INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Alan Britt
Shutta Crum
Jumoke Verissimo
Las Slomovits
Richard Kurtz
Lyn Lifshin
Duane Locke
Serena Wilcox
Jerry Blanton
Dami Ajayi
Odimegwu Onwumere
Joanie Freeman
Dike Okoro
Amit Parmessur
Paul B. Roth
Divya Rajan
Kim Keith
Fred Wolven
C. Derick Vann
Al Ortolani
Steve Barfield
Jim Davis
Chris Lord
Jennifer Burd
Will Swanson
Isabel Kestner
Lisa Schmidt
Running Cub
Tolu Ogunlesi
She defied all
the admonishment
and fluttered her eyelid
and took the other uninviting way
to make money
without reverence
to her pride:
the woman's pride.
Sadly!
She has made the money
but bought Human Immuno Virus;
she has now spent all the money on
trying to buy her life, her future,
and the future is still bleak.
POVERTY
Is there anything like poverty?
Is it POVERTY when a man is healthy
but not wealthy?
Is it POVERTY when a man is wealthy
but not healthy?
Is it POVERTY when a man is a rich-illiterate
but a poor-literate?
Is it POVERTY when a man has many children
but there is no money to take care of them?
Is it POVERTY when a man is rich
but has no child?
What you call POVERTY might be RICHES
to the other man.
Are there not out there financially
rich barren women
who are craving for children?
Are there not out there
financially muscled people
who do not have peace?
Are there not out there people
who are handicapped
but have handiwork?
What seems as POVERTY to you
might be RICHES to the other man.
Is the success of man
determined by how successful
he is financially?
In life, man lags one thing or another
no matter how highly placed.
So, there is no RICH man, no POOR man.
What abound are gluttonous-insatiable persons
or you call them kleptomaniacs.
Odimegwu Onwumere, Oyigbo, Rivers State, Nigeria