New Poetry by DAH

fragmented no. 34

when winter is a string of rain

between bone and skin  

between emptiness

in cold rivulets

this wet inventory stops

the sun from breathing   

there’s a young man sitting

on a porch

huddled up to a cigarette

, his expression : all of his

dreams defeated

, heavy eyes , as if sinking

the rain , a damaged lung asking

for breath : if only to sleep

when it rains

my hands are like cold fruit

covered in ice , the shivering

puddles at my feet

walking with heads lowered

a man and woman , as fragile

as pawns . the heart is like this

: every life is a riddle , riddled

with emotions

, the young man doesn’t know

what to think

, the man and woman tremble

, and the water , a mirror reflecting

their unbearable sorrow  

I avert my eyes , as if forbidden

to look at them

, or to assume their secrets

- © DAH 2021

DAH is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net nominee, and the author of nine books of poetry. DAH lives in Berkeley, California, where he is working on his tenth poetry collection, while simultaneously working on his first collection of short fiction.

New Poetry by John Grey

Between the Covers

To all who resent his comic books,

his only response is “Shazam.”

His parents look in on him from time to time,

shake their heads,

return to the business

of raising the rest of their children.

Meanwhile, his head is buried in Spiderman,

treating every frame with such reverence.

Or making eyes at Wonder Woman,

the glorious Amazon he is saving himself for.

He’s twenty-five but won’t look for a job.

As long as he gets his allowance,

he doesn’t need the money.

And, he figures, why be a Clark Kent

who’s just Clark Kent and nothing more.

He longs to fly

and have the strength of a hundred men.

Instead, he’s overweight

and still wets the bed.

He won’t be coming to your rescue

any time soon.

- © John Grey 2021

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.

 

 

New Poetry by Robert Pegel

Sacred Space

My son’s room remains a shrine.

He died in his bed

and we don’t know why.

But I refuse to let his bed become the enemy.

I kneel and pray there nightly.

As if the words thought might bring him back

to lie in that bed and all will be right in the world again.

As I depart from the room after my nightly ritual,

I touch three pieces of clothing,

one at a time, that remain on his bed after four years.

One black t shirt he wore on our last vacation shortly before he died.

An oxford blue shirt he loved and wore in his last class picture.

And a little light brown teddy bear mini blanket

we searched for and found from when he was a toddler.

He used to rub the silk from the edge of the blanket

against his lips as he watched cartoons.

My mind relives the days of Calvin

from all three of those times.

Then I hit my heart twice

and give a peace sign to heaven salute.

It won’t bring him back.

But it brings back stages of his life

to my mind for an instant.

And for now, my mind is the only place left

where I can capture a moment in time.

- © Robert Pegel 2021

Robert Pegel is a father and husband whose only child, his son Calvin, died in his sleep four years ago.  Calvin was 16 and died of unknown causes.  Robert writes poetry to help process the unimaginable.  He hopes others will find inspiration in his writing which may help them cope with suffering they are experiencing.  Robert graduated from Columbia University where he majored in English.  He has only begun submitting his work recently.  He has been published in Down in the Dirt and The Unique Poetry Journal. 

 

New Poetry by Edward Raso

Fire Escape

The city, on fire, lies still to listen to the song of her sirens

and to the balcony serenades sung down,

remembering the war-cries she had once heard from atop the ash heap

by those breathing-in the dooming bones of the unknown,

just another layer in the anthropocene of a first responder.

How I've missed her warm glow, as I've faded here in the luxury of being

an outsider at times of tragedy

who will be heard from. Who will go? Who will come back and begin again?

I miss the quieting of her commotion as I fade to the tree frogs' haunted dollops

that pulsate through the suburban insect static.

The fire, uncitied, still lies to the happily red and ravished

through the fingerstuffed ears of those who give invitation 

to warm their frostbitten hearts, leaving only hospital waste and a little more

space—    

Another striped shroud is stripped and bleached and put back into circulation.

What is it you fear when you lie still and as lonely as a smoldering city 

silencing what (boozesexmoneylovefamily)

you've drawn up around yourself to muffle

the voice at the base of your skull that whispers the one thing

you never wanted to know, at every moment of your drawn up life.

Who else is there to pay what you owe?

- © Edward Raso 2021

Edward Raso's poetry has been published in The Mystic Blue Review and is forthcoming in RAW Journal of Arts. His fiction has been published in Causeway Lit as the winner of the 2016 award, eFiction Magazine, and Soft Cartel, among others. In music, he has written, performed on, mixed, produced and recorded over 15 platinum and gold albums. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his family.

New Poetry by Jean Bohuslav

protection

1          lips sneering

curling back on themselves

mean and ludicrous his steely smile

eeking soft bird sounds

cajoling a mother’s senses

     to her death

through the cat door

early morn

perfectly placed amongst christmas presents

beneath the spruce

not a feather disturbed

nor drop of blood

2          feeding five greedy mouths

every day

nested on a shed beam

just inside the door  

it wouldn’t be long before they’d

circle with the flock

over sheep paddocks

    to join the morning cooing

he was seen before    

     in hindsight

checking on their growth

and when just right

took them all

at morning light

that bloody hawk

 

3          a golden labrador in the top paddock

biting every sheep possible

    while the rifle was retrieved

they fled to the bottom flat

the shot rang through the valley

local farmers rang for news

they knew we’d been losing ewes

the young lad had been walking his lab

fronted

picked up his dog

tears rolling down his face

not realising he was standing on two legs

of our pet sheep raised by hand

and in lamb

she used to disappear and then turn up again

he said

- © Jean Bohuslav 2021

Jean Bohuslav lives  on the Surf Coast of Victoria, Australia.  She is interested in mindfulness and philosophy which some times influences her poems.  Her work can be found in Kissing Dynamite, Mad Swirl, Poetry On The Move, Tango Australis as well as Bluepepper.

New Poetry by Lewis Braham

Elegy for Walter Benjamin
 
For forty years we bore the words on our backs.
Carved into calfskin and carried them
step
            by
                    blistering
                                        step
through the desert.
Yet you lasted forty hours in the Pyrenees with a broken heart.
Timing everything—ten minutes walking, one rest—on your pocket watch.
Spent on an escarpment like an immolant to your briefcase.
“The manuscript is more important than I am.”
Lost.
Nothing but the planet will be anymore
because now we copy and paste.
Click Send.
If only we could you then or
Backspacebackspacebackspace over the whole debacle
Arendt: “One day earlier Benjamin would have got through without any trouble. Only on that particular day was the catastrophe possible.”
How absurd.
Benjamin, benoni, son of my pain.
The last zion out of Yakov and Rachel—or tried try to—too late.
Binyamin, spirit man, twenty-first century spook,
ectoplasmic love machine, alive in the multiplication of your texts.
These pulpy pilpul, digital doppelgangers reduced?
to zeroes and ones.

- © Lewis Braham 2021

Lewis Braham is a graduate of Brooklyn College's MFA program in creative writing. His work has appeared in the Ekphrastic Review, Tuck Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reuters and Bloomberg.

New Poetry by Lisa Bledsoe

Below the Ancient Border Trees

In a low crease of mountain lies a seeping

palace of alchemy and decay. Here

there is severance, bloom and outrageous gift,

where Mystery sings her invitation:

Walk here with me, unhurried.

Wear boots you don’t mind getting soaked or foul

and carry a stout branch for balance in the mire.

Here your private hopes and furies are unjudged.

You are known, a confusion of roots, stinging vines, 

spoilage and color: orange and olive, deep stone

and umberleaf—all with the sweet breath of sky

above. Will you name your ruin and collapse

haunts of potential? What would it call for

but your own inpouring of immoderate love?

- © Lisa Bledsoe 2021

Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, American Writers Review, Sky Island Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Red Fez, and River Heron Review, among others.

New Poetry by Marilyn Humbert

Threshold

 

the day you died

no rustle or ripple fills the space

traps me

between strikes of the struck bell

in silence after the coda fades

stranded like a drip of dew in morning heat

a dust mote in pale-beam’s flicker

before stars turn on their blinking lights

a place darkness grinds me down

- Marilyn Humbert 2021

Marilyn Humbert is a Sydney poet.

New Poetry by Charlie Brice

Anniversary

Billy Collins’ poem, “Anniversary,”

tells of a baby being born on the day

someone dies such that the baby’s birthday

is always a commemoration of the dead

person’s life. Who died on my birthday,

June 7, 1950? I’m gonna crank up the

Google machine right now and check that out.

The only famous person I can find who died

on my birthday is Charles S. Howard, the millionaire

owner of the famous racehorse, Seabiscuit.

Oh for god’s sake! How humiliating.

Who has heard of Charles S. Howard?

He’s not famous, his horse is. Couldn’t have

some internationally known novelist or poet

have died on my birthday? A Nobel Laureate,

or even a famous acrobat or lion tamer, or possibly

an all-around world champion bronco rider?

What about a guy who, single handedly, pulled

twenty fellow marines out of quicksand in Korea

after one of his hands had been blown off

by a grenade so that he had, quite literally,

saved them single handedly? But no, the guy

with whom I celebrate every birthday never

did anything but own a horse.

Who the hell was Charles S. Howard anyway? I bet

he’d never ridden a horse. I bet he spent his time

drinking mint julips, smoking stinky cigars, and

reading the newspaper at his exclusive men’s club

while he sat in a red leather chair that made fart

noises every time he changed position.

Then again, who am I to whine that no one famous

died on my birthday? What will the person born

on my death day think about me?

Oh great, on the day I was born some obscure,

unknown, minor poet, not even a footnote

on Duotrope, some verbigerator obsessed with

nuns and death who, as an atheist, claimed

he had no soul and whose soul, therefore,

had nowhere to go, died on the day I was born.

Not only didn’t he own a famous racehorse,

he didn’t even possess a famous moose,

or turtle, or anteater.

 

I want to apologize now, before my demise,

to the poor bloke or lass who draws my death                                              

to commemorate on his or her birthday.

I’m sorry. Make a wish. Blow out the candles.

Live a good and decent life. 

- © Charlie Brice 2021

Charlie Brice is the winner of the 2020 Field Guide Magazine Poetry Contest and is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (2016), Mnemosyne’s Hand (2018), An Accident of Blood (2019), and The Broad Grin of Eternity (forthcoming), all from WordTech Editions. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Chiron Review, Pangolin Review, The Sunlight Press, Sparks of Calliope, and elsewhere.

 

 

New Poetry by Stu Hatton

friday night sutra

 

Once the first-drink glow

subsides, you feel a slight pain

in your career.

                           If you seek not ‘small-talk’

but its opposite (whatever that may be),

where, & with whom, might you begin?

Do you find speaking becomes somewhat

possible?

                 And then to seek what: closure?

opening? or the petalled eye

of oblivion?

                     Are you yet another who sings

a love of borders, who’d suffer

any old flustered tale?

                                         Or if pressed

to name names, will you point the finger

at all the other pointing fingers, each aimed

at a different mugshot of the moon?

                                                                   As you stumble again

on the dim set of Night of the Introvert,

beware the low-hanging wisdom:

‘it is only a thought

that will trouble’.

- © Stu Hatton 2021

Stu Hatton lives and writes on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung country in Campbells Creek, Victoria. Recently his work has appeared in Burrow, Otoliths and Verity La. He is currently preparing his third poetry collection, entitled In the Not-too-distant Present.