New Poetry by Anne M Carson

This amplitude

Calder Freeway, past Melton, Victoria

Mesmeric miles on bitumen the same steely grey

as the sky. Wispy elongated white-line clouds

flash by. I take the sky highway, steering towards

cumulus, cirrus, getting my bearings from a flock

of galahs happy to lend their gen to a passing

motorist. My vehicle cruises into the stratosphere,

wheels eating air. Landscape shrinks to a painter's

smear on the horizon. The rump of hills is all that's

needed for definition, clefts in their flank – texture. 

Everything else is sky – as far and as high as ...

Panoramas of light-streaked vapour appear,

avenues of cloud-puff billow. I’ve joined the 

commerce of wind and precipitation, the traffic

of weather.  No buildings or street signs break

the day's open invitation. Where have they

been hiding this amplitude? When everything is

pressing in, where have they harboured this haven?

- Anne M Carson 2015

 Anne M Carson is an awarded and widely published writer who is looking for a publisher for Massaging Himmler: A poetic biography of Dr Felix Kersten.

New Poetry by James Walton

This is a half done fjord/wood splitting accident blues

Erik the Blood Eye can only squint
into the sun of homecoming
casting itself out along runways,
lined with the kelp of torn out hair
of all the waiting tendrils.

Those crowning glinting wisps
shaking down into the rising fog
lifted by the gentle hand of their bequest,
the finest remembered artists
mixing their beautifully poisoned leads
into the unspoken insanity of hues.

Amethyst in ice is the colour of souls
made whole by your return.


- James Walton 2015

 

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Your fierce face

on the pillow— 
brows spearing down towards
wide bisected koala nose
succulent lips 
acute resilient chin. 

Tonight you are troubled 
by concerns beyond your scope:
baffling sorrows
pervading childhood’s lair… 

Felt inside the strident pitch 
of your father on the telephone;
the tremulous tone 
of your mother's lullabies. 

Felt in the streak of the cat,
the slink of the dog;
felt in the dangerous pulse

of our home. 


- Michele Seminara 2015



Michele Seminara is a Sydney poet and editor of Verity La.

New Poetry by David Ades

Talking to Myself

It’s in silence, understand,

the inner voice of my inner voice

with all its nuances, its wry wit

for my ears only, its endless

loving monologue, its wakefulness,

its antipathy to silence,

its restless, un-stilled, always

looking-at-itself-in-the-mirror preening,

its wondering at what the inner voice

of my father’s inner voice

sounded like, and all those other

inner voices prowling in their cages,

day after day, year after year,

lifetime upon lifetime,

those voices it craves to speak to

and never will.

- David Ades 2015

David Adès is an Australian poet living in Pittsburgh since 2011.  He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979.  His collection Mapping the World (Friendly Stret Poets / Wakefield Press) was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. He was a volunteer editor of the Australian Poetry Members Anthology Metabolism. His poems have appeared widely in Australia and the U.S. in publications including over 20 of the Friendly Street Readers, and numerous literary magazines. In 2014 David was awarded the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was also shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Recently, one of his poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In October 2015, Garron Publishing will launch David’s chapbook, Only the Questions Are Eternal: see http://www.garronpublishing.com. 

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Character Flaw

Millie wants Willie to make up,

go back to the way they were,

be lovey-dovey, hunky-dory.

Willie wishes he could 

but that’s not the way he is.

He has a character flaw,

permanent as a birthmark

his mother told him 

when he was only six.

Some folks can forgive 

and then forget but that’s 

not you Willie, she said.

When he heard about 

the crucifixions in Syria,

he said that's genocide, 

plain and simple. 

Willie’s can't forget 

a wrong, big or small.

It’s hard to forgive, he says,

never mind forget ISIS.

You’re not ISIS, Willie,

his Millie reassures him.

You just have a conscience.

No nails, no hammer.

- Donal Mahoney 2015

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Naked Root

Ostensibly I was making my way deep down into the bowels of the marketplace looking for some books which I heard an indifferent merchant was using, piled up as a sort of makeshift coffee table. Part of the reality though was that I prided myself on a personal library of interesting tales, firsthand experiences which I could tell and never have to embellish the smallest detail of, to delight and hold the listener's attention with. 

 The stairs, all stone, became narrower and narrower which, on account of my caution, slowed down my progress. I soon reached that part of the marketplace where the flagstones had not seen sunlight since the day they were first laid down, before the rest of the market built up around and on top of them. A different marketplace existing concurrently with the one resting on its shoulders, here, the merchants would laugh and, once their shaking shoulders stilled, regard one with suspicion were you to ask about any fruits or vegetables. 

The heat was a wet thing now that clung about me as if a drowning man presuming on my concern for his salvation. The scent was unique in the dichotomy of notes, floral, rotting, cloying and an after the act, sexual muskiness. I looked far above me, where I had started, the little kiosk with its honey cakes. I once again calmed myself by  imagining all of this has already happened and that what I am feeling now is merely recall as I tell the story over drinks at Pierre's or slowly sipping tea with Sidi, as ever feeling her watching me peripherally from her place upon my couch. 

I could not find the shop with the books, the strap of my book bag grew teeth and began to bite into my shoulder despite the leather oval pad between me and it. I picked a shop whose un-shuttered windows were deeply recessed into the wall but still had intricate metal grill work which fascinated me. Inside an old woman wearing Ray Ban pilot sunglasses even though the place was dimly lit softly clucked at me as I entered announced by the tinkling of a brass bell. At first she looked like a small head among a pile of patterned clothes. She stood up clasping her hands together and stretching her arms towards the low ceiling. I said hello and did a half bow which works in any culture.

She started off by showing me all the usual tourist junk, curved daggers made of tin destined to end up on someone's desktop eventually birthing a story which never happened but believed down the line in old age. Blurred erotic postcards of models who were not really from here and of a jaundiced hue that made the bellied women seem as if doing the dance of the seven veils trapped in amber.

I laughed. She then crooked her index finger at me and I followed her bent form to the back of the store. There was an old dresser which leaned diagonally to the right. She opened one of its doors with a long drawn out creak whose sustain bordered on free jazz. She pulled out a bright green silk handkerchief too big for anyone to possibly keep in their pocket.   She then turned around and shuffled back to the storefront with myself once again following. 

At the counter she took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were kohled and intense. She was humming to herself but it was more a series of vibrations in her throat than any melodic sounds. Her impossibly long fingers managed to un-knot the kerchief. As the kerchief went flat against the opaque of the glass counter I was not initially sure what I was looking at.  

She presse,d something against my chest, her other hand taking mine and not letting it go until I held the thing as one would a very small child. She repeated this two more times. Once I was sure that she was done I looked down. A root type thing which had naturally grown in the shape of a fetish. 

True language barriers do not exist in the places tourists are, the luxury hotels, airports, restaurants but it is a great way to curtail too long of price negotiations with the Europeans. It is also a way to be a little rude and still make a sale, the attitude being chalked up to cultural differences. Down here though was different there was no need to bother with acts.

The old woman nodded to me and said three times:

"Ostium...Ostium..."

She then put her thumb and two fingers together and opened her mouth, the clustered fingers went from the flat of the palm of her other hand up to her mouth,  pantomiming eating something. I shook my head yes. I gave her some of the heavy coins and she nodded with a smile. I was given a dirty white cloth bag for the roots. Carefully I rearranged my book bag so nothing would crush them. I noticed way after the fact that the books and notebook which had been in there all permanently took on the perfume whose closest notes of comparison were Ginseng, sweat, earth and ozone. 

Back home in my office I placed the roots in one of the glass domes where I had kept a pocket watch who had fallen out of favor with me in on display. Aside from occasionally humming a snatch of song as I walked passed them, they required very little care. I noticed their colors subtly changed depending upon the season.   

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Linda Imbler

Man in the Bath

In this dark harbor,
A tsunami reveals its strength,
Quickly,
Without mercy.
Later, the partially submerged empty vessel
Rocks back-and-forth,
Knocking against pilings
With a constant, monotonous
Rhythm reminiscent of a stranger’s knock on the door.
This asylum,
Still shrouded in darkness,
Newly coated with red algae bloom,
Lies in wait,
For what, it's not known,
The harbormaster
Has already visited and departed.
The rhythm of the knocking slows,
As at once,
This shelter becomes alit.
The air is stirred,
And so begins
The shriek of the first gull
As the vision of what lies here
Is illumined.

- Linda Imbler 2015

Linda Imbler is the author of several poetry books including The Weather In My Head , Doubt and Truth, and Precious Vibrations.  She has written such diverse poems as “Tomb, ” “We,” “Leviathan,” and “Walking the Road.”  Her work has been called evocative, provocative and beautiful.  Linda has designed her own book covers.  This poet, yoga practitioner, and acoustic guitar player resides in Wichita, Kansas.

New Poetry by Annmarie McQueen

Conversations in high places

From those rooftops Brussels glittered

Before us like an open quarry

 

The centuries

Layered on top of each other

 

Books stacked

High on a crumbling shelf

 

Stories and secrets lost somewhere

In a sprawling city which rippled

 

When we touched it, seconds away

From shattering completely.

 

Dangling our feet over a

Brilliant abyss

 

We convinced ourselves we could

Step out onto the next building

 

And then the next

 

Bridging these night-time voids like

Skipping stones.

 

And I saw you running through

 

Empty streets

 

Burnt amber in my mind,

Searing down concrete boulevards

With your clothes on fire

 

Your smoking voice and

Barren eyes

 

Shedding the flames to rise from them

A phoenix in denim.

- Annmarie McQueen 2015

Annmarie McQueen is a recent graduate of Warwick University in the U.K, where she studied English and creative writing. An aspiring author/poet and previous winner of the Simon Powell poetry prize, she has been published in magazines including ‘Words with Jam’, ‘Reach poetry' and 'Buried letter press.'