We Are Beautiful Like Snowflakes is 21 poems that takes the reader on a journey through time revisiting events from the 1940's to the present year of 2016 highlighting family, class, race, adolescence, faith and the importance of empathy when looking at the lives of those less fortunate then ourselves.

Not for the faint of heart, the poems in Breaking Out of the Cocoon tell the story of a family in crisis and a woman "tortured in mind, body and soul" who is pushed off an unthinkable edge. Through her poetic accounting of these distressing events, Ryabchich attempts to contain the tragedy hidden in the poet's signature and bones, eradicating it as "weeds pulled from the flower garden until it blooms no more." Like "twilight emerging from Heaven after a downpour-after everything seemed doomed to disaster," these poems take the reader on an emotional journey from the depths of suffering to an ultimate place of healing. -Claudine Nash, author of Beginner's Guide to Loss in the Multiverse and The Wild Essential "A child's frightened eyes tiptoe through darkness." I'm betting Anne Sexton would have liked that line and many more in this volume, just as she'd admire the carefully chosen verbs throughout-such as those used to spill the beans of the characters she allows us to meet-dozens of them, including: slanted, nestled, oozing, trashed, shunned, jabbed, and beaten. These poems will have a fine journey. -Dan Masterson, Poet Laureate of Rockland County An unworldly lady emptied of heartache had just a needle and a thread of optimism to suture her failing heart, Lisa takes us through the finespun yarn of self-destructive near adventure of injury and intimacy; of wanting badly to live; of needing to undo knotted arteries clotted in purpling sting. In these instructive poems, a nameless child running to 'evade injustice' is thrown into a whirlpooling kindergarten of daily filth, a blinding black hole where his ancestry knives through his feelings and forces him to find balance between reminiscences and scavenging through shadowy spaces-in search of hope at the mouth of a city glowing in orange sunrise, we unearth enchanting surprises in verse, a flutter finally finds its reason to wing through unchartered paths....Then there's the 'Crazy Bastard'! This collection suffices as an anecdotal mirror especially in these troubling times. -Shittu Fowora

KAIROS is an online literary magazine with a physical publication of the work we publish available annually. We look for pieces that establish both a control of language and a command of artistry. Not only do we want to be at the forefront of literary thought, we want to publish writers who find tranquility in writing their most cathartic work, who emanate artistic expression. KAIROS means "the precise and opportune moment." In this volume, contributors include Clayre Benzadón, Eimear Bourke, DS Maolalaí, Pat Ashinze, Annette M Sisson, Ben von Jagow, Carl Boon, Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich, Rex Wilder, Yasmin Mariam Kloth, John Repp, Juanita Rey, Arja Kumar, Leslie Dianne, Erin Jamieson, Glen Armstrong, Yuan Changming, Siavash Saadlou, Andrew Withers, Akhim Alexis, Robin Gow, Alexa Mergen, Rich Glinnen, Ivan Faute, Ziaul Moid Khan, Jake McCabe, K. James D'Agostino, Kathleen Sands, Louella Sullivan, L.P., Miesha Lowery, Anastasia Jill, Misty Yarnall, Robert Steward, Alecz Yeager, Rekha Valliappan, Michael Blackburn, Amirah Al Wassif, Preston Taylor Stone, Kristian Tonnessen, Sante Matteo, Claire Marie Anderson, and Jones Irwin.

The most delicately exquisite moments are visible in those poems where the poet charged with emotions reveals lyrical intensity.