New Poetry by Michael Keshigian

Panda Bear

 

Because he was terrified of loneliness,

he granted me life

and the ability to share with him

what little time he had remaining.

I placated his hours of isolation.

With no mobility,

he carried me everywhere,

onto the veranda with its view of the lake

on most sunny days

and nightly, in front of the television.

I could hear him limping

as he approached from the hall,

his gait, a telltale sign of concern.

Will he discuss his wife’s departure

or the considerable ineptitude

of political leaders?

Neighbors never visited,

they thought him odd, reclusive,

yet I know he would have welcomed

even the most abbreviated conversation.

No one complained about him,

he once entered a burning house

across the street

to save the wailing dog,

observation, his forte,

he knew no one was home.

The woman, living there,

who sobbed incessantly,

occasionally waved as she pulled

from out her driveway.

These midnight thoughts

are my only escape

from his ceaseless chatter.

I stare at him as he sleeps.

In the morning, he will open the blinds

and the sun will continue to melt

my button black eyes to a faded gray.

How I envy him. I yearn for eyelids 

and a single night of obscurity.

- © Michael Keshigian 2021

Michael Keshigian is the author of 14 poetry collections. His most recent poems have appeared in Muddy River Review, Studio One, Jerry Jazz Musician, San Pedro River Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal. He has been published in numerous national and international journals and has appeared as feature writer in twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)

 

New Poetry by Fotoula Reynolds

When the world seems a dungeon

What might a lily

With all her being

Wish for?

Her aim is true

Toward any sun

A bold rankness

An unceasing

Obsession to

Become herself

A continual longing

A tense line of ivory

Wrapping over

The boundaries of

The blossom is so

Unmistakable in

The decision of

Her direction

Skyward she rises

In a steady siren

Of Calla confidence

Her waxy petal cups a

Yellow spike like an

Eternal flame in God’s

Garden, on days blacker

Than night, when Earth

Becomes timid

Where the dragonfly

Goes beating his

Blind wings against

The long lines of the rain

The lily trumpets with spirit

 

- © Fotoula Reynolds 2021

Fotoula Reynolds is a writer of poetry, born in Australia of Greek heritage. She lives in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria and convenes a poetry reading group in her local community. She regularly attends and participates in spoken word events in and around the city of Melbourne. She is the author of three poetry collections and is published in five Australian anthologies. Fotoula is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee.

 

New Poetry by John Stanizzi

Jah Rain

Got to have kaya now

Got to have kaya now

Got to have kaya now

For the rain is falling

-Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Kaya"

                                  

rain in the hills

on curled October leaves

on the tarnished crop

 

one drop

mercurial hop

from blade of grass

to blade of grass

            glazed chain of rain

 

strings of grass

gilded with water light

playing faint notes

 

rain in the hills

a room just after dusk

the sacristy of night

 

thoughts of morning sun

thanks and praises

for the sound of wings in rain

 

blessings in blades of grass

that grow up

through shrapnel

into the air

into the clouds

the sweetest taste of life

 

lightest rain

in the dark

lights the dark

Jah rain

that makes children sing

when they drink it

- © John Stanizzi 2021

John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections Ecstasy Among Ghosts (Antrim House), Sleepwalking (Antrim House), Dance Against the Wall (Antrim House), After the Bell (BigTable), Hallelujah Time! (Big Table), High Tide – Ebb Tide (Kelsay Books), Four Bits (Grayson Press), Chants (Cervena Barva), Sundowning Main Street Rag, POND (imspired – UK)), and The Tree That Lights The Way Home (Antrim House). John is the Flash Fiction Editor of Abstract Magazine TV, and he has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others.  He teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com

 

New Poetry by Christian Garduno

The Eastern Hemisphere

The blood trade-

it stains your throat

skulking around Astrid’s blown-out town

I’ve been asleep for centuries

dreaming of yesterday

The gloaming has eight arms

to push the sands back up the hourglass

your heart beats in a sound-proof box

two things can be true at the very same time

strains of Vivaldi wafting through your hair

We are beginning our descent

yellow traffic lights blinking on blank streets

your eyelids flutter

the Sun is moving

it is we who are still in the night 

- © Christian Garduno 2021

Christian Garduno’s work can be read in over 80 literary magazines. He is the recipient of the 2019 national Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry. Garduno is a Finalist in the 2020-2021 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Writing Contest. He lives and writes along the South Texas coast with his wonderful wife Nahemie and young son Dylan.  

 

 

 

New Prose Poetry by Keith Hoerner

The Incredulity of Thomas

An index finger points the way from beneath the altar at Santa Croce Church in Gerusalemme, Roma. Postmortem examinations record the appearance to be blackened at the tip to the first knuckle; ashen grey for the remainder; absent of nail; with an irregular, saw cut along the webbing. Like a fat cigarette that’s been snuffed-out and soaked... I ponder this relic and imagine it in a clear, Petri-like dish, resting as a dial in a compass: coming to life with a shudder, spinning wildly, and settling its accusatory point on all passersby incredulous with doubt—of its existence. 

- © Keith Hoerner 2021

Keith Hoerner lives, teaches, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois. His recently published memoir, The Day the Sky Broke Open, can be found on Amazon. 

New Poetry by Brian Rihlmann

Pencil marks

I park in the cul-de-sac,
stop at the bottom 
of the driveway and 
grab the mail from the box.
The garage door’s open
so I take that route.
Before going in I pause and 
look at the pencil marks 
on the door jamb, 
just like the ones 
from my childhood bedroom.
I was always so eager
to be tall like Dad.
I waited impatiently 
for a summer growth spurt
that never quite came,
bugged her every week
to check it again.
Standing here now
I examine hers 
from ten years ago, 
five, and one from this year;
a half inch below the last,
a half inch closer to the ground.
I go in the house.
She’s in the kitchen.
Hi Mom, I say. I hug her. 
Squeeze. Too much.
Not so tight, she says.
You’ll break my bones.
I let her go, then.
I’m sure I’ve already broken her
more than enough.

- © Brian Rihlmann 2021

Brian Rihlmann lives in Reno, Nevada. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal Of Poetry, and New York Quarterly. He has authored three collections of poetry, most recently “A Screaming Place,” (2021) by Cajun Mutt Press.

New Poetry by Bow Campbell

In the Wheelhouse

Kill it with fire

Bury it at sea

The destination 

Never meant that much to me

She sails herself now

She sails of her own accord

I’m in the wheelhouse

And there’s no one else on board

In the wheelhouse

I’m in the wheelhouse

There is a pirate

And he sails the seven seas

He carries cargo

That nobody ever sees

A true believer

And a port in every storm

You lose your anchor

You wake up on the shore. 

In the wheelhouse

In the wheelhouse

I’m in the wheelhouse

And there’s no one else on board

There’s nobody else on board

- © Bow Campbell 2021

Bow Campbell is a musician from Sydney, Australia. He maintains he has no business posting his musings on a poetry blog. But he can’t do gigs due to lockdown, so an old friend suggested he send some lyrics to Bluepepper. In the interests of full disclosure, the editor of this blog is that old friend. Bow is a founding member of the legendary Sydney band Front End Loader, and has worked over the years with many of the greats of the Sydney music scene including Bernie Hayes and Brendan Gallagher. Bow and I have collaborated before with an old band of his, The Impossibles, and plan to do so again. 

New Poetry by Robert Ronnow

The Writer Working Hard

   

This morning I put the apostrophe in

and this afternoon I took it out.

Oscar Wilde’s comic wit

about the writer working hard.

Revision has lately become the sign

of seriousness, as in I revise

some poems a hundred times,

maybe more. A word of praise here,

a critical word there.

Before that there was the debate

if poems not stitched with end-sounds

were playing tennis without a net.

Late summer, August, hot, but

chickadees forming platoons.

Three months until the snow flies,

sure as the June my father died.

- © Robert Ronnow 2021

Robert Ronnow's most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). Visit his web site at www.ronnowpoetry.com.

New Poetry by John Grey

The Three Largest Cities In Europe

I keep watch in your sleep,

unwitting expressions I name like the birds,

a tremble, a sigh, like you’ve reached

the top of a hill –

I’ve kept up – I’m beside you.

It’s the face I saw when I was a child,

in the garden rose,

the blinding light at the top of the column,

in window mist after a day of rain.

When we are together,

we are five of the four elements,

candles flutter in our veins,

nerves climb stairs

then go down again.

I have loved you

in the three largest cities in Europe,

the sun-yellowed Italian piazza,

in the winter of separation,

in memory and expectation.

I find you in heaps of fine hay,

in red clay, morning upon morning,

in the solstice, the ripening trees -

on days when I hear no voices,

I listen to yours.

And yes,

when the lake is smooth as a cheek,

your shadow makes ripples in the water.

- © John Grey 2021

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Penumbra, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and Held.

 

 

New Poetry by Sherry Poff

Light, Shining

 

Out of the coal-seamed earth

   layers of leaf-fall

   April's tender buds

   July's verdant green

   blackened, compressed

 

out of the darkness

   of wooded roadsides

   cooled by streaming air,

   water oozing chill

   from beneath flat rocks

 

clean as stars in a dusky sky,

they rise on slender stems:

daisies and Queen Anne's lace,

nodding like sages

in the wake

of our passing.

- © Sherry Poff 2021

Sherry Poff grew up in the hills of West Virginia. She now lives and writes in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she interacts with a large group of students and family members. Sherry holds an MA in Writing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is a member of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous online and print publications.  Sherry’s short poem “Resurrection,” published in Liquid Imagination, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Three New Poems by Emma Foster

The Heroes

Things were so gray when we were young

We just didn’t know it.

Till now,

The world was sky-stabbing castles of stone,

Dragons gutted through—

Warm hearts of obsidian flesh—

Thrust into pieces by gold,

Before the day was saved

And the hero could be return home victorious

By dinner.

The Monsters

High school, the limbo years,

But we still don’t know why gray is so garbled.

One day we witness two girls in the hall

Engage in hand-to-hand combat

Between Biology and Algebra.

Blood and hair under their nails, they fling

Their makeshift kennings at each other.

We can’t understand

Why it’s so hard to be good

Before we realize we are monsters too.

 

The End

Now in our twenties

We confuse storybook endings with catechisms.

Back-alley sunsets

Like cut lips and bruises

Smear our faces—we sit in the gravel

By the abandoned train tracks.

These ashen bones, our unforeseen inheritance,

Feel empty at 4:30 am.   

We sit and scream, O, Wuldor-Fæder

Where did our castles go?

- © Emma Foster 2021

Emma Foster is a recent college graduate, fiction writer, and poet from Florida. She can be found in the Cedarville Review, Voices of the Valley, Ariel Chart, and she is forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit and Nailpolish Stories.