Owl

Guna Moran is an Assamese poet and critic. He lives in Assam, India. His poems are being published in various international magazines, journals and anthologies.

Outskirts

Jade Riordan is an Irish-Canadian poet, an undergraduate student, and a selection committee member (poetry reader) with Bywords. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Blue Nib, Cha, Cordite Poetry Review, The Miracle Monocle, Spittoon, takahē, Vallum, and elsewhere.

Two Poems

by John C. Mannone

Learning to Speak

Learning a new language at fifty
is like learning ballet at seventy.
I love the music of new words
the dance of new thoughts,
a drumbeat of names:
Pevek and Anadyr, Roytan and Wrangel,
Larisa, Volodya, Valya and Slava,
Pyotr, Victor, Ludi, Villi, Yuri.
I want to come back to the north
and talk with you about polar bears,
and the ice floes, about icebreakers,
and the long night,
and the flowers on the tundra,
about where you came from
and where you are going,
and if the arctic will still be white
when our children have children.