New Poetry by Jordan Hoxsie

something vogue

bullet points summarizing beauty

always leave exit wounds

- Jordan Hoxsie 2016

at this moment

palm trees have a place

in history

and our wallets

right now we are experiencing

hypebeast weather

angels are hibernating

in the hollow places

we keep clean inside

because everyone needs

a little extra warmth

- Jordan Hoxsie 2016

Jordan Hoxsie is a poet living in Burbank, CA. They are the founder of Varsity Goth, work as the Social Media Editor for Reality Beach, and are the author of the mini-chapbook cry lightning (Ghost City Press, 2016). Their work has appeared in Be About It Zine, Internet Poetry, Babe Soda Zine, Dirty Chai, and elsewhere.

New Poetry by Jonathan Beale

Bye - the - Bye

By Barnes Pond SW13 on a bright spring morning

The accident of the molecular.

All heads: men - women - dogs

-Pidgeon’s and all the fish & toads

of the pond.

Silken veils we each breathe

here – sat by Barnes pond

on the sun kissed April morning.

A goose shrieks against

the wind – fracturing

(like a bolt of thunder).

Practically visible as lightning

The daffodils (now yesterday’s idol)

fading and dropping away.

An old woman draws against the pavements

Insufferable mood.  Yet still she goes on….

Waiting for: The passing of time, life and… more time

As the pigeons scatter around

For the rich pickings

that make or may not make their day.

In these wide sparse arenas

where something runs, pulsates

into silence. A sweet happiness is just around

the corner, here. Bye-the bye

- Jonathan Beale 2016

Jonathan Beale poems published in such journals as: Penwood Review,  Ink Sweat & Tears, Down in the Dirt, Mad Swirl,  ‘Don’t Be Afraid: An Anthology to Seamus Heaney’, Ygdrasil, The Four Seasons Anthology, The Seventh Quarry, Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology, The Curly Mind, The Beatnik Cowboy, Dali’s LoveChild, Storm Cycle Anthology (Best of Hurricane Press 2015), The Jawline Review, Bluepepper, and Jellyfish Whispers .

New Poetry by Mark Roberts

The Age of Rubbish

I rode my bike through the last days

of the rubbish dump over shallow hills

covering the waste of decades.

After the war they filled in the bay,

the muddy shallows and the salt marsh,

with discarded war waste, planes,

tanks and jeeps. Drove them

into the mud till they sank,

then drove the next tank over the top.

They had to punch holes in the crates

of unassembled spitfires so they

would sink. The spoils of war.

A sea wall was built, a hard boundary

between the victory of land

and the flow of the river.

The age of rubbish, a public tip

for the garbage of the fifties.

Methane outbursts mixed with

old aviation fuel seeping

from the depths. Rats and crows.

- Mark Roberts 2016

Mark Roberts is a Sydney poet. He edits Rochford Street Review. His latest collection, "Concrete Flamingos" has just been released.

New Poetry by Meredith Pitt

Through the Window

after Julia Darling

I shall heave up and nudge an extra pillow at my back,
enjoy the tea you left like a bloom beside me.

The pheasant and I will pick up our conversation

about the state of the garden as I spread

the sand of toast along the quilt dunes.  I will once

again marvel at your splayed camellias along the fence,

the blooms peeking through like neighbours while I

rest back against the headboard.  I am at last

ready to venture past the window and take lungfuls

of that crayon blue horizon.

- Meredith Pitt 2016

Meredith Pitt is a Sydney-sider who has recently completed a Masters in Psychotherapy following her interest in why we do what we do.  She has luxuriated in a poetry focus week at Varuna and been published in Meanjin.

New Poetry by James Walton

Ludwig’s Riff

Unlike my desk or room and bookcases

the garage is a mess that hides things.

The extra set of screw drivers

handles eaten by rats. That ball of twine,

now I have a baker’s dozen.

I never left the fencing pliers by the one inch

joiners in that box. Surely something else,

an incantation a spatial anomaly lingers.

Like the feeling when a song comes back

from where ever it’s been. Sound waves

catch in skin unaware with ankles tuning

in the foreshore. Played while doing the dishes,

out they go. Circling like birds of prey,

waiting for the side way look. Distraction

lets them in again, humming, mouthing words

lost until they re-admit themselves.

Though Beethoven’s hearing left before him

Moonlight Sonata roams the stars,

arcs of never received light race ahead of chatter

mixed with all the transmissions, the spilled tea

of radio plays, Lear in defiant wandering.

Somewhere a comet streak meanders over chords,

an intersect of time and space reconciled

by the first alert of introductory notes.

- 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 James Diaz

The Light Behind Our Eyes Is An Explosion

Are you on fire yet?

Do you know the way?

What is everyone waiting for?

Oh, that old song and dance

dressed for the occasional emergency

first bite 

of every inspired wound

how badly are you

missing...

this much?

my brother & I ate from the same table

but his name was always hiding itself

in the least likely of places

one underneath the welcome mat

another in a barrel of hay

late at night

when the highway groaned

we lit cigarettes and laughed

at the pain of our parents

nothing comes easy

soon we were the ones 

other people found funny

- James Diaz 2016

James Diaz lives in upstate New York. He is the founding editor of the literary arts journal Anti-Heroin Chic. http://heroinchic.weebly.com/ His work has appeared most recently in HIV Here & Now, Chronogram, Foliate Oak & Indiana Voice Journal.

New Poetry by John Sweet

song of the wounded horse

18 year old girl naked &
beautiful in the room at the end of
the hall and will you be the one
to tell her that christ is dead?
don’t just stand there
while the trailer begins to burn

don’t think you can ever stop a
war being fought for profit

the sink in the bathroom drips and
the children are hungry and
i am tired of being told to take
pity on the junkies

i am tired
40 year old ghost on the other end
of the phone tells me we had to
dig for seven hours to find
our daughter’s body and what can
you say to this?

the men out there die of AIDS
or they live forever

the women commit suicide

there is nothing you can build
from the bones of angels but
i collect them anyway and at night
if you’re quiet you can hear the
noise this house makes as
it pulls itself apart

in the morning you can walk
through the rubble of your past

feels like being lost except
that all of the pain is familiar


- John Sweet 2016


John Sweet sends greeting from the rural wastelands of upstate New York.  He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the need to continuously search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest collection is APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press).

New Poetry by Hugh McMillan

Towards the Sea

Where the burn joins the river
the language of water is verbs,
rushing from the hills and the fields
with the wind that breaks

the surface in flakes of glass
that mob and scatter like birds.
My daughter is often there:
for now, it is the boundary

of her empire. She sits for hours.
Sentences form, break apart,
and then move away always,
towards the sea.

- Hugh McMillan 2016

Hugh McMillan is a poet living in Galloway in south west Scotland.