New Poetry by Kip McMillan

Gloria

can you learn how to place an iv

hitch hiking an emergent vet visit

on your way to San Diego

his teeth spattered

raindrops wrapped in

a tourniquet blanket the size of family

you raised him

alone

run with your thumb out

sobbing catheters

trying to save a dead dog.

- Kip McMillan 2016

Kip McMillan is a bilingual poet in Spanish and English living in Boone, North Carolina. She is a student of nursing and Spanish at Appalachian State University. She hopes that nursing can cure things that poetry cannot and vice versa.

New Poetry by Margaret Holley

Lilies of the Valley

And then everything blooms. 
Snowdrops dot the hillside, redbuds blush dark pink,

and one morning the scent of lilacs
steals in through our window.  My husband has purchased

a second cane, this one with a leather-
wrapped handle and handsome wood shaft, more elegant

than the drug store version we started with.
He walks in very small steps now . . . “for balance.”

For two days I’ve been trying to recall
the name of our handy kitchen slicer, without success. 

And the name of that white-flowered bush . . .
gone for good?  I imagine my words like petals, one

by one letting go of their little twigs.
I’d rather not remember that all these blooms – fireworks

of forsythia, the blood-red tulips –
are incarnations of ice and the slush it became. 

One December my picture calendar promised,
“The new bread sleeps under the snow.”  For now, we are

the new bread – hyacinths, lilacs, lilies of the valley. 
Then we are snow.


- Margaret Holley 2016

Margaret Holley’s fifth book of poems is Walking Through the Horizon (University of Arkansas Press).  Her work has appeared in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and many other journals.  Former director of Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program, she currently serves as a docent at Winterthur Museum.

New Poetry by Don Thompson

T&R Farms

A brisk, self-confident wind

touches the brackish pond—

a sludge green that broods

and broods until

it becomes almost black.

Nothing happens: Sometimes

the wind has to move on

without moving the water.

- Don Thompson 2016

Don Thompson was born and raised in Bakersfield, California, and has lived in the southern San Joaquin Valley for most of his life.  He has been publishing poetry since the early sixties, including a dozen books and chapbooks.  For more information and links to his publication, visit his website San Joaquin Ink (don-e-thompson.com).

New Poetry by Abigail George

The theft of George Botha’s silence

Comrade, elsewhere
there’s progress in a distillate
that can’t be erased
from public life. “Man for all seasons”.
After silence I’m
caught between the wires of
the rise and decline of apartheid.
The decline and fall
of an empire. Tidal.
Its aftermath windswept
with integral bridges.
Out there cities plural,

it’s a landscape of graves.
The brilliant gone long
before their time. Comrades,
countrymen, countrywomen.
They’re welcomed
into eternity even
though they’re more
ghost than ash, dirt, clay, earth, soil.
Afterwards, I feel
a kind of emptiness inside.
As if I’ve been hollowed
out with fingers.

He's an atom. He's an angel
whose sins have been
washed away. His
hands are clean as
snow. He’s wind
and sky and rain
without a soul. The
forecast says that
he’s a weathered particle with velocity.
Listen, he’s a symphony.
A Masai warrior feet
in the dust. He’s independent
of the river. I can taste
his truth. Its light. Salt.


- Abigail George 2016

Abigail George briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. Some of her poems have appeared in and are forthcoming from Birds Piled Loosely, Hamilton Stone Review, Literary Orphans, The Writing Disorder, Toad Suck Review, Vigil Pub Mag. Some of her stories have appeared in and are forthcoming in Spontaneity, Hackwriters Magazine, Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine, and Africanwriter.com. She is the recipient of grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, Centre for the Book in Cape Town, and ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council).

New Words by Rob Walker

Generic Trump Speech

Wow. UN. BELIEVABLE. UN. BELIEVABLE.

We have amazing people. I’m self-funding. I’m putting in my own money. I’ve made millions and millions of dollars. These people are so stoopid. We’re gonna win in Florida. I gotta tell ya. I’m a non-politician. We gonna win Big League. Yuge. I have to say. Wow. We have a number of – and I’ll never forget it – we’re gonna make America great again – I love you too darling – I LOVE Oklahoma I love your football team yeah let’s hear… hear it for that football team and by the way we are going to build that wall and who’s gonna Pay for that wall? That’s right, the border’s become a very big deal a very big deal this is important we’re gonna have to send these people back we don't know where they come from they have no paperwork see that guy in the old days I’d punch him in the face everyone’s too politically correct nowadays were all going to Hell. It’s disgusting. Everyone’s stoopid but I’m very smart you know remember what I said I love waterboarding. I think it’s fine. Standing ovation. We gotta build up our military our military is depleted we gotta take care of our vets they are important so important and I’ll tell you what so I came down that escalator and it was about borders it was about trade it was about the military and it resonated and I’ve been number one in the polls since that very first day. Number 1. I have to tell you. Aren’t those debates ridiculous though? The networks were forced to have these debates. How about I don’t do the next one? No I’ll do… I like this guy – stand up! It’s all about turning this country around rapidly and beautifully we have countries you haven’t heard of making a fortune out of the United States by the way I love Hispanics I have thousands working for me I will be the greatest jobs president that God every created that I can tell you that I can tell you we’re not gonna get ripped off any more. I’m a very good business person I built an amazing company and by the way you know with the tax returns? You don’t learn about – I love you too – look at her, thankyou we have got the dumbest tax policy by a factor of twenty. It’s a tremendous problem. Our leaders are dummies folks, major major dummies. We gonna replace Obamacare with . . . something terrific. You know I love my supporters. I love them. I love the people in this room and it comes out in every single poll and they’re better than – every single poll said like Trump can do anything. They love Trump. I love them. And the numbers are staggering and I’m like 98% and they’re like 10%. Were gonna save so much money so much money. Win against Chinah, the Japaneese… nobody can do this stuff better than me. Nobody. Nobody. We have something so special going on. Something so special going on - it’s a movement. It’s a movement. It’s a movement to take our country back. And it is. And that’s what it is. A movement to take it back. I can promise you that.  It’s gonna be so beautiful and that’s what we’re doing. It takes guts to run for president. Not easy. I’m self-funding my campaign. I can’t be bought. That I can tell you.

We’re gonna do something that’s so amazing. We are gonna start winning again. We’re gonna kill ISIS. Folks call me and thank me so I’m gonna say get out there vote make America great again folks. Thankyou. I love you. Thankyou.

- Rob Walker 2016

Born Robert John Walker (26 June 1953), Rob Walker has lived in Adelaide or the Adelaide Hills most of his life. He attended Cowandilla Primary and Plympton High Schools and trained as a primary school teacher at Western Teachers College (later University of South Australia.) He has worked as a primary school educator, particularly in the Performing Arts area. In addition to poetry he writes occasional book reviews, articles, essays and short fiction. He currently divides his time between Australia and Himeji, Japan. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

New Poetry by James Walton

Here and Now/Then and There

Love walks out of the same door
it came in by,
the aperture between heart and mind
be grateful for that.
How the rooms grew in adrenalin rush
and the most simple of things
a sofa for instance,
where you hugged over family life and death
held in the turmoil of it all.
Wallpaper moments that look back at you
open windows that let sighs waver,
laughter doing the washing up
whose turn it was to cook in that lousy oven.
The speeding world settled
in scattered books and music,
fur balls and muddy paws
or a child’s sudden end of the world sob.
So close the panel tenderly,
turn the handle as though you’re touching a rib cage gently,
this place was the centre of something.


- James Walton 2016

James Walton lives in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland, Australia. He has been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, and many journals and anthologies. He has been short listed twice for the ACU national Literature Prize, is a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, and Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition.  His collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ is available. He’s been a Librarian, bred Salers cattle, and was a public sector union official for many years.

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Night Walk

I am not thinking, or walking for any reason

though I calculate these steps.
the madness in me
is breathing

in the silent hours
I see the air 
does not belong to anyone, lost
against the freezing skin
I am still not tired enough 
to sleep.

and if my blood runs 
it is not accidental 

from where I am standing 
the damage is immeasurable

no one on the road at 4am 
listening 
to the cars approaching.


- Robbie Coburn 2016