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My email address has changed. I have enjoyed an entire 24 hours without any spam. Click on the submissions tab to update and get those insidious robots working again!

By the way, the poems published yesterday at Retort magazine are from my verse novel Magellenica, written in the voice of Albermarle Darcy, DSO as he lived and breathed in 1924 in Balmain, NSW, Australia. I am not in the habit of employing racial epithets in my poetry.

New Poetry by Phillip A. Ellis

The Dream of Meaning

Be the girl who's her coat,
the guy who's his car,
the wife who's her washing machine,
the man who's his tie and promotion,
the grandpa who's his rocking chair,
the grandma who's her cooling apple pie
on the window sill,
and that elusively hollow dream,
that masculine and powerful dream,
that warm and limiting dream,
that bread-winning dream,
that retired dream,
that comforting, homely dream,
may be saccharine enough to choke upon.


- Phillip A. Ellis 2008


Phillip A. Ellis is a poet and scholar living on the eastern coast of Australia. His first concordance, of the poetry of Donald Wandrei, is due for publication by Hippocampus Press, and he has a free e-chapbook of poetry, Morning Light downloadable from http://www.geocities.com/phillipellis01/broadsheets.html and he has another chapbook, Bitter Honey, available for purchase from ebooksonthe.net as well. He will be studying English at Honours level through the University of New England, Armidale, over 2008 and 2009.

New Poetry by Wayne H.W. Wolfson

Hearts and Onions


The alley was narrow. Two neighbors had agreed to stretch a rope, window to window.

It is late. Everyone is asleep, eating or hungry. From the rope now hangs a solitary shirt. Dead breeze, with the last of its strength, this torso waves the way out of the city.

No one ever looks up though. He is still now. No escape is possible, not even his own.

The last set, the bassist is half awake and the skin man seems anxious. After this, what? I feel compelled to take my time. Horn in hand I stretch out. Three small vignettes, Schubert playing the blues. The last note a stifled sob. People file out, the night air, hungry beast licking with heavy tongue.

Summer is like the illusion of the promised land, and that things are going to be better.

Libby will still be up.

I knew her neighbor. He called me “Schubert, the sad one”. I think he purposely waited to hear my footsteps on the stairs, to come out and meet me. I did not care, we are all inherently lonely.

Before anything else, I would have to wait while he took his watch out. It was not a pocket one, it had just lost its band.

He would look at the watch in his palm, squint, look up as in prayer, and depending upon the time say:

“Good morning” or “Good afternoon”.

She let me in wearing an old housecoat I hate.

She always thought tea would make me healthier. The cups from my previous visit where still on the counter. After two days the sugary dregs at the bottom had hardened.

All further prophecies now frozen within this dark hued amber crystal landscape.

All bets are off, you will have to find out for yourself.

Being too tired to try to magic trick pop them in my mouth unseen, I went into the bathroom and popped some pills.

She put a record on and shut out the lights.

The scent of orange blossoms, dilated pupils, I had never noticed before the intricate patterns tapped out on the high-hats.

I opened my eyes. Her silhouette framed in the dirty blue of a midnight window.

The stars were fish which ran through her hands, who pulls at these long fingered dreams?

She came to bed.

“Take a shower, you smell of smoke.”

“You, of cheap airport cologne some of your customers wear.”

“We could take one together.”

I don’t answer, but roll over.

“Should I set the alarm or let nature takes its course?”


- Wayne H.W Wolfson 2008



Water Song


Somewhere, in the dark, she hides her secret wishes.

Again, the boy-girl thing.

Come on in, the water’s fine, for the Sharks.

Her blues.

A treacherous kiss finds my lips.

Where are we?

According to the informant, caught.

Dancing, wrapped around each other like good poetry.

Where are we?

In between rounds, putting her blues in motion on the dance floor, hiding from all tomorrows.


- Wayne H.W Wolfson 2008