New Poetry by Louise McKenna

Puffer Fish

Here we lie abandoned on the beach

like deflated balls,

ugly as toads.

It is a mystery how we got here,

how we oozed from the ocean's heaving lungs,

slippery as phlegm.

You poke at me with your foot

for I am too vile to touch.

There are signs of life: I flip suddenly,

like a foetus in the womb

and my dumb mouth opens

on a lethal bolus of air, staring

with my unblinking bloodshot eye

as if an ember of afterthought floats

in my iris before death.

- Louise McKenna 2013

Rat's Skeleton

I unearth it from the humus beneath my roses:

a chain of vertebrae, exquisite skull,

ribcage like honed shards of porcelain.

I remember him dying, slowly as a martyr

where he lay poisoned

in the cruciform shadow of our garden fence.

He seems so brittle. I could snap his matchstick femurs,

fracture those toy toes. In life he was untenable,

the substance of shade slipping

through interstices between day and night.

And I loathed him. Now through the empty windows

of his eyes there is only darkness;

through the gables of his ribs, only untenanted space.

This is what we are all pared down to.

I feel death scuttle down the stairwell of my spine

before I reassemble him in the soil,

hiding him from the teeth of this antipodean light.

I will no longer dig here.

- Louise McKenna 2013

Louise's first poetry collection, A Lesson in Being Mortal was published by Wakefield Press. She has since co edited Flying Kites, the Friendly Street Poets anthology, also published by Wakefield Press. Her work has appeared in Poetrix, Eureka Street and Mascara Literary Review. In 2012, she was one of the poets who appeared in Light and Glorie, an anthology of South Australian poetry, published by Pantaenus Press.

New Poetry by Tendai Mwanaka

Playing to death’s gallery

December’s
last breath of
December’s
sun, like us
is
beyond our boundary’s stiff netting
Towards
the sun’s fast setting
We mark
time together
as we
dip our toes
into
Friday’s evening

Night
time is a beckoning glance
trying
to beat the clock
as it
turns into dusk
In the
final heat fanned
by the
last of the sun

Casting
shadows of wagging tails
Shadows
of no complexion
Night
yawns in the expanse of stars
dims and
quells

Electing
this quite night
impatient
death furious and scoffing
at my
refusal to go with him
His
hunger is a brush fire
Says my
death is down the
little
dirty road, a bit down
Promising
me that he will be back
very
soon for me

Life is
too technical for me
Wandering
through my casual
brain’s
day trading
a score
tricks on my brain.
Trying
to learn how not to die
half
knowing, half not
knowing
how
to catch
it before it tells me
to try
to cancel it

But
still leaving upto this face
a face
without a name
The
strongest one among us
has to
raise his string
An
imaginary string hallowed by absence
above
all of our reach
for us
to get past the scales
that
don’t ask anyone's permission
and
accompany the frightened children.


- Tendai Mwanaka 2013



Untitled * 2

where
there is no choice
we deal
with what
we did
not choose
and
choose what we
do not
want to choose.


- Tendai Mwanaka 2013

Voices from exile, a collection of poetry on Zimbabwe’s political situation and exile in South Africa was published by Lapwing publications, Northern Ireland in 2010. KEYS IN THE RIVER: Notes from a modern Chimurenga, a novel ofinterlinked stories that deals with life in modern Zimbabwewill be published by Savant books and publications, USA in July 2012. Logbook written by a drifter, and Voices from exile were both short listed by the Erbecce press poetry prize in 2011, and 2009 respectively, nominated for the Pushcart twice, 2008, 2010, commended for the Dalro prize 2008, nominated and attended Caine African writing workshop 2012. Published over 200 pieces of short stories, essays, memoirs, poems and visual art in over 100 magazines, journals, and anthologies in the following countries, the USA , UK , Canada , South Africa, Zimbabwe, India , Kenya, Cameroon, Italy , France , Spain , Cyprus, Australia and New Zealand.

New writing by Jonathon Kane

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE RAISED HAND

Even the hired clowns never knew what hit them, their tearstained faces running off into an oblivion of polyester, their paintbrushes thrashing around in a silver bowl of cold tomato soup, their parrotcolored paints streaking across white linen tablecloths -

while a nearby abandoned piano made the most of its only tune, keeping an eye out for the coatcheck girl helping herself to hundred dollar bills from every finely culled wallet she rubbed up against with the storytelling lines of her hands -

as the stragglers blocked as best they could the muttering walls, repeatedly announcing the abbreviated names on the guest list, including the young cousins hiding in the discarded folds of the paintstained wedding dress, playing cards in the hope of drowning out the din on the other side of the ruined silk -

where the lofty dreams of lovers grew green horns and a tail, leaving only the lightfooted priest untouched, and alone in signing the register, his inscription reading: This will not stand.

- Jonathon Kane 2013



THIS HOUSE FOR SALE

Vines of jasmine covered the mausoleum, the latest scent in a heavyweight night already far from sleeping, winding its way over the threshold shaped like the breadboard you were fingering after dawn with the dread of indecisiveness, back at the house:

away from the afternoon’s heavy humidity, pushing out the veins of your arms down to the end of wavering hands, prompting a pair of boots to stop and comment, relieved, as they must have been, to be speaking of something other than why everyone was gathered around - before the sky got mentioned, the sky the same shade of blue as the flapping tarpaulin, half covering the pile of firewood, back at the house:

away from the scuffed knee shots of her comparing crayon compositions atop a recently raked pile of leaves, her lines resembling the fragile strokes of clouds - before your threatened social awareness fragmented even further, and found you all washed up on a thinning stretch of beach, the trace of your steps together returning to the sea, then swishing round the pint remains in a centuries old pub, hearing her speak once again of Xanadu, and the biscuit tin, kindly left behind by the chambermaid, back at the inn.


- Jonathon Kane 2013


 Jonathon Kane currently resides in the Blue Mountains of Australia. 

New Poetry by Mark Nenadov

Resolve

Resolve is slightly out of my reach

like that lonely cookie jar

only accessible by a stool.

The stool is misplaced.

If resolve is a cookie

inside that jar

then I'm dieting

and nothing else sounds good.

How will I quench my hunger?

What have I done with

my precious time

other than spin my wheels

on the dry, dusty dunes

of a quiet afternoon?

- Mark Nenadov 2013

Mark Nenadov lives in Essex, Ontario, Canada with his lovely wife and their baby daughter. Mark's poems have appeared in publications such as Wilderness House Literary Review, WestWard Quarterly, Northern Michigan University's The Lightkeeper, and Pif Magazine. See http://www.marknenadov.com for more details.