New Poetry by Peter Mladinic

Green Turtles

Resentment is a tuna fish sandwich.

A peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat.

The garden-fraught-with-discontent-by-

the-river’s flowers let go its fistful of dirt

over the coffin lid. Goodbye, Matilda.

My grandmother, an entity 

in my heart in my head. My uncle Will said

She’s in heaven. I said, smugly,

if that’s what you want to believe. I believe

in river flowers, peanut butter, tuna fish.

Robert Q, Frank said, you need to learn

how to talk people, to Bill Frappier, Dwight

David Bair and Christine Walsh. And to

Alan Parker, Amy Swerdlick and Robin

Grabrowski.  Tell them about the snapper’s

jagged edged shell, different from orange

shelled turtles and smaller, green shelled

turtles swimming in clear water in a round

plastic dish. They don’t want to hear about

a fist full of dirt sprinkled on a coffin lid.

Okay, dark Frank.  I’ll keep my Matilda

in the garden by the river in my heart. 

I taste the peanut butter and jelly and can

almost feel her fingers caress the snapper’s

jagged edged shell. Be careful it doesn’t

bite you, I say. I love when

the doctor’s got that big needle, Amy

Swerdlick, in his hand and says, This is

going to hurt, and it does. That’s my 

miracle, Frank. I’m talking to my people.

Robert Q, all Bill Frappier and Christine

Walsh want is your money, and a weekend

in Vegas, to watch a little ball spin round

a roulette wheel. They’ve got their own

grandmothers they said goodbye to, 

their own rivers, their own green turtles 

they got from pet shops that die when you

get them home. You look at them and 

they die, those kinds of turtles. They

go the way of all living creatures, Uncle 

Will, Alan Parker, you and I. Bill Frappier,

up Newton, Mass., has his own Matilda, 

his own fistful of dirt flung on the coffin

in the hole in the ground. Like you he smells

the river flowers’ fragrance, like you 

someday, too weak to make a fist.

You should go to Disneyworld, or maybe

in Wichita Falls one night go to a rave.

Donna can’t. Dead of a brain tumor at 52

In 2007.  She never hit you up for money.

Donna Curd kindled my life a short while,

dark Frank. Petite, natural blonde, 

always she had a head cold.

Pretty face, a voice quick to laugh, her hair

wore the river flowers, her fingers caressed

the jagged shell, the snapper’s eyes, she

looked into.  Donna, RIP. Goodbye, good

poems she wrote in Fayetteville, dark

Frank, I’m talking to my people.  Goodbye, 

Matilda, goodbye. Donna Curd, RIP.

- © Peter Mladinic 2022

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

New Poetry by Ben Schroeder

Speech

Wind only sounds when there is something 

to sound against. What I meant

when I said in the thistle patch catching fireflies:

there’s no light without the dark. What did you mean 

when you said there’s still flight, the wind

sings through the canyon, through the valley, 

the lightbug flies by day?

I say look at the edges, 

the cut: the mountain against the sky,

the frame of the gulch, the wind sings

rattling the frame, the noonday 

firefly is just a fly. Look at my mouth.

- © Ben Schroeder 2022

Ben Schroeder is a poet from Wisconsin currently living in Madrid, Spain, where he works as a language assistant. His poetry has appeared in The Tower (formerly Ivory Tower), and his reviews have appeared in The Wake and Great River Review. He can be found on Twitter at @bschroederpoet.

New Poetry by Colin Dardis

Sacrament and Ablution

To say retreat would be too trite. I lay myself

down in the tiled hollow of this kitchen,

birthplace to so many thoughts and hot goods.

I rest my worries on the windowsill,

only pick them back up when they are cool

enough to eat. There’s a confirmation in baking, 

where flesh is fresh and put to use; where time

is stopped in the mixing bowl and death

is reduced on the pan. There’s a baptism every time

I turn on the kitchen tap: all the spots wash off

while I breathe a little more, confident

in the day’s absolute promise.

- © Colin Dardis 2022

Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent poet, editor and sound artist from Northern Ireland. His latest book is All This Light In Which To See The Dead: Pandemic Journals 2020-21 (Rancid Idols Productions, 2022). A new collection, Apocrypha: Collected Early Poems, will be published in 2022 by Cyberwit.

New Poetry by Malcolm Glass

Dream from the Edge I

Not so long ago, border 

collies of Maneotis herded 

sheep along this road. 

Now the pine fences

have fallen, broken 

down to slivers.  

The wind blows west, 

but the trees lining 

the field lean eastward.

- © Malcolm Glass 2022

Malcolm Glass has published fourteen books. His poems, fiction, and articles have appeared in many journals, including “Poetry” and “The Sewanee Review.” In 2018 Finishing Line Press published his latest poetry collection “Mirrors, Myths, and Dreams." Also a playwright, his play "Replay," was recently published in "Contemporary One Act Plays."

 

New Poetry by Rob Schackne

Bird Dreams

I’m not alone, no 

I seek my birdness 

as the crows observe 

where I was looking 

but I’m learning 

what it is to want 

to cry for all my needs 

It turns me inside out 

it sits me upon the sign 

at the crossroads 

the telephone wires 

at the scarecrows 

the twisted miles 

where I have to go 

I look for a tree 

and avoid the tree 

the tribe looks at me 

they praise my wings 

they shout loudly 

at my rough flight 

it's cross to cross 

I go the path they go 

nightly they tap my head 

I go underneath a wing 

I will sleep my turn 

I will see a little 

look out for dreams 

they watch for raptors

- © Rob Schackne 2022

Rob Schackne was born in New York and he lived in many countries before settling in Australia in the 1970s. He’s a retired teacher – he taught in China for 15 years – and he now lives in central Victoria. His poems have been published in many magazines both paper and electronic. His book “A Chance of Seasons”, a Pocket Poet book in the Flying Island Books series, was published in late 2017. It fits very well in the back-pocket. When he’s not writing, he likes taking photographs. 

New Short Fiction by Mackenzie Denofio

 Summer Sleepover Fun! 

We arrive with our pillows packed and our mother’s kisses still clinging to our forehead. It's our first night away and our mothers are worried the other mothers won’t let us use the phone in the middle of the night if we need to. We brush her off.

 Our lips are covered in cherry-flavored lip balm, our bathing suits are tied tight, and we brought a Ouija board for when the adults fall asleep. 

 We’re going to say Bloody Mary three times in the mirror and talk to a ghost named Evelyn from Georgia who died when she was seven and then we’re going to see the shadows of unknown people outside the bedroom windows and hug each other so tight in between giggles because we did it. We brought Evelyn back. 

 And we’ll watch a scary movie that we’ll watch again in ten years and find to be silly and stupid but for now we’re adults and we chose the movie, and our parents don’t even know we’re watching it and we’ll have nightmares for weeks, but we won’t tell anyone. We won’t tell anyone how wonderful it feels to shriek under blankets and have someone else’s legs around us. Because for once the man who sits on our laundry chair every night as we try to go to sleep is real and he’s killing girls like us and we knew it all along. 

 We go swimming until the skin around our fingers is curled around themselves. And I turn to you, and I tell you that I want you to drown me.

 You step on my back as I lie on the bottom of the shallow end. We’ve done this before. We do this all the time.

 You ask me to slap your face and I do, and you slap mine. We see what a punch in the arm would feel like and wrangle our limbs around each other until they’re crushing. We know now, children are always looking for death, they want to come face to face with it, seconds away from it, and have made the choice. 

 I want you to hurt me, I say because we’re play pretending, because our whole lives have been play pretend. But we know one day we could be slapped, drowned, choked and we want to know the feeling beforehand so when we feel someone’s fingernails drag around the thin skin of our throats, we can say oh yes this again, I know this. 

 I want you to drown me. I say because I don’t trust anyone else. Only you. An adult wouldn’t understand it, they were never like us. Your hands are kind and soft and you’re wearing Barbie pink nail polish with silver flakes of glitter on the manicured edge, like we had discussed last week. Your hands are the only ones that can dip me under the water and take away my air and then return it again like new. I open my eyes even though it stings, and I see the sun under or over a flimy layer and then your face, looking down at me. 

 Your face is there, and you smile, and you’re impressed because I lasted so long, and you don’t know if you can prove yourself. I think you can. 

 That night I won’t be able to sleep even as we’re pressed together nearly cheek to cheek. The curtain will move in the circular breeze the fan makes and I’ll see a figure out on the lawn, and I’ll know. We’re right. We’re always right. 

- © Mackenzie Denofio 2022

Mackenzie Denofio (she/her/hers) is an emerging writer in Boston, currently getting her MA at Emerson College. Her work can be found in Blind Corner Literary Magazine, Generic Magazine, and Crack the Spine Literary Magazine. When not writing or reading she can be found fantasizing about walking the halls of a haunted manor as a gothic heroine.

 

 

New Poetry by Paul Jeffcutt

Visit Nagasaki *

The Portuguese were first.

We traded silks

for copper and silver.

Their preachers roused peasants.

We crushed the rebellion

and banished all.

The Dutch came.

We consigned them to a trading post,

storehouses rich in books and sugar.

We built a causeway to the West:

docks, ships, aircraft,

the machinery of empire.

Munitions factories at the limit,

conscript housewives

and schoolboys.

A gap in the clouds,

one aeroplane.

Hibakusha rise.

* Whilst Japan was a closed society, this port city was open to the world. Hibakusha are survivors of the atom bombs. Their testimonies have been recorded and can be heard by visitors to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

- © Paul Jeffcutt 2022

Paul Jeffcutt has won thirty three awards for poetry in competitions in Ireland, the UK and the USA.  He has two collections: ‘The Skylark’s Call’, Dempsey & Windle (2020) and ‘Latch’, Lagan Press (2010). Paul is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. He has recently completed his first novel. 

New Poetry by Allan Lake

Shalamov

His feast of stories about gulag prisoners

(who rarely got enough bread to eat)

now savoured by picky readers

who can overload their guts

several times per day

as a reborn Stalin

adds poison.

- © Allan Lake 2022

Allan Lake, originally from Canada, is an Australian poet.  His latest chapbook of poems, My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press.

New Poetry by Skaja Evens

Choice Over Life

I saw a picture of myself as a child

Six years old, innocent

Only a year or so before that first time

I found myself in a compromising position

With a boy who told me it was no big deal

My heart breaks for her

Because she felt her body wasn’t her own

The last time was maybe a few months ago

Nearly forty years later

When I, again, felt my body wasn’t mine

What made it okay for others to decide

To snatch away my autonomy

As though I didn’t have a high enough clearance

To view my body as sovereign, sacred

Capable of more than being a breeding ground

For lives that ultimately don’t matter

To those preaching that life begins at conception

I am thankful I never became pregnant

Not forced into the position to be an incubator

For a life used as a bargaining chip

And method of control from out of touch men

And the women clutching to their coattails

Setting the double standard

Guaranteed that those in power will always

Have access to what they deny everyone else

- Skaja Evens 2022

Skaja Evens is a writer and artist living in Southeast Virginia. She edits It Takes All Kinds, a litzine published by Mōtus Audāx Press. She’s been published in Spillwords Press, The Dope Fiend Daily, The Rye Whiskey Review, and The Crossroads Lit Magazine. 

New Poetry by Linda King

the language of this place

this wide night    the weather moves around you

like music    moments like this

never announce themselves

you have learned the language of this place

where the light tempts the darkness    every day

still arrives at your window

here where the smell of the sea is in your hair

the sun is soft in the mornings

like a poem left out in the rain

- © Linda King 2022

Linda King is the author of five poetry collections including Reality Wayfarers (Shoe Music Press, 2014) and antibodies in the alphabet (BlazeVOX Books, 2019). Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals in Canada and internationally - including Bluepepper. King lives and writes by the sea on The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.

New Poetry by Mike W. Blottenberger

Three Roses and a Half-Empty Bottle of Cognac

  - for Edgar Allan Poe

Sir Edgar,

Mister Poe,

tell me:

who places

the three roses and

a half-empty bottle of cognac

by your grave

every Halloween night?

Last October,

on the Raven’s favorite holiday,

I hid behind the brick wall of the cemetery,

but the fog veiled your mysterious admirer

and your anonymous toaster

from my view.

And though I missed that elusive face,

I saw the four offerings left there.

It was cold,

and they were lying beside your marble slab,

because the world’s still haunted

by your genius.

- © Mike W. Blottenberger 2022

Mike W. Blottenberger lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania. His poetry has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Gulf Coast Review, James White Review, The Pennsylvania Review, Unbroken Journal, and The William & Mary Review.

New Poetry by Erina Booker

Dead of Night

night is womb time

shaded moon time

in my dreams

dead family visit

sister reminds me

that double basses

are tuned in fourths

not fifths and I,

grateful for the return

of that knowledge now

keep it consciously lodged

in my cerebrum, last night

I visited my father

in his bi-partite mansion

crossing sides on the

white marble steps, mother

visits in shadows, only her face

clear and recognisable, lipstick-ed

and young, I stopped seeing her

at forty to save myself, this

is the only way she can

visit me now, and I

am strangely pleased,

the word ‘mother’ loaded

with substance, I realise

why the hurt of son

never saying ‘Mum’

though daughter does

I clasp each one

like a prized talisman,

They visit when I am awake

too and I am perplexed

by an identity: who was it

who strode so resolutely

through the door

that night before I

was asleep? my late-husband

or my desperate lover

who suicided, both

now intertwined

in death, the only way

I can have them both

night is womb time

doom time

moon time

- © Erina Booker 2022

Erina Booker is a Sydney/Tweed Heads based poet, whose life revolves around Poetry. She has published 11 collections, recites at public functions, belongs to poetry & writing groups, presents seminars, judges competitions, & also publishes in anthologies, & online. She has a major is Literature & Composition within her BA, & post-graduate studies in Counselling taught her more about the value of the pause. Her work may be found in Amazon, Lulu Press, & InHouse Publishing.

 

New Poetry by Nolen Price

You proposed and I said no

the sound of silence

and silverware

talking to each other from across the table

by scraping against plates

“they’ve been arguing a while”

said the steak knife as it goes

back and forth between the fork

to the empty wine glass

“our big happy family”

the spoon scutts against teeth

“so much for the anniversary”

the napkin says as it gets wiped over a frown

- © Nolen Price 2022

Nolen Price is a poet and rising sophomore student at Susquehanna University pursuing a degree in creative writing. His work has been previously published in Rivercraft Magazine. He was born in Texas but now lives in Pennsylvania and hopes to make a career out of writing.

 

New Poetry by Catherine Friesen

Yukon

Let’s go north where time splinters

into a million incandescent pieces and 

ravens sing to the tune of the full moon. 

We’ll take up the flute, sing each other mad 

love songs by the light of a dying fire 

while stars ricochet off the mountains 

and the river chants a centuries-old hymn 

only the bears still know the words to. 

When we’ve read all the books 

and drank all the coffee we’ll walk 

five miles to town; I’ll pick fireweed 

for you to string through your lute 

and you’ll tell me stories of the moose 

we see through the trees. 

When winter comes, I’ll keep you warm 

or you’ll keep me warm but either way 

we’ll wrap ourselves in furs and each other, 

drink cinnamon cider and eat peas 

we grew under the peculiar midnight sun. 

Even though the snow falls in frenzied waves 

we’ll dance violently under the big dumb moon, 

arms raised above our heads, and say 

nothing can possibly go wrong.

- © Catherine Friesen 2022

Catherine is a writer, editor, sometimes illustrator, and all-around nature lover living on the side of a mountain. They majored in psychology and creative writing in their undergrad and are currently working through art therapy grad school. When they’re not reading or writing, they can be found baking cakes, singing to their plants, or getting lost in the woods.

New Poetry by Anita Howard

Reading With my Grandmother 

Whispering silence among headstones,

your saint enshrined in misty, fractured plastic.

“When I am called,” you told me,

“I want N.T. after my name.”

National Teacher.  Lines with gilt eroded

from buffeting estuary winds.

I see myself, a small child clothed in grey

with fearful eyes, who perches at your side

to read the letters you alone could teach me.

Your voice, your presence, told me all my worth,

and yet I knew that menace would replace them.

For all my life another loomed before me,

grey shadow that I strained to push away,

until I learned that you had never gone.

You’re here, beside me, pointing out the words.

- © Anita Howard 2022

Anita Howard is a writer, storyteller and actor who lives in Passage West, Co. Cork, Ireland.  Her work has been featured as Poem of the Week by the HeadStuff online journal, and has also been published in Poetica Review in April 2022, in the Storytellers of Ireland Newsletter in 2021, in  Good Day News in 2020, in and in Southword in 2001.  It will also feature in the forthcoming Don't Get Caught! anthology for Write In For Charity, Leicester, UK.  Anita is a member of the Cork Yarnspinners storytelling group, and the Hunter’s Moon Theatre Company and Inkwell Theatre Drama Group in Cork.

New Poetry by Julia Vaughan

Marriage to Divorce

Walk seven times

Around the fire

Under the Mandap

A sacrament in Hindi

I pledge,

In honesty and sincerity

To be for you, faithful and helpful.

A contract with Allah in Islam

Devotion to each other

Compassion and harmony

Sipping three glasses of wine

Exclusive choices for Buddhists

Marriage made in heaven

A love story; eternal and everlasting

Until     death      do us part.

Chrisitians make pledges in cathedrals

Seven blessings

Shattering a glass

Under the Chuppah

Jews promise to only have each other

True love reigns supreme

A promise is a promise

Non- religious couples

Bonded together, fidelity forever.

4 vows sung

To the bride and groom

Fill their minds with songs of joy

2 Sikh souls become one

            Joyous unions.

                                Broken vows.

Too easy               to stray.

Deceit and jealousy.

Ego and anger.

Too easy to           walk away.

Compromise is      hard work.

Resilience is          missing.

Divorce is               too easy.

Sadness         and          regret           linger.

A vow is a vow.

- © Julia Vaughan 2022

Julia Vaughan moved to Australia with her husband in 1989, and began writing poetry after attending inspiring Victorian U3A Surf Coast “I just don’t get poetry” classes.  Having poems dotted sparsely across the internet, she dreams of becoming an accomplished poet.  When not dreaming, she can be found walking on the beach with her husband and two Vizsla dogs.

New Poetry by Kitty Jospé

Poem to my Son, after reading Rilke "Do you still remember: Falling Stars"

"every gaze upward became

wedded to the swift hazard of their play" - Rainer Maria Rilke

I hope you will remember the fireflies

how like Rilke's shooting stars

they flashed in the night,

like gifts of starlight tumbling

in the pine trees

and I hope they will remind you how

deep the bond between a parent and child

no matter the hurdles

of wishes held

                             flashing desire

in our hearts so strong, so immeasurably potent

and indestructible,  

that no matter inevitable

disintegration, there is this love,

this fury of desire

to understand

each other,

so we can confirm

our bond is not just hazard

we know we just can't do it

alone in this life.

- © Kitty Jospé 2022

Kitty Jospé is a retired French teacher, active docent, received her MFA in poetry (2009 Pacific University, OR).  Since 2008, she has been leading workshops on art and word, and moderates weekly sessions to help people to be more attentive and appreciative readers of good poems.