- Letter from the Other Side of Silence — Stephanie L. Harper
- Because The Deacon Couldn’t Sleep — Dina Friedman
- One Day At A Time– Kavita Ratna
- YOU ARE– Mahvash Mohtadullah
- Gypsy Woman– George Bakola
- For Angie– Rachel Ikins
- Rise And Fall– Lynn White
- Canary’s Plea– Agaigbe Uhembansha
- The Lost Pages– Sabreen Ahmed
- VOICES: Three Haikus by Daiypayan Nair
- Lipstick– Kalpana Singh Chitnis
- She Rides The Bus– Marianne Tefft
- There Is A Desire– Trijita Mukherjee
- My Inner Voice– Shailja Sharma
She Rides The Bus— Marianne Tefft
She Rides the Bus
She rides the bus every day
When they start to screech
Like hopped-up pill heads
She wants to hide among the Sunny D straws
Jammed between the torn plastic seats
She wants to crumple herself up
Like the nasty notes they thrust into her face
They pump their fists up and down in their laps
Debating how many times that one kid
Left class to jerk off today
Insisting they would never do it eyes closed
Like 40-year-olds who live in their mothers’ basements
And spend their days eating pizza
She tells them they are disgusting
Just like yesterday
The smug one who used to be her bestie
In elementary school
Tells her to shut up girls are so dramatic
They think everything is traumatic
But they always want to play Boys Chase Girls at recess
And some bend over without asking when they get caught
At last the door with the frayed rubber gasket opens
She locks the tears and vomit inside her angry head
And tells herself her mother raised her strong
Only 927 more school days until graduation.
Marianne Tefft is a poet and voiceover reader who daylights as a Montessori teacher on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. Her poems appear online and in print in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Serbia, India and Sint Maarten. She is the author to the poetry collections Full Moon Fire: Spoken Songs of Love and Moonchild: Poems for Moon Lovers.
Parcham Online 
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