, and the owl does, too,
with a hoot to the world, he dives,
survives—though it’s fate—not feud,
the hunters and the pursued.

All the questions, unanswered, still are asked—
the moments gone, past to future and to past–

but listen–
the fade of argent song, the hummed goodnight,
as trills and twitters awaken dawn’s light.

-Merril D Smith

MH23

Aux Barricades!

They built gallows, crashed through police lines,
smashed glass. Someone was beaten to death.
Life was crushed out of someone else.
Shattering, scattering everywhere.
He had been in the thick of political riots

all over the world, some against the Right,
some against the Left, some against the tax
on gas. He never thought he would
find himself in such a thing at home,
the seat of democracy defiled.

A woman walked away wiping her eyes
on a piano-print scarf, “I was MACED!” she cried.
“I didn’t even get inside.“ Why did you want
to go inside the Capitol? “Because it’s a REVOLUTION! “
she sobbed, collapsing on her companion’s shoulder.

What surprised me most were the grandmothers
said the journalist, standing off to the side
with their children and grandchildren,
looking like they were saying yes, this is what
I want, yes. The grandmothers.

-Holly York

Owl Moon – KR23

Stop the car. I saw something white.
Was it a flash of light ?
Certainly bright.

It seemed to go up to that tree
and yet the Moon was behind me.
I’ll get out and see.
“Owl”.

22,Ja,2021 for the twenty-third of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.

Bios And Links

-Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Christine O’Connor

is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.

Christine O'Connor

-Marcel Herms

is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.

He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

=Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Godefroy Dronsart

is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.

-Joy Fleming

Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.   

-Holly York

lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.

-Alan Gary Smith

A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.

-Hilary Otto

is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto

-Jim young

 is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque

Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree  in English Literature and  History (
Ancient Indo-Pak  Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,

 articles and stories since 1980.A published  poet Anjum was awarded  Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in  2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .

She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for  Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers  

Educational Consultant by Profession. 

Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..