​The Flying Dodo
Issue 6, March 2023: Darkness
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A sense of one’s strength
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He’s a glass of wine kept in the darkness;
A silver line here...
A silver line there…
Like the armor of a knight
Hiding in the night,
Made to glisten like a sword
Sharpened more on flesh than metal;
A sword that drips in black blood,
Covered with veins of the dead
That are still alive;
Pulsating here and pulsating there,
As if it will grow into a creature itself.
Reminded of his sword,
The knight rises.
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Abel Johnson Thundil is a poet from India. His works have appeared in Terror House Magazine, The Pangolin Review, namely. His latest anthology of poems, Wilted: Poems of Modern Tragedy, is available on Amazon.
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At War With Trolls
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In the pinprick light / talking heads come into focus / the horror is in the tiny touches / the hoods / and dancing fools / as the homeless woman / saves her words in a plastic bag
Listening to the peaceless staccato of bird song / and the sizzle of fried chicken voices / with their kaleidoscope of words / we are not sure if we’re being enlightened or punished
Aren’t we tired of soup can consumption / and empty speeches / noisy as dice / as they bring out the bodies / and aren’t we tired of pretending / life is not a work of deconstruction
What if locked down by wrongness / the silence rustled / so we disembarked / and saved ourselves from falling into endless conversations / with no talking / and called it victory
Adele Evershed prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies. Finishing Line Press will publish Adele’s first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places, in 2023
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Shadow Dancing
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Maybe it’s right
that parts of me want to stay
rooted in my seven deadly sins,
composted.
Maybe it’s okay
sometimes, to live among
the roots, buried, innermost
sacred.
Maybe it’s good
to let light collaborate, not win,
to make the darkness
exquisite.
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Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies from around the world.
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By the Dark Shores of Night
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A glimmering full moon, solid as earth, floats
on a sea of silver clouds over tall pine trees
that cast shadows, alter my perceptions,
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induce a drug-like state where a new awareness
greets me. I practice lucid dreaming, practice
what it is to bring dream-sights into wakeful
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existence. A line blurs and realities shift like
wind-blown sand that trans-morphs into a
new world each day.
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It is miraculous to still see all the elements
of yesterday’s world, but rearranged
by the turn of a kaleidoscope.
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Emily Black, second woman graduate in Civil Engineering, University of Florida, had a long engineering career, the only woman in a sea of men. She recently began writing poetry and is published in numerous journals. Her first poetry book, The Lemon Light of Morning, was released in 2022. Emily wears Fire Engine Red Lipstick.
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Obsidian
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darkness
is fragile like
black feathers… look into
a raven’s eyes and see the truth
darkness
is the
wings of a moth
disintegrating on
your fingertips… darkness is a
silk shroud
peeled back
until even
the moon surrenders to
the light… this is darkness’s truth
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Farah Ali lives in the UK and writes fiction and poetry, with a particular interest in haiku and other short forms. She has been published in a variety of journals and her supernatural Deerleap Hollow series is available from Amazon.
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Stanzas for Corri on Mother’s Day
It is difficult to tell
With mother and daughter
Which is the root
And which is the flower
Because there is no love
Between the minute and the hour
Conspiring to kill
The father with the water
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Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and US Air Force veteran. He considers life an impossible sit up, but plausible.
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River of Death
Beside the dark, cobbled path
lies the black river.
Fierce and outflowing, each droplet
a wrath for sinners.
Evil-doers of the past continuing
to pull off sins perish and melt in the river.
The droplet splashing on their feet
is the executioner, calling the prey
in the dark, vicious night, every night.
Either walking near the river must cease,
or it is the death of the river.
Born on a 13, Jenny Cruz started writing poems at 31. She adores cooking, television and palindromes.
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Nighthawks
Nighthawks
slapdash makeup
beneath the gaslights
pepper’s pigment
buying time
or earning paper
calmly in the darkness
he begins assembling
rocket launcher
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Jerome Berglund has many haiku, senryu and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Bear Creek Haiku, Bamboo Hut, Black and White Haiga, Bottle Rockets, Cold Moon Journal, namely.
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Opel
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Opel, emshee, stay back, FOB, fobbit,
“mister, mister, mister... give me chocolat.”
Recognize these touchstones,
too rough to be granite, too unpolished to be opalescent.
Nod knowingly at these shared reference points.
Please relate to these fusty, familiar totems of my Iraq War sojourn.
I’m alone in the murky slop of the night's edge, and my friends are dead.
It’s 4 a.m. a decade later and I’m sobbing.
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Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, the author of three local interest books, an Indiana University graduate and a Pushcart Prize nominee. His writing and photography have appeared in more than 100 journals, including Gravel, Chaleur, The Offbeat, and Tipton Poetry Journal, and his short plays have been staged in Detroit and the Boston metro.
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Light Study
So this is the edge of night
in what should at this hour
be called a moonroom
rather than in my usual parlance
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A Robin, two blue jays,
crickets, katydids, my breaths
as darkness quiets the woods
leopard frogs’ songs anon
I need to put on socks
lean into evening’s soft demise
as summer yellows, dries, drops
shivering season begins
On this north side of home
in a northern clime in near
autumn in this room named sun
silence falls on a screech owl’s cry
Here I am bathed in rays
Here I am awash in beams
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Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 16 books to her credit. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY).
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Nightfall
darkness is the stealth
of creeping years
days darken into winter
lengthen as our
lives dwindle to bones
that creak under
night’s lumpy quilt wake
to blackness of
another morning’s slow
stumble into death’s
blackout swallowed by
its yawning shadow
Kate Meyer-Currey lives in Devon, UK. Her poems have been published in a variety of journals worldwide.
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It Is Dark Here
I am running my fingers through the furred dust. Light, blindfolded, cannot find the key;
Now at last the smallest of chinks has appeared; the walls of the dam have been
pierced. Flashes of torchlight in unpredictable sequence light up the mothy darkness.
Exercise books, satchels, morning prayers. Music drifting across misty playing fields awakes the ear of the past. The dead feel their way through the dusk. They struggle for breath, like desperate fish emptied from a creel on a cold quayside. My father, in his old mac, is ploughing the twenty acre field. The rich earth turns, noisy seagulls form a foaming wake above the dark waves. My husband is listening to Bach. As the violin soars unbearably, he wipes away a tear. Now the far horizon is fading. It's no more than a faintly pencilled line, the edge of memory. It is dark there.
Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher who taught in UK, India and Tanzania. She has had work published online and in print. She lives near Cambridge, UK.
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Insomniac Shadows
Seeking slumber in Elysian Fields
like a restful warrior, sword set aside,
agitated closed eyes twitch on edge,
far from a comforting REM respite,
I reach out to follow Hypnos, god of sleep,
grasp his son Morpheus’ drowsy hand,
who snoozes in a crystal cave upon
a poppy seed filled mattress,
molding, forming delirious delusions—
clutching only wispy shape-shifting digits
that slide through my own fingers,
leaving me in a wakeful nightmare
deprived of relaxation, intoxicating bliss,
dark serenity in ever morphing dreams.
Author, educator, and Pushcart nominee for poetry, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies such as The Ekphrastic Review and Anti-Heroin Chic. Warner’s poetry and fiction collections include Flytraps and Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction (2022)—as well as. Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories.
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No one’s dancing in the dark
It’s late in the evening
The city hides its darkness
With lights
Festival lights
I attend a soirée
One that tries
Its level best
To slot me
“Do you drink?”
I am asked
The haves and have-nots
At a glittering do
Those with whiskey glasses
Those without
Those holding them
Hold them well
I don’t really belong anywhere
I drink
I drink not
I occasionally sip
Perhaps I tease
Life has to be lived from both ends
The music grows softer
The conversation
A wee bit louder
The festive lights
Hold the night’s secrets
Like that girl there
In a tight black dress
Holding in her stomach
With a tummy tucker
Once the revelry says adieu
Street lights will be
As erratic as ever
In a country in the subcontinent
Everything shines from the outside
Vandana Kumar is a New Delhi-based French teacher, poet, film producer, writer and cinephile. Her poems have been published in several national and international websites, award winning/nominated anthologies and journals of repute. Her debut collection of poems Mannequin Of Our Times was published in February 2023.
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Rommel Swallows Cyanide
no one comes to visit
me: I wonder how long
I would lie, dead
in this a.p.t.?
The landlord would miss
his rent in a month;
mail would slowly build
in the box;
people at work might
call the cops:
Richard Brautigan, who was getting
50-grand
a book
while he was hot,
lay for a month
headless
on the 2nd floor
of his house
while flies and
maggots gathered.
Wayne F. Burke’s poems have been widely published in print and online. He has published eight full-length poetry collections and a book of short stories. He lives in Vermont, USA, and worships the dodo.
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