Bluepepper would like to wish all poetry lovers a safe and enjoyable Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous 2016.

New Poetry by James Diaz

Anyone Can Light A Match In The Dark

Some say that I never really knew

the things that I needed to know

in order to survive

but if you are reading this tonight

it means that I exceeded 

more than a few low expectations

that I went uphill on my knees

year after year

undeterred 

and that all of the shouting

from over my shoulder

was no angry God

just a few hungry ghosts

that I refused to feed

and when I look back on it now

nothing haunts me,

I stood the test,

not of time,

but of the emptiness that sits between time

what gets filled with the light

you learn to hide from all of the death eaters

the cheerleaders of nothing and nowhere

whose hands 

at the end of the day

have no real creases of their own

no signs of having survived

with only this:

the will and the need to go on.

- James Diaz 2015

James Diaz lives in Upstate New York. His poetry can be found in Chronogram, Calliope, Ditch, The Voices Project and A Long Story Short.

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Book Signing

Keep writing,
a famous writer 
once told me
signing his novel,
until you have said
something true.
The thing of it is,
he cautioned,
some never do
yet find no time
for life as it is.

They find no time
to feed the hungry,
give drink to the thirsty,
clothe the naked,
care for the sick,
visit the imprisoned
or call an embalmer
to bury the dead.
Instead, he said, 

writers keep writing 
hoping they’ll say 
something true
and maybe they will.
The thing of it is,
he said, so few do.
Most write about life 
as they wish it to be
and not as it is 
for too many.
A pity, he sighed,
signing another book, 
but so often true.


- Donal Mahoney 2015

Donal Mahoney’s fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including Ink Sweat & Tears (England), Bluepepper (Australia),The Galway Review (Ireland), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria),Revival (Ireland), print and online magazines in the United States.

New Poetry by Les Wicks

Pop

Just another pain, I
turn away
blood in the pupil, a crookedness on the spine.
This absence of words
is covered by planking
under construction
safety first until we burst
in grief.


- Les Wicks 2015


Les Wicks' most recent publication is Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience), Puncher &Wattmann, 2013.

New Poetry by Damen O'Brien

The Flinch

We knew about the flinch, because
time-lapse photography showed
bruised leaves and cut-stems curling,
nearby branches swaying away
in distress, through the same filter
we’ve witnessed rival canopies clashing
and striving in bitter border disputes,
but now we know that in silent outrage
and perhaps also in plea, each plant calls
to its neighbour in chemical messages,
if it is assailed by caterpillars or
by the predations of grazing cattle,
not for its own sake, but to warn
its neighbour to furl flowers or close leaves.
So, anthropomorphic enough to make
vegetarians quail, and meat eaters
smile around the edges of their steak:
empathy Dahl and sympathy salads
and indigestible moral dilemmas.


- Damen O'Brien 2015

Damen O'Brien is a Queensland Poet, previously published in Cordite and Mascara, and winner of the Ipswich International Poetry Feast, the Yeats Poetry Prize, and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Award.