By Luccian Layth Drink: Black Coffee I chose the café because something in me had failed to leave it. The street outside held a cold that did not insist. It settled instead — into fabric, into the narrow space between…

By George Oliver We met at the movies. At the pictures, as my grandpa says. At the cinema. At a cinema. Specifically: the BFI. The British Film Institute. Belvedere Road, South Bank, London, SE1 8XT.           We were at the…

By: Bruce Levine My internal clock is set at ManhattanI face the world with a jaded point of viewManhattanites are chauvinistic, snobbish, opinionatedAnd relentlessly focused Manhattan energy drives our universeLike the taxies forge the streetsIn a frontal assault Art, history…

By: J.K. Durick It’s Like That Our personal past hangs aroundAlways ready to reappear in Dreams, in recollections, in Whole scenes that are there Waiting to become again. I’m In a meeting with colleagues We’re talking, laughing about Some college…

By: Tah Asongwed That evening the arguments slowly ran out of breath. Not because the villagers had agreed. Villagers rarely agree in a single day. But the sun had slipped behind the hills, and darkness, like a patient elder, had…

By James Aitchison When words don’t come easily, invent them!  William Shakespeare did, along with J. R. R. Tolkien, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. In fact, Shakespeare invented 2,000 new words and phrases such as hurry, eyeball, puppy dog, dauntless,…

By: Kristian Keefer Dear Nan, There are things I wish I had said while you were still here. I think about that more now than I used to. You weren’t the kind of grandmother people usually picture. You didn’t bake…

By: Paul Bavister Love Poem I think back through the spiny mammalsscoffing yolk from dinosaur eggsto leggy fish skittering at the swamp’s edgethen even further back to spinning jellyfishand single cells in electric soupwhen the earth was still too hot…

By: James Aitchison In life, the only reality —the true reality —is Eternity.It is infinite andimmutable.No human hand hasshaped it.No human handcan control it.Craft your lifenot for the ephemeral,but for the eternal.In doing so,the ferocity withinevery man’s heartcan be woven…

Review of Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond, published by Speaking Tiger Books By Mitali Chakravarty Ruskin Bond’s Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond has writings…