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There are very few single mountains in the world

The earth’s crust pushes up, forces itself out towards a cloudless sky and they hold hands, the mountains here an obstacle, there an adventure. Once, on a plateau warriors were bartering and selling milk of kindness. On the eastern ridge of the highest of the mountains, a waterfall fell and fell. A solitary vulture soared and curated the dead.

Periwinkle

Put its blue-violet pastel in your mouth, a flower but also a word, which knows perfect more than we do. A bouquet is what I really want, from you, peripleasing and winkling my tongue. Oh, forever. Wink, and a flower becomes a windmill, becomes a circle.

Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus.  Her work was included in various anthologies, most recently in Europa 28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe (Comma Press, 2020) and in the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day anthology (UK). She has won prizes or been commended in international poetry and short story competitions. Her latest book is the collection of short stories Selfie (Roman Books, 2017).

Parting

I don’t know much about goodbyes except that we used to catch lacewings in fields of potatoes, line them up on a plastic table, take their heads from their bodies with tweezers and drop them like kisses onto petri dishes, the two of us plucking oranges from the tree as we labeled, slurping the juice as the wings stick to my hands, the black eyes looking, the dishes filed away in a bag, leaves falling on the table as if mourning all the things that have ever been torn apart.

Noa Covo’s fiction has appeared in Jellyfish Review, Okay Donkey, and trampset. Her micro-chapbook, Bouquet of Fears, was published by Nightingale and Sparrow Press. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.

What Blooms

when we found your car
abandoned, it was blooming

with bright white tissues,
crumpled stars mottled

with tears strewn about
the seats and floor, lotus

blossoms bound to you by
your tears and your DNA

and those final moments
of your despair.  I admit.

I identified more with them,
with those stark and unmoving

witnesses held prisoner
than I ever did                    with you

how to pray after loss to suicide

 Whoever loves his life, loses it
                     John 12:25

fall to your knees in the empty house
kneel beside the bed where two days ago
he pulled the trigger and bled to death,
the same bed where as an infant,
he slept safely          bow your head

in prayer to a new Holy Trinity: 
Father, Gun, Holy Ghost
place your ear to the floor
listen for whatever
sound life leaves behind

instead hear the family next
door greet each other halfheartedly
at the end of another day,
as though that is ever anything
other than a miracle

Joan Kwon Glass is a biracial (Korean/Caucasian) second generation American. She grew up in Michigan and South Korea, and now lives near New Haven, Connecticut. Her poems have been published or are upcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Ghost City Review, Sublunary Review, Rise Up Review, Black Napkin Press, Dying Dahlia Review, Vagabond City Lit, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Literary Mama, among others. Her poem “Bathing Scene” was featured on the Saturday Poetry Series: Poetry as it Ought to Be, and her poem “Cartouche,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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