INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Lana Bella
Hongri Yuan
Lyn Lifshin
Duane Locke
Elisavietta Ritchie
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Fahredin Shehu
Laszlo Slomovits
Andy N
Alex Ferde
Lekan Alesh
Michael Lee Johnson
Running Cub
Ali Znaidi
Silvia Scheibli
Robert Nisbet
Richard Gartee
Amit Parmessur
Jennifer Burd
Paul B. Roth
Sanjeev Sethi
Keith Moul
Arjun Dahal
Alan Britt
Richard Lynch
Fred Wolven
Eddie Awusi
Joanie Freeman
Hongri Yuan
Amit Shankar Saha
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2017
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 48 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
A SHELF CONTAINS YOU & I
We are hiding in uncoloured memories,
you & I, where a name is not a name
but shadows of abandoned bodies stitched to
remind us of rotten faces. When you smile
you are not smiling, in fact, you are doing
a thousand things except sprouting a
smile on your garden-face where nothing else
grows except a fever and some sunflowers.
Of fever there's nothing else to say,
but sunflowers reminds me of kinky hairs.
You are not kinky if there is a
smile on your face. But this face is a strange room
where faces are kept on quiet shelves.
A shelf contains you and I.
BROKEN STONES
1.
You've heard the free folks say
broken stones are what remain
when a rock is dead. But do rocks
really die? Do memories too, say,
we hold on to them real tight
decides to chop off smile by smile
till all that remains is your staring face
in an uncoloured memory?
2.
I have built half of my home
in your laughter, half in your tears.
Each day I'd wake to new balconies
but the backyard, the shrubs that are
half dead are still half alive. My neighbours
still wear strange faces to work but
the world keep its old worn out smile.
3.
I memorize the stones we've
abandoned in the cold,
I pick them up as refuge
moments off some UNICEF posters
and gave them religions. Tomorrow
I will open a mansion for broken stones
and ask them not why they are here
but what I can do for them. I, too,
am a stone someone threw away.
Lekan Alesh, Lagos, Nigeria