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.

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

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.'