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.

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.

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

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.

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.