Call for Submissions – Pratik Magazine: The Wolf Special

 

Call for Submissions 

The Wolf Special

                               Johanna Mueller

Wonder. Awe. Fear. Amazement. 

Hatred. Love. Admiration.

Wolves—among the most beloved, misunderstood, and mistreated creatures on Earth—haunt the global imagination. They prowl through our myths, legends, fairy tales, horror stories, and dreams. Some see them as spiritual guides, others as terrifying beasts.

Wolves run for miles without rest. They give gifts to each other. They howl not just to communicate—but to call us back to the wild within ourselves.

As apex predators, their hunting precision is breathtaking—sometimes brutal. Yet they display astonishing devotion: feeding the elderly, raising pups together, living by codes of care and cooperation.

Why, then, this love/hate relationship between wolves and humans?
Why the campaigns of extermination? Why the fascination?

Since the discovery of fire, wolves have circled our campfires. They were our first companions. Today, only one gene separates the wild wolf from the dog curled at our feet.

 

We Want to Hear Your Wolf-Voiced Stories.

 

Pratik Magazine invites submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art, and photography for a special issue dedicated to wolves. Let these majestic beings stir your creativity.

We seek work that:

·       Explores the natural history of wolves worldwide.

·       Revisits myths, fairy tales, and urban legends featuring wolves—across cultures and geographies.

·       Invents new myths and legends. Subvert the known. Reimagine the wolf.

·       Examines the interactions between wolves and humans, hunters, governments—our ancient dance of fear, admiration, and destruction.

·       Considers what wolves might teach us about loyalty, survival, freedom, and family.

·       Let your voice be part of a centuries-spanning dialogue that merges the sacred and the contemporary.

·        

Submit your work and become part of the pack.

 

For more information:

https://pratikmagazine.blogspot.com/

https://whitelotusbookshop.com/product-category/pratik-series/

Deadline: [ 30 Oct, 2025]
Contact/Submission Email: [pratikmagsubmissions@gmail.com]

We look forward to your howls.

 Editors

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PRATIK HLF/NYWW SPECIAL HIGHLIGHT: ARMENIAN POET HAYK SIRUNYAN'S POEM. "CONFESSION"

HAYK SIRUNYAN

Confession

 

What there is, 

I call love, 

Because 

Your eyes are two lamps, 

Lit with the oil and wine of my words. 

 

Because 

Your brows melt frost, 

And your gaze is an ancient tale 

About a summer morning. 

 

I call it love as well— 

The scribble of my hand, 

Helpless before your image— 

Errant, wild, and mad. 

 

And this unparalleled bewilderment, 

I call love. 

 

This is how I love— 

Fainting, faltering, 

And I do not know how to turn the world around… 

 

…And so, I speak to you in sparks, 

Like a burning hawthorn, 

Like a burning hawthorn… 

 

Come, let’s mend the world with love, 

My choice, my chosen one… 

Come, let’s mend the world with love.

 

Translated from the Armenian

 

 

 

Distinguished Armenian poet Hayk Sirunyan has recently released Leave Me Here, a powerful English translation of his selected works, bringing his evocative verse to a wider international audience. Known for his lyrical precision and deeply human vision, Sirunyan has been a vibrant voice in contemporary Armenian literature for over two decades. In 2024, he represented Armenia at both the New York Writers Workshop and the Himalayan Literature Festival in Kathmandu, where his readings and discussions drew acclaim for their emotional depth and cross-cultural resonance. His work, translated into multiple languages, continues to bridge Armenian literary heritage with global poetic traditions.

 

 

 

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UPCOMING PRATIK RED WHEELBARROW POETS SEGMENT: DONALD ZIRILLI'S "IF THERE IS AN OCEAN IT IS HERE"

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets

 IN PRATIK MAGAZINE

 

DONALD ZIRILLI

 

 

IF THERE IS AN OCEAN IT IS HERE

 

I borrow Spring and All

with a bookmark already in it,

after the new introduction

by C. D. Wright.

 

I move the bookmark

to the red wheel barrow

before I give it back.

 

I go to the high school graduation

of my eldest niece. She is tall,

and in that blue gown,

papery.

 

I hug her but I should be

shaking her hand,

but that’s too like good-bye,

but so is holding on.

 

 

Donald Zirilli was a finalist for the James Tate Prize and a nominee for Best of the Net and the Forward Prize. He edited Now Culture and is on the board of Red Wheelbarrow Poets, Inc. His poetry was published in The 2River View, Anti- poetry magazine, ART TIMES, Nerve Lantern, River Styx, and other periodicals and anthologies. His chapbook, Heaven’s Not For You, was published by Kelsay Books.

 

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets is a collective of poets based in Rutherford, NJ, the hometown of the beloved American poet and doctor, William Carlos Williams.

PRATIK BOOK REVIEW : Tonga, Tessa & Kathmandu : Tim Cooney on Kristina Prater's debut novel Tessa Eyes On The World

 

BOOK REVIEW

Tonga, Tessa & Kathmandu

Tim Cooney on Kristina Prater's novel Tessa Eyes On The World

Tessa Eyes On The World, a debut roman á clef novel, tells a tale about impermanence and change through the striking tragedies and joys of an unconventional extended family. Tessa, the eldest of four siblings from one mother and two fathers, is born with a conscious awareness to help others and the planet. This emotional bearing leads her to different parts of the world, including Mexico, Guatemala, Tonga, and Nepal. While trekking in Nepal, she witnesses the trafficking of young women sold off by Nepalese families. Profoundly affected, she vows to fight poverty and abuse, and studies Buddhism to understand the suffering she encounters.

In 2006, Tessa was killed by a shark (true event) while serving in the Peace Corps in Tonga.

The many people Tessa had touched during her short life were shaken by the loss of this young woman who excelled in academics, athleticism, and art, and who was on her way to do great humanitarian work.

Through her eponymous character, at life’s critical seam, Tessa reflects, “Then I was looking up from below at the surface of the water as I was pulled down. I saw the pale, distant, distorted disc of the sun, a froth of bubbles, my flailing arms and hands…”

Author Kristena Prater (aka Salodius Byrd), her mother, fashions the beginning backdrop of her fictional casting of real events in Aspen, Colorado, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the 1970s. During those freewheeling, counterculture times, she started Aspen Mercantile, a vintage and contemporary clothing store. Her shop became a popular hangout for beautiful local women in old-time lacey dresses, spirited hippy men and itinerant turquoise dealers. Among other adventures, she sailed to Tahiti and later became a successful New York model, before becoming the mother of four children.   

Prater effectively employs a narrative of fleshing in the lead character of Tessa through her challenges as a Peace Corps volunteer deployed in Tonga and through the eyes of her family’s correspondence. Tessa questions her homesickness and the dynamics of those close to her, far from her Santa Fe home. In the second part of the book—as if tilting a hologram picture to reveal another picture—we then see Tessa’s life through her mother Viva’s eyes, Prater’s veiled persona. Such an image brings to mind a poetic Grateful Dead lyric: “In another time's forgotten space, your eyes looked from your mother's face…”

Through shifting family dynamics, Tessa manages to nudge her many relatives toward higher awareness and the importance of helping others. Each evolves during their brief time with Tessa, especially after her life is abruptly cut short in Tonga by a dramatic force of nature that inspires her family to sift their lives to cope with the grief. After Tessa’s death, Viva—who has already endured a car accident that left her son paraplegic—goes on to process the accumulative grief for her whole family as only a mother can feel, and, subsequently, the death of another child.

What is profound here in Prater’s telling is the resilience of a mother who survives and transforms, even as her heartbreaks compound. In finding tools to bear emotional loss, she writes: “When I am afraid, I move in and out of my body. My family and I keep ourselves busy, diverting our attention to the muscle memory imprinted in our bodies of something missing: our daughter, our sister, our friend. We wanted to pretend we were a regular family rather than people changed through continual shocks. We built bridges across the caverns of loss.”

Yet, Viva gathers herself up and decides to follow Tessa’s path and do what Tessa hoped to do. Retracing her daughter’s emotional journey, Viva returns to Tonga and to Katmandu, Nepal. In Tonga, she meets the Tongan royal family and discovers that her daughter’s death has become a legend. She also meets the young man who tried to rescue Tessa and finds that the two were developing a close bond. In Nepal, she visits a home for abandoned children and the Saving Women Foundation, where Tessa had earlier connected. Returning home to Santa Fe, Viva embarks on a life of giving more and needing less.

This is a good book for a book-reading group to discuss emotional learning, much of which is digested by the author in her introductory poems before each chapter. Tessa Eyes On The World can be purchased on Amazon.com in either Kindle, hardcover or paperback.

Tessa Eyes On The World, a novel

by Kristina Prater

Bright Communications LLC,  2024

Pages : 304,  ISBN-13 ‏: ‎978-1958711781

Available on Amazon

Tim Cooney is a writer and freelance journalist working for Aspen Journalism (aspenjournalism.org), a nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom that reports on environment, water, social issues, and history. He is a retired professional ski patrolman and has spent his life in the Colorado mountains.

Upcoming Pratik Issue Highlight — New Poems on Massachusetts Poets and Their Homes: Lloyd Schwartz’s “Intimate Visits”

 

 

 Lloyd Schwartz

Intimate Visits

 

I was lucky—I knew a great poet, and she was kind to me.

The first time we were introduced I told her I loved her poems. “Thank you,” she replied, then turned and walked away.

Years later, I thought writing about her could be my rescue. But having come to know her deep sense of privacy, I asked her if she would mind. “I’m afraid there’s not much to write about,” she demurred. I told her to let that be my problem. Then she asked, “But would you finish it?”

Was she being motherly? Fearing disappointment? Or expecting it?

Then she asked if I would like to meet with her—to help if I had any questions.

So I came to her apartment, for exactly one hour at a time. And she would tell me stories. About how hard it had been for her to get published. About what she had written under a pseudonym. Or published anonymously. Or who her poems were really about. Things, she said, she’d never told anyone.

Once I asked if she would explain a certain line. Her answer: “But it’s obvious.” Her sign that I could never again ask anything directly about her poems.

One day she was expecting the books she had put in storage. Anyone who’d help unpack them, and brush away the insect powder (she had allergies), could keep any of the books she didn’t want for herself.

I wanted them all.

(Years after she died, I slid her Modern Library Giant Freud off a shelf, and a piece of onion skin—a bookmark?—slipped from between the pages. An intimate note she’d written to her lover in the hospital, whose family had tried to destroy all their letters. “[Your doctor] doesn’t seem to realize the boredom of hospital life for you, when you are not asleep, that is—but I DO.”)

On one of my visits, we were interrupted by her doorbell. An unexpected delivery. We sat together on her couch as she unwrapped the package—a book she was in. She opened it to “her” page: a poem of her own along with one she had chosen by another poet. And on a facing page, a recent photo—a full-page picture.

I told her, not lying, that I thought she looked beautiful—thoughtful and elegant—though her hair was a little wild and her cheeks a little puffy from her medications.

Without a word, she took the book and disappeared.

After how many minutes, she finally returned, and handed me the book, which I then continued to peruse. But as I leafed through the pages, I couldn’t find her photo. That page was gone. The photograph was gone. With remarkable precision she had torn it from the book.

 

Lloyd Schwartz, born in Brooklyn, is a poet, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, and noted Elizabeth Bishop scholar. He earned degrees from Queens College (CCNY) and Harvard. His poetry—featured in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry—explores intimate and familial themes. Schwartz has published several collections, including Who’s on First? (2021) and Little Kisses (2017), and edited major Bishop volumes. Also a classical music critic for Fresh Air and the Boston Phoenix, he has received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. Schwartz is a  former professor at UMass Boston and the current Somerville Poet Laureate.

 

 

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PRATIK 'S HIMALAYAN LITERATURE FESTIVAL/NYWW HIGHTLIGHT: SOUTH AFRICAN POET NTHABISENG JAHROSE JAFTA's Poem, "The Cow"

 

NTHABISENG JAHROSE JAFTA

 

The Cow

 

Kgomo motswalle wa malapa

Re sechabana sa kgomo

Tse kgunou le tse phatswana

We too venerate the cow

Yours are holy

Ours gifts one with a wife

Belts and shoes forbidden in temples

While we cloth caskets with cow skin

 

Kraals of ancestral wealth

Guide lineages- passages of life

I saw us in you

Even in your extremist

The universal flows

Connects us like water

Spirit laws move with us

Here cows seal dealings

 

Nthabiseng JahRose Jafta is a prominent figure in South Africa’s literary and cultural landscape. She has received the prestigious Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) Multilingual Award for her outstanding contributions to promoting multilingualism and cultural diversity through literature. A talented author, poet, producer, and publisher, she captivates audiences with her performances in both Sesotho and English. Her recent Sesotho theatre production, Pitiki – Poetic Blues, showcases her ability to weave compelling narratives that resonate across cultures, particularly amplifying women's voices.

 

 

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PRATIK TRIBUTE: DAVID B. AXELROD : Honoring a Life Devoted to the Healing Power of Poetry

 In Memoriam: 

DAVID B. AXELROD

Honoring a Life Devoted to the Healing Power of Poetry

by ADAM FISHER / TAMMY NUZZO-MORGAN        

                                          

 

I first met David and his then wife Joan in the hospital after they were in a serious automobile accident. I had been writing a spiritual diary which I thought might have possibilities of being poetry. I visited David and Joan and David took me under his wing and was my mentor and friend for the next forty years. We did poetry workshops in person as long as he lived on Long Island, and when he moved to Florida, we continued every month on Zoom. In all those forty years I never heard a harsh word from him. He was always kind, supportive, and instructive. I was not the only one. There were many others as well. He took great pains to mentor young people and made an effort to publish their books. I always thought of him as having a great mind—he was very knowledgeable about many things and absolutely loved language, the sounds of words, and their association.  

I would not have become a writer if it had not been for David. Through his Writers Ink Press he published three of my poetry books. He took great care with my books and the books he published for others. He made sure there were no typos and saw to it that the type face was appropriate, and the page margins all lined up. He took great pride in making sure that each book was professional. 

David did not have an easy life. He suffered from childhood traumas. He was also deeply disappointed that he was not accorded the national recognition he deserved, and the recognition by major poets. He taught at Suffolk Community College for many years and carried on a decades long fight for free speech in the classroom.  While there he sponsored many poetry events inviting leading poets to the campus.

Dr. Axelrod won awards and was became as Poet Laureate of Suffolk County and later was a poet laureate in Floria in recognition of his great contribution to poetry. He was named a Fulbright Scholar several times, which is very rare. He was invited to Ireland and other international poetry events. With all those many honors including winning many poetry contests, he continued to mentor his students and members of the poetry community. 

—Adam Fisher

I have known Dr. Axelrod for over 20 years. I have seen David in action as a poet, mentor, friend and Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, and Board Member of the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository. He was always willing to take time to encourage novice poets. While he was Poet Laureate, he put together a project between young poets and mentor poets; I included. Each young poet compiled a chapbook, which Dr. Axelrod had published. We held poetry readings to celebrate these emerging poets. This is only one project Dr. Axelrod has undertaken. His energy in the poetry community is well known. He truly embodies what a Poet Laureate should be; a facilitator of all those within the community. I have witnessed his ability to draw out the shyest person and enable them to be creative.

Dr. Axelrod is the Editor of Writers Ink Press, and has given many aspiring poets, including myself, the opportunity to be published. Many have Dr. Axelrod to thank for seeing their work in print. He had insight into poets and poetry I have rarely seen in others. He sensed the inner skill and is a master at developing it.

Dr. Axelrod created “The Happiness Institute” a creative-community outreach. The mission statement for this endeavor is: “To enhance the quality of your life through a diverse and creative series of programs and services.” If only more people saw the importance of such institutes; we would be much better off.

Dr. Axelrod carved out time to create himself. He is the author of twenty-eight books! He is the only American to ever hold two consecutive Fulbright Scholar Awards in separate areas: Poet-at-Large, the Professor of American Literature. His CV is beyond impressive. It is the story of a life devoted to not only poetry, but the healing power of poetry.

—Dr. Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan

Adam D. Fisher is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Isaiah in Stony Brook, NY. He is the author of four poetry collections, a book of short fiction, and two volumes of liturgy. From 2006 to 2014, he served as Poetry Editor of the CCAR Journal.

Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, PhD is the first woman appointed Suffolk County Poet Laureate (2009–2011). Founder of the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository and editor of Wyld Syde Press, she has published six chapbooks, two full-length poetry collections, a memoir, a children’s book, and The Healing Power of Poetry: Living with the Death of a Child. She teaches at Long Island University.

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