Tuesday, July 31, 2012

New Poetry by Robert Demaree











LINGUISTICS CLASS

1.

What must it sound like,
The idiom of our tongue,
If you have come from other shores:
Listening to tapes
In classrooms below ground,
Beads of dampness on cold cinderblock,
Trying to apprehend small meanings
(Preposterous proposition):
Run in, run over, run down;
Dress down, dress out, dress up.
Would it be the same
For someone to come on to you,
Or come out?

2.

Language, quixotic, carries weight
It cannot bear.
A boy spent hours in practice—
Tennis, piano scales, free throws.
Later he practiced medicine,
His sister practiced law,
Always getting ready, it seemed,
For something else.
At the restaurant
He thought of a bad pun
And made a note:
He also waits who only stands and serves.

3.

Language tells you what it sees,
So pejorative becomes
Normative.
I want to hear about people
Who are ept, couth,
Ruthful, clueful souls with
Shevelled hair.
Do you remember when we
Worried about creeping -ism’s?
Neologism;
Barbarism,
An ancient word, meant to
Mock the sound of
Those who do not talk like you.


- Robert Demaree 2012


Robert Demaree, a retired educator, is the author of four collections of poems, including Mileposts (2009), published by Beech River Books. He has had over 550 poems published in 125 periodicals. He lives in Wolfeboro, N.H., and Burlington, N.C.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

New Poetry by Mark Murphy











Anniversary Dinner with Borges

So the poet pauses as he passes
a few words
of Borges to his beloved.
She does not know he has been reading
Tigres de Oro, nor that he has learnt
the short piece by heart.

She does not know the words,
nor yet her own part
in the distinct possibilities of the future.
How could she know that in the night
her husband
had declared war on the past?

Today we feast on cheese curd
and curried peppers
he had said, with Borges as our witness,
whilst the obscurants and bibliographers
assign the profits
of oblivion and pedantry unto themselves.


- Mark Murphy 2012


Mark A. Murphy was born in 1969 in the UK. He studied philosophy as an under-graduate and poetry as a post-graduate. His first full length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse is due out in 2013 from Salmon Poetry, (Eire). Murphy’s poems have appeared in over a 100 magazines and journals world wide.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Words and Pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

"The Job Parts 1 & 2" 

 "Did you bring them?" I gave a look without saying anything that let him know I found him a fool. He stepped back from the table as I unrolled the soft felt case. "Just two of them, I would have thought three..." I only needed one and a pad of paper. The other was less a back up and more to keep the first company when not in use.



Holed up for a week living on coffee and egg sandwiches. Now and then I would buy a bag of oranges from the man on the corner but after the second time of making my purchase without inquiring what else he had for sale I made him nervous as all the locals knew the oranges were just a pretense for conversation so that the police would not bother him too much. Every few days I would duck out to have a shave, it was all right I could still see who was going in and out of the hotel lobby. The barber had a picture of his niece on the counter next to the glass cylinder in which combs hung suspended in blue liquid. I tried to imagine what her voice sounded like. It was erotic but more important than that as I may be called upon to birth her fully realized from my pen.





Wayne H.W Wolfson  2012

Thursday, July 12, 2012

New Poetry by Emily Strauss









I.


Spiritual Geography

People always say, I love the smell
Of rain, but all I smell is dirt as if
The sky is washing itself and what
Pours off the dusty ceiling is dirty
Brown water we see as rain, reeking
Like car washes or beaten rugs
Dripping muddy rinse water down
The street, Persian carpets
Lying out soaking wet with soap
Flakes and the woman squatting
Her chador gathered between her legs
Scraping the surface with a bowl
And the passing cars driving over.

This is the dry California rain
Disturbing the dust only rarely
Bouncing off dried oak leaves
Down smooth madrone bark
The earth washing all its facets
Into my nose, pungent before
The sky dries again and dirt
Returns to its normal lifeless
State.


II.


Waiting for Words to Come

While I wait for the words to come
I exercise my fingers by digging into
Rock, guiding sticks that float down
The stream, stroking flower petals, feeling
Their moist softness as if velvet came
Alive and gathered morning dew.

While I wait, I notice the wren under
The bush hopping among the dense
Foliage, the spider web arching
Over the stream at dusk, the peaks
Turning pink. Now I am ready.

I will try my hand at sorting pebbles
At the bottom of the rapids, parting
Branches at the creek, I will become
Warm to the air shuffling the leaves
Until they tremble and the deer tracks
In the damp earth, the bird calls and
Night crickets.

Then I will begin to write.


III.



When spring runs feral
obsidian nights crack
over the plains leaving
sharp splinters stuck
in the old moon dory.

The sky breaks on the points
of black shards while cottony
fog waits far out among silent
Swells with the trade winds.
The land is articulate
in the intervals of time
that includes every moment

Space is an arena of smells
Signaling desire without end,
Emotional reticence is lost
Amidst bay, heather,lavender

And we can’t see that the mind
Is infinite, or breath limited only
By the perfume of gardenias
Orange blossoms, and jasmine
As spring taunts us with incomplete
Couplings and summer is almost
Born.


- Emily Strauss 2012



Emily is a retired English teacher from California, and often focus on the natural world that she encounters and how it reflects her own emotional interior. Emily has over two dozen pieces published here and there online including Poetry Unlocked, Every Day Poets, and the South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal.

New Poetry by BZ Niditch








WINTER BLUES

Snow wraps
around our faces
crawling on fields
in nightswell mounds
by a country-side poet
carrying a pawned sax
refusing to sleep
on the earth-wise bench
by the ice fishermen
visiting the waterfront
in his cold fatigues
with insomniac silence
and hunger pains

- BZ Niditch 2012


A SLICE OF WINTER

Sleep unavailable
only a re-run
of "Breathless"
and a few sparrows
on the night sky,
outside city winds
swirl by the pond,
a time deserted
like matches trembling
in our hands
with a cautious spark
of new year wishes
frozen by frescoes
on a slippery iced park,
imagining Belmondo
in his self-quoted
sensibility
framed about love
now only photographic
of unnamed memory. 

- BZ Niditch 2012




BZ Niditch's poetry appears in Columbia, London Grip, Atlanta Review, Pacific Review.

New Poetry by Jade Howdeshell











The sun is silly when I am silly
The clouds are careful when I am careful
The bird is brave when I am brave
The trees are tough when I am tough
But they are all happy when I am happy















The sun is sad when I am sad
The clouds are careless when I am careless
The bird is scared when I am scared
The trees are weak when I am weak
But they all are sad when I am sad


- Jade Howdeshell 2012



Jade Howdeshell is 7 years old and just completed 1st Grade at St. Lawrence School in Laramie WY.She loves to write poetry, play guitar and read. She hopes to become successful author when she grows up.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

New Poetry by Nandor Teremi









Waves of dreams and blackcurrant trees

Sitting in my cave turning back
and seeing my film I know
There is a way between me and you
a path between caves under the water
between caves and blackcurant trees
Sitting in my cave turning back
seeing my film I go back
swimming under the sea
between caves and blackcurrant trees
on the waves of dreams
and I see you sitting in your cave
turning back and seeing your film
as you see me sitting in my cave
turning back and seeing your film
going back swimming under the sea
between caves and blackcurrant trees


Nandor Teremi 2012


Nandor is an Hungarian poet who is learning English via the internet and the writing of poetry, which he freely admits is like jumping from a plane without a parachute.

God no longer drinks at the Sando

I was saddened to read yesterday that one of the great Sydney institutions, the Sandringham Hotel in Newtown, has gone into receivership and is set to close its doors. The Sando has always been something of a bellwether for the health or otherwise of the Sydney cultural scene, and this latest turn of events, while tragic for those of us with a close connection to the dear old girl (she turned 152 this year), merely reflects the changing tastes of Sydneysiders and the demise of the pub scene fostered by an older generation. 

Back in 1996, when I was moved to write the poem "God drinks at the Sandringham" on which Tim Freedman based the oft-quoted song, those of us who had been around long enough could already see the writing on the wall for the live music scene as we had grown up with it, and sure enough 2 years later the grimy old, dog-friendly pub closed down (I still miss you JC!) to be re-opened as a pokie den (on which Tim based his other "Sando" song "Blow Up the Pokies", easily one of his best). Since then it has gone through a number of changes, the frequency of which is itself a reflection of the tenuous nature of the live music business in this new Sydney of ours.

I count myself lucky to have been part of a vibrant scene back in the 1990's in which the Sando paid such a pivotal part. I am sure the ghosts of Stevie and Alison and so many others are still dropping in now and then to steal someone's beer and get up to God knows what mischief in the cellar. Although I think God may have moved on, sadly, leaving Newtown to its fate.