New Poetry by Clara Burghelea

Elegy for that time we used to be innocent

and buried our hamster in a large matchbox

after feeding him crumbs of sponge cake

mom had made for Easter day, and we sneaked

in and cut the heel off and hid under the stairs

and you took the hamster out of your pocket

and his little pink snout started feeling things

and we watched him frantically move up and

down our sleeves and run into a piece of cacao

cake and chew on it, smart fellow, you said,

and picked all the little crumbs in your palm,

he stored them all in his cheeks and stayed

still as if savoring the moment, or catching

its breath, then one pouch deflated and his

body stirred with pleasure, later we knew

it was a spasm, a little organ inside must

have snapped, a few seconds later he resumed

his stretching and yawning, little pearly teeth

glistening, you found one final crumb, he sat

up, ears forward, the smell must have lured

him, he grabbed it and the cheek was full again,

and mom called us, so we hurried back to

the kitchen and you slipped him into your

pants pocket and when you sat at the table,

we heard a little snap, mom looked over her

glasses, hands over the green beans and we

swallowed hard and all of a sudden, we were

no longer eight, and the world shuddered with joy.

- © Clara Burghelea 2022

Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her second poetry collection Praise the Unburied was published with Chaffinch Press in 2021. She is Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.

 

New Poetry by Jason Beale

Suburbanites

The slow accelerating grind  

of a distant hoon, the singular drip  

of a bathroom tap in the dark;  

the atmosphere of a Sunday night,  

after the children are asleep, 

is not much to write home about. 

The domestic gods of our domicile 

have decreed that nothing may happen 

louder than a sniffle or a shy cough— 

no flamenco dancing, no midnight lust, 

and no heart-to-heart sharing of souls 

with my partner, out like a log in bed. 

Suburbanites like us wonder at the sound  

of a dog not barking, or at the drone  

of an airplane overhead, ready to stall.  

- © Jason Beale 2022

Jason Beale is a writer from Melbourne. His poetry has appeared in Echidna Tracks and Meniscus Literary Journal.

New Poetry by Kenneth Pobo

Her Email Says "How Are You?”

In my thirties I kept getting

things done, fixing the undone,

more than a little done in.  I had

a drive to succeed, to please

others who shared that drive. 

By forty I drove myself over

a mental cliff. 

Now, in my late sixties, I don’t

recognize who I was then.  I sit

ön the porch with my husband.

If we see a bluebird,

that’s quite a successful day. 

I’m disturbed not by papers

that ache for attention but

by a truck’s thud breaking the calm. 

That passes and a pink hollyhock

starts to puff open.  The sky

is usually blue until clouds rush

above leafy trees.  

- © Kenneth Pobo 2022

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections.  Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press). His work has appeared in  Asheville Literary Review, Cordite, Brittle Star, Washington Square Review, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.

New Poetry by Edward Lee

Your Future Argued As Your Present Ends 

Seeing you everyday

I never noticed

the deep, dark caves

forming beneath your eyes.

It was only

as the nurse

gave us privacy

in the room, her head

nodding as her eyes met our own

before lowering to the ground,

that I saw the end

that was coming for you,

saw those caves

like collapsed structures

beneath your eyes,

the end that finally arrived

in your sleep an impossible

amount of days later,

your long-broken family,

hastily reassembled by your impending end,

outside, once again arguing

over your future,

each voice whispering

but still demanding to be heard.

- © Edward Lee 2022

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales.  His play ‘Wall’ received a rehearsed reading as part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

 

New Poetry by Mike James

The Dead

“The dead endure.” - Nancy Morejon

They are always going away

They cross the street, go out of sight

Step in a doorway’s shadow

In an oak tree’s shadow

They step towards the sunlight blazing on a rose bush

And carry some sunlight down to a hidden river

The river is darker than the deep grass beside it

And the dead sing to themselves there,

With remembered voices,

As they strum the long river grass

© Mike James 2022

Mike James makes his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has published in hundreds of magazines, large and small, and has performed his poetry at universities and other venues throughout the country. He has been nominated for multiple Pushcarts, as well as for the Paterson Poetry Prize. In April, Redhawk published his 20th collection Portable Light: Poems 1991-2021.

New Poetry by Robert L. Penick

The Last Ones

They seemed easier to spot thirty years ago,

or perhaps my eye was keener.

The freaks, the misfits, true artists

who wagered their entire lives on

finding the perfect ending to a poem,

or a melody that would break hearts

for a hundred years.

These people stood out like chancres

on the flesh of blind, blinking society.

Their dress and manners signal fires:

We are different: We breath different air,

exchange foreign coin. We are sedition.

They strayed from the herd and

set their course from novel stars.

Now the world is redivided between

the angry and the scared, no room

at the margins for painters adding gilt

to a picture so tightly framed.

Still, at bus stops and in supermarkets,

perhaps at the DMV, you’ll see a secret

sculptor or finagler of verse.

- © Robert L.Penick 2022

The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in over 100 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American  Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. His latest chapbook is Exit, Stage Left, by Slipstream Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net

New Poetry by Richard LeDue

 

Natural

The trees have leaves again,

and they dance in the summer breeze

better than I can,

even though I have feet.

Those trees probably never thought about

taking dance lessons to impress their wife,

or how my lack of coordination

makes me feel like a crumpled piece of paper

that was promised it could be a paper airplane,

but at least my crash landings

come easier than most.

- © Richard LeDue 2022

Richard LeDue (he/him) currently lives in Norway House, Manitoba. He has been published in various places online and in print. He is the author of six books of poetry. His sixth book, “A Hard Homecoming,” is forthcoming in July 2022 from Alien Buddha Press.

New Poetry by Michael Keshigian

No Longer a Garden

 

The following year

he decided not to tend the garden,

for how might he watch

the hummingbird hover to drink

the pristine nectar,

its beak impaled,

whirring and sipping

from sweetness she planted 

so long ago.

Let the weeds rise

wild and thick

where perennials once stalked,

where the annuals

she would have planted

might ingest the sunlight

and flourish,

where she would stand

to admire

the fruit of her efforts,

peonies, roses

and bouncing blue hydrangeas,

tilting with the wind,

ornaments between

the painted patio blocks

she arranged in unique designs,

where the moss now grows

and mildew creeps

to turn the stones green

with a slime

as they will finally

rest in peace.

- © Michael Keshigian 2022

Michael Keshigian is the author of 14 poetry collections, his latest, What To Do With Intangibles, published by Cyberwit.net . His most recent poems have appeared in Muddy River Review, Smoky Quartz, San Pedro River 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. 

New Poetry by Deborah Zenha Adams

Cinders, Feathers

- after Malcolm Glass

Back then we had only pin feathers, but I

believed hard in the fairy tale, that we could fly

beyond the dragon breath, that you and I would soar into

a fiction we’d pull from the air. We called it the

kingdom, our fragile domain a single room

in a thorn-wrapped cottage, but we are the cursed whose

ever after is spent beating bloodied wings against sheetrock walls.

- © Deborah Zenha Adams 2022

Deborah Zenha Adams (she/her) is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry. You're invited to visit her website, where everything's free and the dress code is "whatever." www.Deborah-Adams.com

New Poetry by Fotoula Reynolds

Ancient tenderness

She keeps her purest words

Framed between the utterance

In poetry and the tension of

Silence within language

She hums a forgotten tune

Travels to the edge of scriptures

In search of her kin and stands

In homes vacant of the living

Ancient tenderness disappears

In the void of night

A memory in her true voice

Scars in deaf remembrance

She sees herself in the glass

On the face of time’s watch

A round of beats per minute

Strapping life to her wrist

Living in a naked absence

Her love tries to weigh loss

She vanishes on the other side

Of daylight and is now a freedom writer

- © Fotoula Reynolds 2022

Fotoula Reynolds is a writer of poetry, born in Australia of Greek heritage. She lives in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, Australia. She convenes a poetry group in her local community and 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 widely in anthologies, journals, reviews and magazines. Fotoula is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee.

 

 

 

New Prose Poetry by Jen Schneider

on reasons to strike :: all fibers on fire

a girl in denim bell-bottoms & tie-dye knits clicks size seven needles while her beau throws fifteen-pound balls down an oil-slicked lane. her hair weighted of gels & blue ink. his of grease. limbs in corduroy culottes test luck to the right. spandex stretches winning streaks to the left. pins drop. souls sip lukewarm beer from plastic cups while destiny is gutted. a lad at the bar wrangles a knotted slinky. a pregnant pigeon watches from an overhead rafter. both boy & pigeon consume popcorn. kernels drop. pins fall. all fibers on fire.

- © Jen Schneider 2022

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. 

New Prose Poetry by Ace Boggess

Having Company

is what it’s called when a family our family used to know pays a visit from out of town & stays the night. Food must be prepared. Not funereal casseroles. Barbecue, festive, slopping the plates. Cookies, too, & tea or lemonade. Yet the other family stopped for a meal along the way or else no one is hungry though it’s late. Words take the place of sandwiches, & the evening thrums as if with an early choir outside in the brush. That’s called catching up. Do we even know these people, or they us, saying hello at five-year intervals like pulsars blasting in distant space from which our radio telescopes pick up signals that are never the messages from aliens that we hope whenever we hear the initial buzz that assures us of them coming around again.

- © Ace Boggess 2022

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

New Poetry by William Ross

Point-blank

Our long shadows slid over the snow,

legs dancing. The sun hit all the high notes.

When I finally looked up,

years had past. I was old and

you were vapour, 

a flame-breathing chimera. 

I remember the snow melting.

I cooked meat over a fire

and swam in the cold water.

I threw a stone at the horizon

and saw no dip in the line of flight.

Now, there is gravity and counting days

- © William Ross 2022

William Ross is a typography enthusiast who wrote the Introduction to Epistles to the Torontonians (Oak Knoll Press). He lives in Toronto, Canada on land that was the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, Chippewa, Haudenosaune and Wendat peoples.

New Poetry by Ed Southorn

Hard Currency

An escaped prisoner on a beach of jewels

Suspects perfection in abundance is worthless

So I look for the damaged and the miscast

Among these cast away houses of the dead

Smoothed in rocky baths of foam and salt

A bride weighed in mermaid brooches

Malabar cowrie and wampum strings

The Bornu King’s revenue paid by every man

Flicked into money by the calligraphy brush

Sewn into Solomons cloth exchanged for kina

All this wealth minted in waves

Measured on the tide

An economy underfoot

Whorled pure under clear eyed sky

Enabled agency circumscribed

By attention to place

Until outstripped by white desire

Outlawed by silver and gold

A flint eyed miner made twitchy

By the fossil exchange

Might say the floating hoard

Is given up freely

If shells were money

After fire and flood

Beachcombers could be wolves

So I tell no one

- © Ed Southorn 2022

Ed Southorn lives at Bermagui, a small coastal town in New South Wales. His recent poetry, essay and memoir are in Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus, Blackbox Manifold, Ekphrastic Review, The Blue Nib, Axon: Creative Explorations and The Journal of Wild Culture. His PhD in sociology and narrative journalism explores contested space.   

 

 

New Poetry by Jeffrey Dreiblatt

January 1, 2019

- after Jericho Brown

Life awkwardly packed in a wheeled suitcase.

Unwritten letters wait for a new year.

Written, yet unread letters for the new year.

Waking from fever turns water to a gift.

Bickering angels bring water as their gift.

Lovers’ kisses trapped beneath foreign stamps.

Devotion arrives sealed beneath a stamp.

Fortune interrupts when tradition dances.

Fortune and I dance outside of tradition.

To reach India takes days and 58 years.

A voice so soft, I wear him all of my years.

New year begins by the river Kaveri.

Ananth, returned, to the river Kaveri.

A life awkwardly packed in a wheeled suitcase.

- © Jeffrey Dreiblatt 2022

Jeffrey Dreiblatt is a poety, visual artist and volunteer firefighter. His work has appeared in The Dillydoun Review, Bindweed and forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest Press. He lives in Copake and Brooklyn, New York, USA.

New Poetry by Joan Leotta

Appetite for Mulberries 

Our guide, Hassan, hurried us off the

Bus into the factory

to initiate our tour

“Turkish Silk Carpets

from Start to Finish.”

Hung on hallway walls,

photographs showed

tightly wound, doll-sized

tennis balls, resting on

mulberry leaves. Hassan

explained, “Those are  

silkworm larvae cocoons.

They are happy to

stay and spin on their

favorite food,

mulberry leaves.”

In the next room

large photos

displayed their fate:

cocoons being dipped

into boiling water,

hands discarding those

boiled larvae once alive within,

slim fingers unraveling cocoons

into skeins of silk thread.

In the next room

behind glass windows

we observed real women

spinning, dying silk,

weaving threads into intricate designs.

At our last stop

towers of silk rugs

rose up from polished wood floors.

Salespeople circled like moths.

“Once only for the Pasha, now for you,”

Hassan whispered into his mic.

But all I could see was worms, larvae

whose last days were spent

feasting on their favored food

in ignorance of what was to come,

blinded to their fate by

their great appetite for mulberries.

- © Joan Leotta 2022

Joan Leotta, of Calabash, NC, plays with words on page and stage. In addition to her ten published books, her varied writings have appeared or are forthcoming, in Ekphrastic Review, Pinesong,, Brass Bell, Verse Visual, anti-heroin chic, Silver Birch, Ovunquesiamo, Verse Virtual, Poetry in Plain Sight, and others. She is a 2021 Pushcart nominee and  received Best of Micro Fiction in 2021. In early  2022, she was named a runner up in the Frost Foundation Poetry Competition. Her chapbook, Feathers to Stone , which includes the poem, Sycamore Roots, is scheduled for publication at the end of 2022 from Main Street Rag. She performs tales featuring food, family, nature, and strong women. 

New Poetry by Chris Wood

For Better or Worse

I fight for the covers all night.

He tosses and turns, twists 

the electric blanket around his body,

unplugs it and freezes me out.

His moans, cries to the Lord 

break my heart. I lay my hands

on him, plead with God, asking

for relief. The dogs circle

and pace the bed, keep vigil

as he writhes in pain, whimpers.

Sleep eludes him, wakes me 

at midnight. At one. At two. At three, 

I follow the pups to the back door, 

let them escape the misery he suffers.

Morning light bathes his body, naked.

I lay mine against his, willing 

my good health into him. I want

to take his pain, carry it for him

and release it into yesterday. 

- © Chris Wood 2022

Chris Wood resides in Tennessee with her husband and several fur babies. She works as a lease maintenance manager for a real estate management company, and is a member of the Chattanooga Writers' Guild, where she currently serves as their treasurer. Her work has appeared in several journals and publications, including Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Journal, and Quill and Parchment.