New Poetry by William C. Blome

UNTITLED

Lincolns by the balcony,

a Buick toppled in the sculpture garden,

how many times do I have to tell you

there’s no one out there quite like me.

It’s no accident you echo like an owl

when you keep saying I’m in Yellowknife

and emailing I won’t hie back to Minot

till mallards have turned all-blue

in paint-polluted Four Bears Bay.

Well, as much as pistons rise and fall

from fires above themselves;

as much as sound and color get defined

as aimlessly deflected waves—

so too my love for you is random,

because it’s not my own creation.

- William C. Blome 2015

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as The Alembic, Amarillo Bay, Prism International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly.

New Poetry by Nathanael O'Reilly

Solitude

Traveling backwards from Bath to Dorchester

through Freshford, Bradford-on-Avon, Trowbridge,

Westbury, Castle Cary, Yeovil and Maiden Newton,

over hills, through vales, across meads,

reading Time’s Laughingstocks

I delve into the heart of Hardy’s Wessex.

Morning sun glistens on green grass,

cows graze in the shadow of hedgerows,

freshly-shorn sheep lounge on hillsides.

I pass harvested fields, baled hay, falling leaves,

ripening apples, stone cottages with slate roofs.

I walk from Dorchester to Stinsford

beside the gurgling water, visit

Hardy’s grave at St. Michael’s,

explore the church interior,

stand alone at the pulpit

declaiming from the Book of Job.

Through fields and woods I hike

to Higher Bockhampton, stopping

in Thorncombe Wood for sandwiches

beside Hardy’s birthplace, then onwards

across the Roman Road to Lower Bockhampton.

Crossing the Froom I pass freshly-mowed

fields following Hardy’s footsteps to Max Gate.

After a pick-me-up-pint at the Trumpet Major

I stroll back into the centre of Dorchester,

explore the ruins of a Roman villa at dusk,

marvel at intact third-century mosaics

before retiring for dinner at The Royal Oak.

- Nathanael O'Reilly 2015

Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool & raised in Ballarat, Brisbane and Shepparton; he currently resides in England. He is the author of Distance (2014) and the chapbooks Suburban Exile: American Poems (2011) and Symptoms of Homesickness (2010), all published by Picaro Press. He is the recipient of an Emerging Writers Grant from the Australia Council. Over one hundred of his poems have appeared in journals & anthologies around the world, including Antipodes, Australian Love Poems, Blackmail Press, Bluepepper, Cordite, fourW, LiNQ, Mascara, Postcolonial Text, Prosopisia, Red River Review, Snorkel, Social Alternatives, Tincture, Transnational Literature, Verity La, Writ Poetry Review and Windmills

New Poetry by John Sweet

the false prophet

held an empty frame up to the

sky said that’s it said that’s everything

and creeley was dead and the

house across the street

had burned to the ground

man i knew had christ locked in a

cage at the far edge of town

gave him bukowski’s bones to gnaw on

gave him the poisoned water

from lake superior

 

touched him but wasn’t cured

- John Sweet 2015

 

 

spontaneous benediction

 

these men in the room of maps,

lying naked on piles of money

these prayers that feed no one

these poems that mean nothing

 

that devour the truth and

shit out empty platitudes and hope,

of course, is not a drug,

but the children are all stoned

the astronauts are falling from

the sky like dreams turned to

fire and blood

catch what you can and make

your small desperate wishes

- John Sweet 2015

John Sweet is a believer in sunlight and the undying power of surrealism, opposed to all organized religion, and has no use for millionaire politicians who claim to have his best interests at heart. His most recent collection is THE CENTURY OF DREAMING MONSTERS (2014 Lummox Press).

New Poetry by Karen Pape

Mothwoman

Climbing the night vines
Into the sky toward Luna,
The perverse moon
With her guardian man,
I am a great moth, gray
As night, chanting
The moth song--fire,
Fire, fiero, te amo,
The itch between my legs
Is strong, the desire
To go up ever with me.
Moths are sensual
Creatures drawn
From the dark recesses
Of the skin of the world
Toward lanterns,
Toward bulbs.
Why not the romantic
Moon, that great orb
On whom man has
Left his ruddy prints,
Upon whom we have
Gazed and gazed again
The one desire out
Of bounds.


- Karen Pape 2015

Karen Bingham Pape is a teacher and writer.  Her poems have appeared in small press publications such as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Maverick Press and in on-line journals such as Big River Review, Red River Review, Words-Myth and Perigee. She has read her work at conferences such as Southwestern ACA/PCA Pop Culture, ASU Annual Writers Conferences in Honor of Elmer Kelton, and Fort Concho Literary Festival.

New Poetry by Lizz Murphy

Dry Ink

She finds her answers

in the dry ink of other writers

the blow of a disturbed morning

the rearrangement of aggregates

branches pounding a beat

on the side of iron sheds

the gathering place of long dark night

the ancestral ache for the grave

She is reminded of old-time letter habits

the style of days she thought naive

and that the imagination is a personal well

a winged monkey or a mapmaker

climbing the rocks of her dreams

or singing the road ahead

Occasionally a hawk hovers in her thoughts

quivers with the thrill of a potential kill

And that poem she wrote about the pony show

and the hand-repaired Australian flag?

Really she was saying we do need a new one

no offence to the old Diggers*

It’s all dry ink

- Lizz Murphy 2015

Lizz Murphy is still writing. Still publishing. Still wondering.

* Australian colloquial for ex-soldiers, particularly those who served in World War One.

New Poetry by C S Hughes

Roll The Bones

I send signals to ships at sea

I was confused about what you were saying

But you’ve cleared that up now with what you said

Your wet-mouthed commentaries

Because of signal latency

We are receiving your message early

Please unrepeat

Semaphore your little flags

Three flares at night

A warning that the rocks

Are underneath and overhead

The water between treacherous

The squid small and curious

The suckers lecherous

In their fifty-dollar suits

Pockets turned out

Grottoes empty of treasure

Secondhand shoes

Shined with spit

For two dollars

Below the heels

Above the toes

Aching pirouettes

Amongst a litany of other complaints

Dancing under turbid behemoths

You can see the lighthouse


- C S Hughes 2015

C S Hughes grew up on both sides of the tracks in ochre towns and charcoal cities. When he was young he hoboed across the country by thumb and freight train, before spending several years in reading and study. He has lived in parks and palaces and worse places, creates innovative poetry pieces illustrated with his own photography and digital artworks in iBooks, including the interactive poem “Four Score”, and has occasionally had a story or poem published on paper. He also recently created and wrote the book on "The Art Of Knitting Needle Ikebana". His pictures of cows and trees can sometimes be seen around South Gippsland in local art and photography shows.

He writes commentary on popular culture and edits at nerdalicious.com.au, publishes some older poems and occasional musings online at http://satanloves.me/author and more recently has released the collection "Cars Crashed In Charcoal Cities" as an ebook, and had poems published in A Guide To Sydney Rivers and Uneven Floor.

He says he is getting older but no more wise.

New Poetry by Dael Allison

Archimedes Palimpsest

stars glitter beyond bath-showroom glass.

archimedes, lost down a plughole in syracuse

resurfaces in brunswick, everything bared.

i watch him clamber from tub to tub, testing

the hippest gloss black or white freestanding

styles. night cars growl past as he slips

into the current sensation, clear burnt orange.

he floats, overflowing the cliché, feels

the buoyant surge of inspiration—why run

through the streets naked when the eureka

moment can be witnessed through

transparent acrylic?  he scrubs a heel

with pumice, wondering how many

grains of sand it takes to fill

his universe. i wonder about

scratches in gloss acrylic.

- Dael Allison 2015

The Archimedes Palimpsest: a parchment overwritten by 13^th century monks which included a copy of previously unknown theorems by Archimedes.

Dael Allison edits and writes poetry, essays and prose. Fairweather's Raft, poems exploring the life of artist Ian Fairweather, was published by Walleah Press in 2012.  

New Poetry by Williams Davies Jr.

Untitled

Rain comes
Down in October,
The cold brethern
From the house
Of July,
The one who
Chose undertaking-
His fascination
With embalming fluid,
The keen eye
For a message
In dead leaves.


- William Davies Jr. 2015