Issue Five Contents

4 poems
by Domingo Alfonso
2 poems
by Rito Ramón Aroche
3 poems
by Caridad Atencio
Flower Power
by Miguel Barnet
2 poems
by Pierre Bernet
2 poems
by Yanelys Encinosa Cabrera
4 poems
by Alberto Peraza Ceballos
3 poems
by Maria Liliana Celorrio
4 poems
by Felix Contreras
art
by Wally Gilbert
3 poems
by Georgina Herrera
3 poems
by Karel Leyva
3 poems
by Robert Manzano
2 poems
by Roberto Méndez Martínez
Grand Prismatic Spring
by Jamila Medina
2 poems
by Edel Morales
3 poems
by Alex Pausides
How Lucky They Are, The Normal Ones
by Roberto Fernandez Retamar
A Gust Disperses the Limits of Home
by Soleida Ríos
3 poems
by Mirta Yáñez
Frogpondia
3 poems
by Karel Leyva
translated by Carmen Laura Contreras, Anne James, and Yma Johnson
Karel Alexei Leyva Ferrer (Santiago de Cuba, 1975) is a member of the organizing committee of the International Poetry Festival of Havana. He is a poet and cultural promoter, and holds the 2005 Nosside Caribbean International Poetry Prize, among other acknowledgements. He has published the collections Ágape Inconexo (2001), Cambios de marea (2005 and 2008), Escenas cotidianas (2010) and Sucesiones (2015). He has work in both Cuban and international anthologies, journals and digital publications.

Anne James has edited and solicited work for Ploughshares, St. Petersburg Review and Zymbol, the latter of which she founded in 2012. She also served as Treasurer of the New England Poetry Club from 2012-2016. She now works as a freelance editor, literary agent, translator and publishing consultant. She can be reached at annejjames@gmail.com.

Laura Contreras was born in Cuban in 1995 and is currently pursuing undergraduate degrees in history and Chinese at Havana University. In 2017, she conducted tours for Chinese and Costa Rican visitors to Cuba. Contreras worked as an English-Spanish translator for UNEAC at the International Poetry Festival of Havana, also in 2017. She was employed as a Chinese-Spanish translator in a Cuban Factory for a company based in Shanghai in 2018. Contreras currently works as a private Spanish tutor and teacher.

Yma Johnson is a first generation Sierra Leonean immigrant who began her writing career in 1996 as a journalist in Puerto Rico. She has written articles on topics ranging from the criminalization of the mentally ill to Japanese swordsmanship. She is a master’s candidate in creative writing at Eastern Michigan University where she taught rhetoric and composition. She also taught a poetry at a women's prison. Yma won 1st place in the 2012 Current Magazine Fiction and Poetry Contest as well as an honorable mention from 2014 Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, the St. Petersburg Review, The Encyclopedia Project Vol. 3, an anthology of experimental literature. Her fiction was also anthologized in, “Cthulhu Lies Dreaming,” short story collection of works inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.

Underground

Stained Glass

The Grover

Underground

Midnight in the metro of Milan after boarding the red line with the modesty of those who are on the other side of the platform and the curiosity of a schoolboy clutching your hands around the plastic bag in which you guard a slice of cake to eat in the morning on the way to the Steam Factory. No one sees you. Despite your strange status of non-emigrant of budget tourist of business class return flight. The tiny lettering on the paper instructs you that you don’t want to change pockets while luck is still on your side. The first act finished they will call you, don’t doubt it, they will call you. At least so that you see how you can become a happily condemned criminal in the latest model cellblocks. You don’t recall the name of the stop you don’t want to ask. They told you to be careful don’t let someone confuse you and end up paying for too many mistakes. You’re a specimen that lives on the embrace of the complicit gaze that ignites the memory. You’re seated in the carriage that carries you inevitably to the East like all rivers like all songs that pierce the night.

Stained Glass

for Juan Carlos Flores

A boy has died on the coast of Europe, in the Windward Passage in Magreb, in the streets of Canberra in high Peru, in the channel on the north of the island, in the parking lot in Milan, in the shot-up classrooms of Columbine, throat slit in Palmira, starving in New Delhi, torn to pieces by the bloody jaws of war, with lungs grey from smog, glue, cigarettes. The boy has died near to oblivion his executioner is man, capital, bullets, ignorance. A fatuous mirage is in proscenium his tiny body, the multiplied face, the eyes plucked out. It’s not possible to embrace this anatomy glass separates us from him, while the loudspeaker announces that the shipwreck was possibly caused by overcrowding that his death on the streets, in gold mines, in quicksand, under the voracious dicing of knives, by gunshot, by kilos, by stones thrown, is a casual and regrettable fact of a sad and unexpectedly frequent prognostication.

The Grover

Hard days are coming —you said— this nasty word that bitters my mouth and my brutal hand against the white of pulp and porcelain is what dictates all of my hours. I’m a creature of gestures and habits. Whoever asks about me will receive nothing but silence Men pursue sudden changes in other people the visceral weight of stain remover the borders of a country where they can mutilate forgetfulness. You’ve preferred bread for this leap friends will know that you’re coming back that ash may fall into the water mixing acrimony and patience together. You men who are still clinging to discord look at the arsenal that remains here around the initiation itself the soul is a practical state that can mutilate itself by its own will. This is another of those dislocated verses yielded to the Pyrrhic flame of a good time for mediations. You, have come to the end. We, are waiting for the signal, perhaps, for fear of not returning.
Karel Alexei Leyva Ferrer (Santiago de Cuba, 1975) is a member of the organizing committee of the International Poetry Festival of Havana. He is a poet and cultural promoter, and holds the 2005 Nosside Caribbean International Poetry Prize, among other acknowledgements. He has published the collections Ágape Inconexo (2001), Cambios de marea (2005 and 2008), Escenas cotidianas (2010) and Sucesiones (2015). He has work in both Cuban and international anthologies, journals and digital publications.

Anne James has edited and solicited work for Ploughshares, St. Petersburg Review and Zymbol, the latter of which she founded in 2012. She also served as Treasurer of the New England Poetry Club from 2012-2016. She now works as a freelance editor, literary agent, translator and publishing consultant. She can be reached at annejjames@gmail.com.

Laura Contreras was born in Cuban in 1995 and is currently pursuing undergraduate degrees in history and Chinese at Havana University. In 2017, she conducted tours for Chinese and Costa Rican visitors to Cuba. Contreras worked as an English-Spanish translator for UNEAC at the International Poetry Festival of Havana, also in 2017. She was employed as a Chinese-Spanish translator in a Cuban Factory for a company based in Shanghai in 2018. Contreras currently works as a private Spanish tutor and teacher.

Yma Johnson is a first generation Sierra Leonean immigrant who began her writing career in 1996 as a journalist in Puerto Rico. She has written articles on topics ranging from the criminalization of the mentally ill to Japanese swordsmanship. She is a master’s candidate in creative writing at Eastern Michigan University where she taught rhetoric and composition. She also taught a poetry at a women's prison. Yma won 1st place in the 2012 Current Magazine Fiction and Poetry Contest as well as an honorable mention from 2014 Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, the St. Petersburg Review, The Encyclopedia Project Vol. 3, an anthology of experimental literature. Her fiction was also anthologized in, “Cthulhu Lies Dreaming,” short story collection of works inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.