Submissions closed until further notice

From December 1st 2020, Bluepepper will no longer be accepting submissions until further notice. We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and hopefully see you back in the New Year.

New Poetry by Carson Pytell

Seeing

Crepuscular, prodding the boulevard; beeps and bumping,

the billowings of craft burps and vapor, a cigarette handy

and a thin old flask but a day long. I think it's not so bad.

They still do talk, from under and above twilit canopies

I hear cackling, coughs, expatiation of poor paraphrases

as if it's something new to do and find it uneasy to frown.

I can almost smell the sugary throats of them now, 

touting everything under the sun then everything beyond it;

all the stars, maybe water, themselves when they say it aloud.

I feel them there as wind knows other winds

which hit and halt then stir about storms, then pause

and settle into the quiet steam off coffee cups.

And it's that time, out for constitutional cacophony.

Most everyone needs coffee now, even if what's more

appealing is more homebrewed talk, less inhaling thought.

Which is bothersome. I find in these polyphonies seeming

to be the only one listening enough to be just in saying

no one seems to be listening enough to say anything justly.

People need that coffee, need to wake up a little,

if only long enough to get on home and into bed 

long enough to wake up thinking not but what they said.

So somewhere I sit, perhaps a bench, furtively gulp 

and light my cigarette because it's gone out of style

and - knowing no other style - wait, wait for the steam talk.

Being blind, you forget other people still can see you

and your tears. Myself, people, ideas, we come and go.

I think it's not so bad, but that's all I can do.

- © Carson Pytell 2020

Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, NY whose work has appeared in numerous venues online and in print, including Artifact Nouveau, The Virginia Normal, NoD Magazine, Rabid Oak and Bluepepper, among others. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Coastal Shelf, and his short collection, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and chapbook, Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020) are now available. In December 2020 he is slated to participate in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.

New Poetry by Yash Seyedbagheri

Last Drink

The pink and purple jukebox pumps

Kenny Rogers checking in on my condition

behind a booth

last call wafts 

over wooden-paneled counters

into my ripped, soothing seat

into a half-empty glass of Merlot

my fourth or is it my fifth?

a face with steel star eyes 

waits

to lead me to rectangular rooms

with many shadows

- © Yash Seyedbagheri 2020

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program. His stories, "Soon,"  “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and "Tales From A Communion Line," were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work  has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

 

New Poetry by Suzanne Verrall

Local Time

 

having negotiated 

the international departures lounge 

in my sleep 

I woke on the other side of the globe 

 

the currency was familiar 

the exchange rate was horrendous 

 

I patted the pockets of my pyjamas 

in search of a toothbrush 

while an orange cat rubbed 

figure eights between my legs 

 

and touching down 

another jetload of somnambulists

- © Suzanne Verrall 2020

Suzanne Verrall lives in Adelaide, Australia. Her poetry, flash fiction and essays appear in various publications including The Interpreter’s House, Australian Poetry Journal and the Southampton Review. For links to her work go to www.suzanneverrall.com. 

 

New Poetry by Darrell Petska

The Somnambulists

I go walking in other people’s dreams.

Discretely I roam, a ghost among ghosts,

nameless the password, nameless the realm.

Skies churn clouded, fogs trouble thought,

tremors tell of transience and sorrow.

We meet in stairwells, bedrooms, bars.

Eyes speak our stories—they cannot lie.

Our hands touch in gentle affirmation,

their strivings mere shadows on a wall.

Words we whisper congregate in corners:

only there can we know their meanings.

Silence dogs our footsteps. We try,

but cannot outrun, the buffet of its waves.

Have you found a way? we ask each other.

Dare we hope?

The rooms of our eyes hold no answers,

yet we keep to our circuits, unabashed,

some strange chemistry emboldening us

like blooms by a dark moon swayed.

No dimensions constraining, nor weathers,

we pass, pale tinctures of ourselves,

dreams ruffling like pages in books.

Shall we emerge into light?

Through lean existence we drowse,

legends of morning teasing our ears.

- © Darrell Petska 2020

Darrell Petska is a writer from Madison, Wisconsin. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Buddhist Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual and Loch Raven Review. His published work and upcoming publications can be viewed at conservancies.wordpress.com

New Poetry by Eric Persaud

Blackhole Rage

In an explosion
of dust
settling

I expand
and engulf
the planets
that surround

Pull them in
swallow whole
leaving behind
scattering 
of dust.

- © Eric Persaud 2020

Eric Persaud is an Indo-Guyanese American living in New York City. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation in Public Health and writing stuff in his free time.

New Poetry by Jean Bohuslav

rabbit shed

 

his weighted heart smacked reality

emotion slashed to standstill

 

heinous ethereal shrouds hung air

softly pitched 

the requiem 

ran bloodied fur and flesh

 

torture 

dragged, stretched, twisted

lifeless bodies

carpeting floor

 

mauled kittens 

legs once nested in fur

dangled chewed breeding boxes

motherless

 

surreality melded aluminium

wood, ether and concrete

 

high wire windows screamed sharp 

cold light 

down across shavings

 

displaced corded drinkers 

stretched sideways

hung rafters 

like eerie webbed stage props

 

numbed disappointment 

rose

this inner gallery cold

still   

siphoned to a lull in space and time

anesthetized 

blunt

 

frenzied elements 

fully drained

 

biting winds outside

waiting

to whip up structure 

some type of normality

 

inside

empty 

ran the rabbits’ gauntlets

blues, gingers, chocolates, whites 

there

but gone

- © Jean Bohuslav 2020

Jean Bohuslav lives on the Surf Coast of Victoria where she belongs to a poetry group.  Her work can be found on Kissing Dynamite, Mad Swirl, Poetry on the Move, Tango Australis as well as Bluepepper

 

 

New Poetry by Kathleen E. Krause

Eye

a scene for under-love

that begins in riot

ends in the petal 

of the iris 

 

collide with mine

fast in width

that lasts in the blue

of orange crisp mornings

 

where matter grows

to a sizzle 

where we eat the other 

like newborns

- © Kathleen E. Krause 2020

Kathleen E. Krause was winner of Phoebe’s Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, chosen by Brenda Hillman. Her work has appeared in Agni, canwehaveourballback?, Danse Macabre, Denver Quarterly, The Four Way Reader #2, LIT, Lungfull!, Pennsylvania English, Provincetown Arts Magazine, Really System, Salonika, S/tick, and Terra Incognita. Her chapbook, Broth, was published by Linear Arts. She graduated from the New School with an MFA in 1999, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

New Poetry by Heather Sager

Sounds of June 

I walk into a bright morning.

The trees make the hectic sound of wind blowing.

The green grass sings

and the sky teems with white and gray 

clouds, tall as schooners. 

The sky’s blue depth welcomes me.

I touch the leaves of a locust tree. 

The spindly leaf radiates, verdant and green.

I marvel: in winter the tree limb stood gray,

now I shake this leaf that resembles a hand.

A blue-black dragonfly whirs past.

I sneak past the siding of some houses

to find 

a green dragonfly 

clinging to a garden hose,

incognito.

My house stands in the distance— 

I cling like the darner to a shadow

to admire the shape of hearth and home

from a safe distance.

- © Heather Sager 2020

Heather Sager lives in Illinois. Her recent poetry appears in Amethyst Review, Visitant, Door Is A Jar, dreams walking, Harbinger Asylum, The Wild Word, Backchannels, Sandpiper, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Ariel Chart, and elsewhere. Heather also writes fiction, most recently for The Fabulist Words & Art and Slippage Lit.

New Poetry by Paul Tanner

the last bus

the lamppost hums.

holy shit,

there’s a ten-pound note sitting in the kerb –

I bend down, snatch it up, shake the rain off it:

it’s a bad job.

cheap paper. 

the queen wonky.

the colours faded.

I turn it over

and the other side’s blank.

can’t believe I was suckered:

it’s the bad street lighting.

this treacle lamppost glow,

it makes the forgery look glossy, 

a bloodier orange 

compared to the dark of the street

and I look around the dark of the street,

scared I’m being laughed at 

by boys in the bushes. 

what can I do? 

I drop it back in the kerb

cross the road 

and hide in the bushes with the boys, 

waiting for the next sucker. 

fucking bus never showed anyway. 

- © Paul Tanner 2020

Paul Tanner is a UK poet who no longer works essential retail and is still finding it difficult to believe a Tory government is paying him to stay home and write.

New Poetry by Earl Livings

Over

And there you have it,

each metaphor for life—

game, battle, meditation,

path of heart, soul making—

unravelling at the first sign

of your death bed.

Each one had merit,

as a bright jewel looked at

from each angle

hints at that deeper beauty

only a simultaneous view

might reveal. Yet each word

you use to describe those views,

and the darkness beneath them,

are never enough, and you shiver.

And so there you have it,

this enigma of being full

of life and not knowing it,

not knowing if you ever

fully displayed your jewel.

And maybe that is the true gift—

accepting the doubt

and hoping that before life

calls you to account,

a laugh, a scent, a touch

will summon you

to remember, to smile,

to give thanks for mystery,

this darkness blinking at you.

- © Earl Livings 2020

Earl Livings has published poetry and fiction in Australia and also Britain, Canada, the USA, and Germany. His work mainly focuses on nature, mythology and the sacred. His second poetry collection, Libation (Ginninderra Press) was published in 2018 and he is currently working on a dark ages novel and his next collection of poetry.