New Poetry by Michael Lee Johnson

Fall is Golden (V3)

The last golden yellow apple

hangs like a healing miracle

bow down old apple tree

winter is coming.

Life is a single thread this time.

- Michael Lee Johnson 2015

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 875 small press magazines in 27 countries, he edits 9 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  "From Exile to Freedom", several chapbooks of poetry, including "From Which Place the Morning Rises" and "Challenge of Night and Day", and "Chicago Poems".  He also has over 71 poetry videos on YouTube.

New Poetry by Ron Riekki

Walking the Streets of Croix After Our Argument

There are a thousand bars.

I could get drunk,

so drunk

that I’d become a fossil.

I’d be a dinosaur.

I’d drink myself

to the Big Bang,

before we ever met,

before anyone ever met,

before anything ever happened,

and I’d be drunk there,

stupid

and young

in an alley,

fighting

to remember you.

- Ron Riekki 2015

Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North (Wayne State University Press, chosen by the Library of Michigan as a 2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Michigan State University Press, May 2015, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU).

New Poetry by Jonathan Hadwen

Untitled

when you lower yourself

into the ocean, look outwards

as if there’s no shore,

no heartbeat to return to,

just that distant point

where no part of you, not even your eye, 

can ever reach.

- Jonathan Hadwen 2015

(Jonathan Hadwen is a Brisbane writer who has been haunting the various halls of SpeedPoets since 2008. In 2013 he was named runner-up in the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript, and in 2014 he placed second in the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize.)

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

An Easter Rising

 

Poetry by priests?

Who gives it more than mock attention?

We read their poems, yes,

author first, then the title,

finally the verse itself.

Not much, except for Hopkins.

We wait for Rome, you see,

to give us in addition to its saints

one more decent poet.

A sot once said

“When things get bad enough,

you will see a Celt,

armed with a quiver of poems,

ride flaming out of the hills, 

soaring over the lakes,

wearing a rainbow for a Roman collar.”

Things are bad enough right now by half.

We need to hear his gallop soon.

 

 

 - Donal Mahoney 2015

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He writes poetry and fiction. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Stop

Let's leave everything be.

Let's just stop fixing.
Perhaps if we let everyone settle
clarity will be revealed.

Today I entered the cathedral of the bush—
sought permission to walk the land; felt it granted.
Was buoyed by a chorus of cicadas ululating
their adulation to the Gaia of this world.
(On Facebook a slowed down recording of cicadas—
Oh my, what exaltation! Beyond the range of men.)

As I traipse through the bush
in my rag of a dress,
great slobbery dog lopping
at my side, a disheveled woman
with hands clasped behind her back
like some unhinged Confucian scholar—

a brown snake crosses my path.
It's an intimate moment, as if
he has been waiting for me.
What does one do in such a moment?
Acknowledge, pass...

Let's leave everything be.
Let's just stop fixing.
I want to open like that naked flannel-flower to the sun.


- Michele Seminara 2015

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Autumn Proverb

walking the paddocks I saw a dog attack a bird, 
take its fragile body in its jaws and shake it of all life.
it lay motionless on the earth, the shrill cry that shattered the grasses fleeting.
I wondered what it must have thought of when its throat was torn, 
who must now wait for its return, the coming of only a longer silence-

death, as absence, has a permanence the skin cannot repair,
captured in any moment that passes beneath a perfumed rain,
I recalled your ghost, transparent in the open paddock,
a thin veil of fog beginning to leak from the frame.

- Robbie Coburn 2015

MTC Cronin at the Brett Whiteley Studio

Margie at the Brett Whiteley Studio Sunday 22nd March, 2-3.30pm, 2 Raper St Surry Hills.

MTC Cronin has published 20 books of poetry, prose poems and essays with several translated into other languages. Her work has won major literary awards internationally and in Australia. Recent poetry collections include The world last night (UQP, 2012) and In possession of loss (Shearsman Books, UK, 2014). Today is the launch of her latest collection – a 20-year work in progress calledThe law of poetry (Puncher and Wattmann).

New Poetry by Dawnell Harrison

My first language

 

My first language was split

in two by a white light that

 

revolved around my head

like a halo -

 

the luminescence sparked down

like rain drops lit from within.

 

My first word was star,

a real white prism of light

 

that lead me up to a cloudless sky.

A silver and blue nebula followed

 

me around like a child dragging

a blanket behind her.

- Dawnell Harrison 2015

Dawnell has been published in over 240 magazines and journals including Pyrokinection, Fowl Feathered Review, Blue Pepper, Queen's Quarterly and many more.  She has have had 5 books published including Voyager, The maverick posse, The fire behind my eyes, The love death, and The color red does not sleep.

 

New Poetry by James Walton

The Hideout

When my father died
I remembered
buried outlaw long necks of beer
as tubers
under the colour of hydrangeas
splashing irises
beside the straggling hibiscus
drunk as


- James Walton 2015


James Walton hails from South Gippsland and lives in the Strzelecki mountains. His work has appeared in: Eureka Street, Australian Love Poems - anthology,  Daily Immanence - anthology, the Wonder Book of Poetry,  and Australian Poetry. James decided to stop being a coward and quit work in January to concentrate on writing.  He is now starving, but happy, and lives with a Noah's Ark of animals.

Bluepepper lives again!

After a good deal of patience and expense on behalf of yours truly, Bluepepper is finally back in business. Apologies to all budding "peppers" out there! Please feel free to re-submit.