Submissions closed for the year

 

Bluepepper will be on the road over Christmas/New Year and so will be closed for submissions until 3rd January 2023. Seasons greetings and stay safe.

New Poetry by Anthony Vernon

Birds

Terror Birds

Bird songs come from terror

They are screams

And cries of fear

Each note a desperation

Every tune a panic

Melodies are but anxieties

Chirps are but worries

And all flights are frights

As bird songs only come from terror birds

Window Birds

Like a bird to a window

I’ll fly into you now

Thoughts of coming through

Crush dead onto the ground

Found are feathers, blood, and bone

A dying alone

And a cry towards the transparent

But the words aren’t apparent

To a barrier to all but shight

That brings an end to flight

Kite Mountain

Sons are birds

Flying up and over mountains

But not before they breathe their mother’s body

Then their wings are born

And the old lungs are forgotten

And when I flew

You cried til the night

Then in your dreams

You clipped my wings

Keeping me in my cage

Where a bird’s flight is forgotten

- © Anthony Vernon 2022

Anthony David Vernon is a Cuban-American literary writer and master's level philosophy student at the University of New Mexico. He is a regularly published author of poetry along with short stories and philosophical articles in a variety of outlets. His premiere book is The Assumption of Death a hybrid work of poetry, short stories, and philosophical musings.

New Poetry by Greg Jensen

Loneliness is a Killer

In the small room you rent 

several floors above the city

you put two words together 

to make conversation.

One word follows

the sound of the other

but just sits there in the room

not explaining like a father

who comes home and stares

deep into the center

of the television.

You put yourself together

and have a day,

instant coffee

and a tinful of tobacco

for company.

Your heart feels

like a hammer 

swinging low

after a long day 

nailing two words

to keep four walls

from falling down.

When it stabs

you take a small tablet 

of nitroglycerine

and swallow another five minutes

of watching the clock.

You hear footsteps

in the hallway,

another door

closing on another

person who rents,

like you, loneliness

for next to nothing.

The cost of living

in this city is high.

You pay to keep 

yourself locked up 

after years 

being locked out.

- © Greg Jensen 2022

Greg Jensen has worked with unhoused adults living with mental illnesses and addiction problems for over 20 years. His work has appeared in 'december,' 'Bodega,' 'Crab Creek Review,' 'Fugue,' 'Rabid Oak,' and 'Porridge Magazine.' Greg holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University.

New Poetry by John Rock

Chrysopeia

if I opened my heart

you'd see children playing in the sand

and the glass cauldron of a sunset

with foxfire beneath it

slow silver swells and a little boy sayin

"I'm a pickle"

and no one listening

this ocean on the edge of ornament

almost metal

almost pure

liquid

the soft blows

of swallows snatching beetles

lifting toward the mountains

- © John Rock 2022

John Rock is a long-time fan and contributor to Bluepepper and organic farm traveler just trying to get at some poetic truths and grow some beautiful food. More poetry, novels and recordings at johnrockpoetry.com

New Poetry by Mark J. Mitchell

Little God Lost

Disguised as art, he slides through the city

like some chess piece left behind when the rules

got drawn up. He sorts every face he sees—

checks or mates. His cracked harlequin mask, blue

under streetlights, can burn red when he needs

passion. He makes confetti notes. Swallows

them without reading. He steals just nothing,

borrowing dropped souls. He’s never allowed

in certain dreams. There are corners his mask

can’t hide, where the voice it uses to sing

is too cold. It cracks lost jewelry—glass,

not precious. He rests. Sleeps on the night bus.

It slides like a rook towards dawn. The last

notes cling to his framed mask. Cool. Safe as dust.

- © Mark J. Mitchell 2022

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu   was recently published by Encircle Publications. A new collection, Something to Be and a novel are forthcoming. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, he’s looking for work again. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and four full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.

New Poetry by Paul Ilechko

Anthem

I see your fingers     scarred and bandaged

your hands are not the hands belonging to a child

I see your feet     the way in which you spin

the angles of your pointing     I see the way

in which you fell     the silence of it was so very

shocking     I see the flowers bursting into color

you were a visitor here     this was never going

to be your country     you wore the heavy coat

and sang the marching songs     your splendid voice

now quiet     your face the shade of candlewax

looking upwards in your stiff unportioned aspect

locked into a theory of directionless divinity.

- © Paul Ilechko 2022

Paul Ilechko is a Pushcart nominated poet who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Night Heron Barks, Tampa Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Sleet Magazine, and The Inflectionist Review. His first album, "Meeting Points", was released in 2021.  

New Poetry by Sam Moe

Fireweed

Late, lilac-infused dawn, pine trees for once

that ridiculous lake into which fall shoes in the summer,

a bird who shares your middle name, rats, combs

covers, gold, mica, plunder dough and the rain

that came at the end of the month and lasted through

the holiday, coated your mailbox in mud and mushrooms,

decay. The obsession of the fawns, your doodles

in the corner of a recipe book, your forgetfulness,

a spoon on the edge of the sink just in case you wanted

to eat the batter again, eggs from someone else’s

chicken, maybe you should leave your windows

open, this isn’t about nerves or apples curved against

copper leaves and a deep sense of abandonment,

this isn’t about the argument or the clover, eucalyptus

in jars, wildflower and buckwheat, how soft the blossoms

were when we gathered them in our hands. False and

vanilla cinnamon, lace down the halls, our friends come

over for dinner, they leave bells in pots, discs with lungs,

ornaments and taffy, marshmallow and too much cream

in coffee, later we’ll lie on the floor. And I’ll spread my

arms in the mist, angelic during evening mist, I’ll tell you

I’m drowning. Everything smells sweet and warm. You think

I’m joking so we both laugh, and you feed me spoonsfuls

of honey.

- © Sam Moe 2022

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, “Heart Weeds,” is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, “Grief Birds,” is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

New Poetry by Peter Mladinic

Eternal Virgin

Which me do you want? The daughter 

watching her father watch the Noh play

in Late Spring, or the widow in Tokyo Story

in a train moving further and further away

from the town, the teacher in a classroom

the young sister-in-law of the widow I

played. The day before my leaving, the girl,

“Is life heartache?” Yes, I told her, yes, it is,

what she hadn’t hoped to hear, her mother 

suddenly gone, her father a widower, I

their daughter by marriage, the only one

who opened the door of her heart to them

their final days as husband and wife,

under my roof. Having been shunned by

their own children. Didn’t I look wistful,

smart in my western skirt and blazer 

seated in the train? That close up, my eyes.

A person says, I’ve never seen such beauty!

It’s all in my eyes.  Setsuko, eternal virgin.

A movie star, I retired early, never married.

In the audience of the Noh play, my father

with the woman he’s to marry.  Don’t leave 

me, father, I say with my eyes. He and she

watch raptly the masked players.

- © 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 Simon Christiansen

Lightspeed

Green

I am permitted to move

But I remain at rest

Emerald raindrops glitter in the night

Yellow

From emeralds to nuggets of gold

Engines wake from their slumber

I stand on the yellow brick road

Red

Roar of engines, squeaking of tires

Blood spatter on my coat

Rubies hit the road

Yellow

Grinding of brakes, cessation of movement

I require no transition

I bask in the light from a miniature sun

Green

I am permitted to move

- © Simon Christiansen 2022

Simon Christiansen is a writer and indie game designer living in Denmark. His stories have appeared in anthologies of Danish science fiction, Lackington’s, and Nature Futures. He has also written several award-winning works of interactive fiction. More information about his work can be found at www.sichris.com.

New Poetry by James Kangas

 

Castle       

There’s a blue and pink castle

in the backyard of the house

on the corner. Every day

or two there’s a new inflatable

in that yard: a bounce house,

a water slide, a rocket.

All I need do is look

out my window and I am

transported to a new wonder.

Then in a few minutes

the castle gets deflated

and someone walks over it

to force out the air pockets

before, finally, the folding 

and putting away.

- © James Kangas 2022

James Kangas is a retired librarian and musician living in Flint, Michigan.  His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, The New York Quarterly, The Penn Review, Unbroken, et al.  His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.

New Poetry by Anthony Lawrence

Security Measures

In the interests of Personal Safety,

should you encounter behaviour, 

objects, or items you consider

to be literature, contact Security, 

the Police, the Mental Health 

Hotline, or approach any uniform,

including pilots, Quarantine

inspectors or cabin crew,even

carousel sniffer dogs have been 

known to sit down beside luggage 

containing books by Rupi Kaur. 

Please report the following: 

a passenger nodding sagely 

while reading 'The Complete 

John Ashbery’; those who swear 

they can find acrostic poetry 

on Flight Information boards; 

a limousine driver at Arrivals 

holding a sign: Lagavulin Lovers 

Welcome Geoffrey Hill;

a First Officer introducing

the captain, then giving an update 

on conditions in rhyming couplets;

people who are close to coming 

to blows over whether 

performance poetry translates 

well on the page, or those 

already throwing punches after

being told the stage is anathema

to any understanding of where

- © Anthony Lawrence 2022

Anthony Lawrence’s most recent book of poems is ‘Ordinary Time,’ a collaboration with Audrey Molloy. His collection ‘Headwaters,’ won the 2017 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry. He is a senior lecturer at Griffith university where he teaches Creative Writing. He lives on Moreton Bay.

New Short Fiction by Nina Alonso Hathaway

 My little sister’s chalk-drawing on the sidewalk, runs inside crying because Marjie from up the street prayed Jesus into her heart, “Get him out?” Mom manages a Jesus-ectomy, later says Marjie asked my brother why he killed Jesus.   

 “Ignorant,” she says, shaking her head, “Never heard of Pontius Pilate, no idea Jesus was Jewish,” glad they’re not burning crosses or aiming guns. 

 No Asians in my high school, one African American boy cheered on the football field who dates a Jamaican girl from the next town. My classmate Sandra’s dad is Jewish, but her mom’s Catholic, so they have some sort of compromise tree. Locals are mostly Protestant, afloat in a bigoted bubble as if theirs is the only true path.

 Dining at Spring Moon we get to know the Moys, and I babysit their girls. Ruth gives me a cheongsam, green silk, which I wear to a party, friends squinting as if I’ve turned into multiple kinds of ‘other.’ 

 One evening four year old Denise is poking her rice, two year old Debbie’s too sleepy to eat. I hear buzzing, notice the liter bottle of Coke on the fridge jiggling, then it explodes spraying soda and bits of glass. I carry screaming kids from the room, glad no one’s hurt, call Ruth,“We’re okay, but the kitchen’s a mess.”

 “Read stories, put them to bed. I’ll clean up later.”

 George drives me to Riverview, as I’ve got a license but no car, over-explaining what I’ve already figured out, “Refrigerator vibration shook the bottle, carbon dioxide bubbles blew it up like a volcano in chemistry class.” He’s a freshman at Harvard, planning to be a doctor like his father who died of a heart attack when he was nine. My pharmacist dad studies George’s thick glasses, his lanky frame, watches him sneeze into his handkerchief, later says, “He’s not a good specimen,” as if rejecting a dubious lab sample. 

 I’m reading about the Holocaust, concentration camp photos, skeletal survivors, Auschwitz.  Mom says, “Auntie lived in Warsaw with cousins, but letters stopped coming, meaning Nazis murdered them.

 I have college acceptances, but money’s tight so choose the piano scholarship at Boston Conservatory. The front desk provides keys to practice rooms, usually a cranky spinet in an airless basement cubicle, walls so thin there’s no way to avoid hearing violins sawing away, voices crawling up and down scales. By November playing piano five hours a day feels like classical music prison, my wrists stiff and aching. My friend Dee says ‘hang in there,’ but the doctor labels it ‘tendonitis, overuse syndrome,’ and orders rest. My teacher, Anton Moeldner, student of Paderewski, encourages me, but the pain’s worse. I love piano, hate disappointing him and giving up my scholarship, but have to accept that whatever I’m supposed to be doing, this isn’t it. 

 “Sometime things happen we can’t understand,” Mom says, as she’s loved hearing me play since I was six.

 I meet a friend for coffee, fine until he starts discussing Freud. No idea who that is, and too embarrassed to admit ignorance, I say, “Getting late,” and leave. At the conservatory I studied classical piano, ballet, Italian, English composition taught by a charming actor, music history and theory, no composers named Freud. That spring I work at a department store wearing the required ugly turquoise blouse, only excitement a robbery in ‘fine jewelry,’ security guards knocking over displays, alarms blaring, police blowing whistles.

 September, lucky to receive a full scholarship at Simmons, I start reading George Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Alfred North Whitehead, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot, Dostoevsky, Freud and all the rest. Can’t afford a dorm, so take the bus until invited to live with my friend Heather and her mom in Cambridge.

 In high school George’s big hands poked under my sweater, but now the guideline’s ‘don’t get pregnant.’ Virginity lasts until Sam, tall, brown-eyed Harvard Law, eager to elope. Why do I agree, repeat words that mean nothing in front of a justice of the peace, move to DC with him after graduation? 

 It’s about being horribly young, afraid no one more exciting will ask, soon sorry because Sam’s emotionally blank, bossy and boring, the sex dismal. I don’t love him, he doesn’t love me. One night he admits he was in love with a Harvard law student, black, from South Africa, but his parents threatened to cut him off financially unless he ended it, so he did, then finds me, a white, parent-acceptable female.  “Still in love with her?” No answer, says it’s my problem if I feel used. 

 I try a psychotherapist, an owlish type with round glasses and argyle socks who jots notes on green-lined paper, but says nothing, even when I announce I’m leaving Sam and DC, just his usual,’See you next time.’ Did he hear anything? Hell, no. 

 I’ve saved money for a plane ticket, grateful to crash on my friend Heather’s couch in Cambridge, depart without telling Sam,  no goodbyes, as I’ve given up on him, glad he’s busy at his Securities and Exchange Commission office. Later he blames my ‘emotional issues,’ easier than looking in the mirror.

 Divorced by twenty-two, I’m angry at myself for legalizing this stupid episode. Why didn’t I see through the situation sooner? I watch other friends marry, figure they made better decisions, seem happy with their cute babies, until they confide about counseling sessions and break ups. My best friend Heather gets divorced and moves to Australia with her six year old. My brother Carl stays married, and my friend Jane, but my sister calls a lawyer when her husband declares himself ‘out’ and joins a gay chorus. It’s a relief that it wasn’t just me who didn’t know what in hell I was doing.

 I find an attic flat in a Cambridge three-decker, lucky to have a grad school fellowship at Brandeis and a Mom who helps with groceries. At Cafe Pamplona I meet Fernando, born in Argentina, who says his family fled Peron when he was seven, settled in the states where he spent school days playing pick up sticks as he knew no English. When I can’t get my VW Bug going, he gives me a ride in his old rust-cracked Chevy. I tell him everything, even what felt stultifying, painful and wrong, struggling to accept that’s just what it was.

 He’s the first man I’ve met who listens, doesn’t criticize, doesn’t judge, doesn’t comment on how I dress, doesn’t tell me what to do, doesn’t pressure me, doesn’t have an invasive ego agenda, the first time I feel safe.

 His touch is gentle and sensitive, though it’s a while before we call it love, no single star-shine moment, more like a seed taking time to grow. We live together, feel no need to change ourselves or each other because, somehow, we’re okay as we are.

- © Nina Alonso Hathaway 2022

Nina's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, U. Mass. Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Black Poppy Review, Bluepepper, Peacock Journal, Ibbetson Street, Bagel Bards Anthology, Constant Remembrance, MomEgg, New Boston Review, Cambridge Artists Cooperative, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Tears and Laughter, Southern Women’s Review, Broadkill Review etc.  David Godine Press published my book This Body, Cervena Barva Press published Riot Wake, and a story collection and novel are in the works.

New Collaborative Poetry by Carson Pytell and Zebulon Huset

A Light Year of Nostalgia *

Lingering in the toy aisle

for decades

Just another toy's story

with no kid

and a concept of time

alien to us

which the wise don't call

forever

they just let gravity continue

to drag us along

into the black hole we call

the light, "run"

the call of those not yet at

the event horizon

yet having always headlined

our own matinee—

A consumer generation waiting

to buy-in.

- © Carson Pytell & Zebulon Huset 2022

Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, New York, whose work appears in such venues as The Adirondack Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Fourth River, and The Heartland Review. He serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of Coastal Shelf, and his most recent chapbooks are Tomorrow Everyday, Yesterday Too (Anxiety Press, 2022), and A Little Smaller Than the Final Quark (Bullshit Lit, 2022)

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. His writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Meridian, Rattle, The Southern Review, Fence, Texas Review and Atlanta Review among others. He also publishes the writing prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the literary journal Coastal Shelf.

* [This piece is from a collaborative poetry project called “Stanza Trades”. In the Stanza Trades series the collaborating poets write alternating stanzas.]

New Poetry by Lynn White

Clock Wise

They were traditional

retirement gifts

after a long working life.

I never understood.

Perhaps the first time

it was given in irony,

an employer with a quirky sense of humour,

but then it caught on and became traditional.

I remember the one given to my father.

It was brown

all brown

with cream numbers and fingers.

It sat dismally on our mantelpiece

ticking away morosely

long after his death.

As I child I used

the glass as a mirror,

a smiling face, a funny face,

or a gurning face.

My faces livened it up a bit

but I left it behind

when mother died.

- © Lynn White 2022

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. 

New Poetry by Andrew Kidd

The Ghost of Liparis Loeselii at Crymlyn Burrows

Bunting out of this purpled, boggy heath

are grasses that fence small pools

stagnating and snaking to pull in

saltwater that marsh to amass

as black-surfaced mirrors.

Inside these, the fiery, wide-lipped glow

of twayblade and tresses

ghost to illuminate this darkening sandpile,

all trodden and trampled upon

by the industrious boot that giants across the river.

Water ripples trickle out repeatedly

to sequins and glitter like eyelid-flicker

leading down to a place where meadow pipits skirt

along Brunel's old harbour wall.

Reflected in the face of the water

is an apparition in a clear-sighted clearing,

yellowed like gorse, part-illuminated

by sparks that anvil across.

- © Andrew Kidd 2022

Andrew C. Kidd has had poetry and flash fiction published in Elsewhere: A Journal of Place, Friday Flash Fiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, Green Ink Poetry and Soor Ploom Press.

New Poetry by Lydia Pejovic

Wild horse rights advocates say:

leave the hoofprints in the dirt. If we

continue to sweep away the remnants

of what stepped here yesterday, or last

century, or tomorrow, what can we make

of walking patterns or the weather? Think

about the recent rains that washed away

red dirt and anthills. What would we do

without knowledge of a natural cleanse?

We would think that someone wiped away

the hoofprints, or worse yet, someone took

the horses and domesticated them and cut

their hooves into new shapes, so that they

could decorate the land in different, more

controlled, ways.

hit lock

he puts the car key in his mouth and hits “lock” / we’re a distance from his car but / i hear a horn down the garage / he tells me that an open mouth amplifies range / and locks the doors from afar / it’s science, baby, he says / i want to put the keys on my tongue / i want to give him the back of my throat / and let my uvula become his punching bag / the range that we could create / would be a wide wide chasm / almost as large as the space / between the past versions of us / it is selfish for him to break / the rules of distance / things shouldn’t work in certain ranges / for certain reasons, yet / he finds ways to extend himself / far and deep inside / past any existing laws or ideas / that i believed to be true

- © Lydia Pejovic 2022

Lydia Pejovic is a writer, lecturer, and current dual English MA/MFA student at Chapman University. She received her BA in English from the University of San Diego. She writes both fiction and poetry. Check her out at https://www.lydiapejovic.com/.

New Poetry by Jason Beale

Common or Indian Myna

They're a favourite of suburban poets

lazily in need of some local colour,

even though they're an interloper, a pest,

and not as lovely as the noisy miner.

Cheeky little buggers in dark Zorro hoods

with the feral stealth of true survivors,

they’re hated for driving out native birds 

but in India a symbol of faithful lovers.

Every day I watch them on our lawn,

peck-pecking away at invisible prey,

bugs and beetles, a worm now and then.

They hang around the back door too,

staking out the dog's bowl, hoping to score, 

like Heckle and Jeckle meets Bill and Ben.

Common mynas live at breakneck speed,

always dodging magpies, cats and cars,

often found deceased on bitumen or asphalt,

sometimes hopping in and out of poets’ dreams.

- © Jason Beale 2022

Jason Beale is a writer who lives in the southeast suburbs of Melbourne. His poems have been published in Meniscus, Grieve Vol 10 and Poetry d’Amour 2022.

New Prose Poetry by Heather Sager

Snowflakes Falling

 With the look of winter, you emerge from the front door of a house. You are young, and your eyes sparkle with curiosity. I say you look of winter because of your black top hat, your black coat, and because your eyes tilt to the gray and white sky. You whistle as you walk onto the sidewalk along the curb. Other people hibernate in their homes. You are all alone. White snow blankets the ground everywhere, and patches of snow drift across the path you head onto, marching quickly. Bare, small trees hunker under pale fluff. The metal park-bench near the weeping willow glowers metallic black. Out in the evergreen-scented air, winter snow flakes fall as delicately patterned as spiral lace onto your shoulders, and also wetly blur your vision. You pull the neck of your coat up to warm yourself. Now you feel as cozy as the folks you imagine lounging indoors. Next the images of the movie you plan to make glimmer in your mind. You intend to make something magical, with a special effect or three—a film that will cause viewers to stop in their life’s tracks and say, “Oh My.” You want to craft a movie about rare humans who live on the moon. Who live in style. The snow reminds you of a painter’s canvas. The images of your film-dream are set in motion.

 You are out walking in winter, the snowflakes gently falling. 

- © Heather Sager 2022

Heather Sager lives in Illinois where she writes poetry and fiction. Her writing has recently appeared in Remington Review, Bluepepper, Poets' Espresso Review, Poetry Pacific, Flights, The Fabulist, Otoliths, Magma, and more journals and anthologies.

New Poetry by JD DeHart

If I Had Only One Pen

I would write your story large,

of living by the railroad tracks,

mother gone too young,

father hunched up in tradition,

and pain,

a back injury, coal dust spelling

your future with dried fingers.

A husband who would

crawl under trains. Sons who

would live most comfortably

among trees and beside springs,

listening to the voices of creeks,

wisdom spilling like water

like the pounds, even tons

of care you give.

- © JD DeHart 2022

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. His most recent poetry collection, A Five-Year Journey, is available from Dreaming Big Publications.

New Poetry by Abigail George

The Psychologist

Her kids are American. In pictures

they draw in kindergarten

they have spaghetti meatballs

for heads. Her life is Americana.

She speaks with an accent.

On the phone in clipped American

tones. Saying ‘yeah’ at the end

of her sentences. By now she

probably believes in thanksgiving,

turkey and reality television.

She does not read Bessie Head, 

Joyce Carol Oates, Lauren Beukes.

Andre Brink. I don’t think she’s

ever heard of Ingrid Jonker.

Perhaps my cousin did a poem of hers placed

in the curriculum in matric. That love affair

inspired me. I wanted to write like him.

Poems like Ingrid Jonker.

All the psychologist wants is to talk.

For me to talk about me. 

The sad, lyrical, beautiful diagnosis.

And that is the last thing I want.

- © Abigail George 2022

South African Abigail George has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize ("Wash Away My Sins"), and Best of the Net awards for her poetry and an essay. She is a blogger, lyricist, editor, filmmaker, playwright, poet, essayist, chapbook, novelist, novella, grant, and short story writer. She briefly studied film at NFTS (Newtown Film and Television School) in Johannesburg. She was educated in Port Elizabeth, and Swaziland. She is the Contributing Editor for African Writer, and an editor at Mwanaka Media and Publishing. She writes op-ed pieces for local newspapers, and has written columns for national travel magazine. Her latest books are "The Scholarship Girl: Life Writing", "Parks and Recreation", "Of Smoke Flesh and Bone: Poems Against Depression" (Mwanaka Media and Publishing), and "Anatomy of Melancholy" (Praxis), a chapbook which was released in 2020. Her latest book is Letter to Petya Dubarova released by Gazebo Books (Australia). Her publishers are Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, Xavier Hennekinne and Roxana Nastase.

New Poetry by Rob Schackne

The Swerve

“The messages are brief but they extend  

 in the solitude of their (our) nights.” 

             -  John Berger in Fellow Prisoners

Enter the bee-loud glade 

birds regain their bearings 

the world throbs awake 

the felled trees 

tantalised 

the ashes spoke 

will I sleep forever 

will I wake tomorrow 

coming up the edge 

the sun in our eyes 

what did we miss 

I write half a hazy dream 

a meadow of butterflies 

looking for the other half 

will I wake tomorrow 

will I sleep forever 

- © Rob Schackne 2022

Rob was born in New York. He lived in many countries until Australia finally took him in. In 2017 he returned to Oz after working for 15 years in China as a Foreign Expert EFL teacher. He lives in country Victoria where he enjoys the blue sky, sunshine, fresh air, and the birds. There were some extreme sports once; now he writes poems and takes photographs.

(N.B. The "bee-loud glade” is taken from W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’) 

New Poetry by Brooks Lindberg

Dostoyevsky's Dice

12 times the mousetrap snaps and

12 times I discover it's empty.

Hemingway had bulls.

Bukowski, race horses.

Nabokov, butterflies.

Schopenhauer, poodles.

And me, I've got mice

whose work with peanut butter

provides perpetual awe and despair.

- © Brooks Lindberg 2022

Brooks Lindberg is a tax attorney recently moved to the Pacific Northwest. His poems often appear in The Blotter Magazine. Others appear in Tigershark Magazine, Squawk Back, Wild Violet, and elsewhere. You can find links to his works at brookslindberg.com.

New Poetry by Nick Boyer

 

Application

Yes,

I am an American citizen.

Yes,

I have a bachelor’s degree.

Yes,

I am not brave enough to starve. 

Yes,

I will find some time to enjoy my sustainable wealth.

Yes,

I saw what my parents did and what my grandparents did.

Yes,

you can take my last escape; I’ll piss in the cup.

No,

I do not think I am above work -

I think everyone is. I am no politician.

I am neither Hitler nor Buddha. I am

broken and in a cast(e). I think and 

stutter and trip over my guts and swollen

liver. I have acne on my thighs and everyone knows.

No,

retirement is not enough of an incentive,

neither is currency. I want time. Is that 

selfish? What language is that on the wall?

No,

I won’t tell the truth. Who is asking? It 

cannot be god. As a child, I was yelled at

by a priest during the middle of a service.

I was banging on the side of the pew with

my plastic hammer. 

I didn’t think anything of it.

- © Nick Boyer 2022

Nick Boyer is an emerging poet writing in Upstate New York. He recently self-published his debut novel, Steady Progress Home, and his poetry has been published in Taj Mahal Review. More of his writing can be found on the web at poetryforthegrave.com or @poetryforthegrave on Instagram.

New Poetry by John Tustin

Number the Stars

 

We are so arrogant as to dismiss the gods,

Making it so easy for the gods

To dismiss us.

We are so arrogant as to try to quantify love.

We are so arrogant with our bows, trying to shoot love from the sky.

We are so arrogant as to try to build a golden trellis

Adorned with blood red roses

That rises up toward our visions of heaven in the clouds.

The gods have no need for gold or blood red roses.

They pluck us as we climb and down we tumble.

We are so arrogant as to try to number the stars

When there are so many more stars

Than the days we have remaining

And are too afraid to number.

The stars remain in their frozen dignity.

We dissolve day-by-day in our fragile and debased less and less love.

We are so arrogant as to dream

More than we sleep,

Want more than we need,

Take more than we try.

- © John Tustin 2022

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

 

New Poetry by Henry Stimpson

Elsewhere

Under another sun, my twin in teal trunks

daydreams in an identical blue canvas

beach chair. He too slurps lemonade, smells

his warm salty skin and hears the waves

crashing. Now he and I get up and charge

across the hot white sand into the bracing surf.

Later, we wonder: is there a strange near-twin

on a blue beach in an almost-Rhode Island

writing subtler poems in greenish English?

- © Henry Stimpson 2022

Henry Stimpson’s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Lighten Up Online, Rolling Stone, Muddy River Poetry Review, Mad River Review, Aethlon, The MacGuffin, The Aurorean, Common Ground Review, Asses of Parnassus, Bluepepper, The Boston Phoenix, Boston University Today, Snakeskinpoetry, Atlanta Review, California Quarterly and On the Seawall.  He also writes essays, humor and articles, lives in Massachusetts and hopes to see a Boston Celtics championship in 2023. 

New Poetry by Jean Bohuslav

priorities

it was an artistic eye favouring an assorted

coloured flock to gaze upon

instead of gallant black headed suffolk

various fleeces being more coveted

for spinning than lamb on plates

a merino ram tied to a nearby

post won her heart as she sold ducklings

at the market

two years growth of fine jet-black wool and

huge curled horns to secure behind the

valiant’s front seat was a joyful trial

the following year he was replaced by

a trojan lincoln minus head gear

idi amin’s streaming silver locks

blinded him almost totally when charging

onlookers being terrified of his battle tactics

more than the actual butt of a broad

nuggety head

the favourite

a chocolate romney sire

raced billy carts downhill to

ropes dangling from redgums

saving youngster’s rumps

then chased them uphill till they climbed

stacked fallen branches

a ready bonfire

where outsmarting him was rejoiced

he appeared docile

until unexpecting youngsters flew over

ringlock fencing

losing shoes and pride

his antics were generally acceptable

like many humans

those paddocks taught compromise

she could have most things

but had to take what came with them

- © Jean Bohuslav 2022

  

Jean Bohuslav enjoys being part of a poetry group in Torquay Victoria.  She shares her work online and has a chapbook published.  Jean’s other interests are mindfulness philosophy and painting.

 

 

 

New Poetry by Malak Nicholas H.

son, are you okay?

You had blood in your hair,

when I met you, you had

broken teeth and your skin

was scorn, full of scars and

small lesions, you spat out

blood and you greeted me,

as if nothing was going on,

as if it didn’t look like you

were close to giving up the

ghost, close to dropping dead.

- © Malak Nicholas H. 2022

Malak Nicholas H. is a writer currently in Europe. He’s a teenager, a middle eastern queer person, but also so much more. And first of all, he is a human who writes about being out of the gender binary & the mental issues he’s been through.

New Poetry by Fotoula Reynolds

September-gold

Sometimes life feels like

The tiny artful twists of a bonsai

Choreographing me to the places

I am meant to be

With full authority

Rising, climbing the air

Like the sunflower that I am

Mysterious and becoming

Dancing into destiny

Feeling safe and hidden

Behind a weeping willow’s

Curtain-like branches, I’m moved

To beyond all that I know

Treading lightly on seeds

That are September-gold

I navigate a spider web thread

And see the pattern within

Emotion-weave into my soul

On a path of unendingness

My heart travels a landscape

Through butterfly-eyes

I breathe a clean language

On the rotating weather wheel

I am further than middle age

I no longer follow a map and

I trust the season of change

- © Fotoula Reynolds 2022

Fotoula Reynolds is a writer of poetry, born in Australia of Greek heritage. 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 with her fourth due for release late October 2022 titled: Kairos. Fotoula is published widely in journals, reviews, anthologies and magazines and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Also by Fotoula Reynolds: The sanctuary of my garden (2018), Silhouettes (2019), Along the Macadam Road (2020)

New Poetry by Helga Kidder

Recipe for Confession

Kneeling behind a latticed screen, Saturdays you used to confess a teenage fire beginning to flame your belly, tonguing the tips of your fingers and toes. You didn’t know yourself anymore as the fire took over your neighborhood, street by street, you couldn’t extinguish. Each house was threatened as you kindled the fire with twigs and branches you found behind sheds and in dark corners, ate an apple a day to keep temptation away.  You looked in your mother’s cookbook for help.  All the recipes required ingredients you didn’t have or want. The priest had no other solution for your affliction but to tell you, Say ten Hail Mary’s and hope for the best.  Of course, as each house burned, the town shrank.  You left it one morning when you saw on the horizon the sun’s bliss, glittering your needs, the last notes of your song yet unsung.

- © Helga Kidder 2022

Helga Kidder lives in the Tennessee hills where poems find her early mornings where the red bird waits for special seeds, where flowers beg to be watered, where she listens and watches critters slip in and out of liriope.  She has five collections of poetry, Wild Plums, Luckier than the Stars, Blackberry Winter, Loving the Dead which won the Blue Light Press Book Award 2020, and Learning Curve – poems about immigration and assimilation.

 

 

New Poetry by Caroline Reid

After Normanville

in baking January

our skin sweats

maraschino cherries

traces of last year drip

from creases

of tired vocal folds

a squawking flock

of sulphur-crested

cockatoos sail in

batter the air, land

on salmon gums

mollusc tongues carving

syllables out of blue

blue sky

time draws light long

and peachy-blush as if

time is having an affair

with the soft slumbering hills

of the headland and

the world is not turning

a darker axis

little blue wren

in the crackling garden

red-breasted robin

in the knocking pines, why

is coming back from a place

so like never having gone

- © Caroline Reid 2022

Caroline Reid is a plural poet who has twice represented South Australia in the Australian Poetry Slam. She recorded her debut collection SIARAD (ES-press 2020) as an audiobook, adapted it for stage and performs it as a spoken word show, most recently at the Red Dirt Poetry Festival in Alice Springs. Caroline collaborates with film-makers to make video poems which have screened in international festivals. She won the 2021 Mslexia International Poetry Prize for Women.

New Poetry by Vern Fein

Lincoln Laughed First

Particularly memorable were his words to a young woman whose deep interest in a hospitalised soldier led her to press the question: 

“Where were you wounded?” 

The infantryman, who had been shot through the testicles, repeatedly deflected her inquiry with the answer: “At Antietam.”

 After she asked the president to assist her, Lincoln talked privately with the soldier and then took the young woman’s hands in his own, explaining:

 “My dear girl, the ball that hit him, would have missed you.”

An august occasion—

the Cabinet tense 

like Civil War soldiers 

hidden behind trees

waiting for a life or death volley.

But Lincoln did not 

spread out the scroll

of the Emancipation Proclamation

as the room expected.

Instead, that oak-tree, strong man

took a news article from his pocket

and began to read Artemus Ward,

a humor writer from Cleveland 

who made Lincoln laugh

though slavery was not funny at all.

He knew it and steely-eyed 

stared down the grimaces and grunts

in that room and this bumpkin president

read an article he found funny

about a hayseed performer bashing

in the head of a Judas figurine

at a carnival show. 

Lincoln, notorious for telling jokes,

laughed first and told

the disapproving eyes 

if he did not laugh 

before he pronounced,

he would die

and that they needed

the same medicine 

as much as he did.

Then he ended slavery

in the rebel states,

which was no laughing matter. 

- © Vern Fein 2022

A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over two hundred poems on over ninety different sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven's Review, Blue Pepper,  Monterey Poetry Review, and Green Silk Review. His first poetry book—I WAS YOUNG AND THOUGHT IT WOULD CHANGE—was published by Cyberwit Press. 

New Poetry by David Dumouriez

I saw this bloke at the bus stop who 

I saw this bloke at the bus stop

who looked like Warren Oates.

Collar-heavy shirt in powder blue,

hair slight and crossing east-to-west,

and not the closest kinship with his razor.

But it was the shades -

retro, brown, too big -

that magicked up the era.

Didn’t hear him laugh - that would

have been the clincher - but he’d not

have been disgraced beside a Fonda,

Jack, or Hopper. Quite what the value is 

to be a Warren Number Two, don’t know.

For it’s not the look that makes the man,

but the man that makes the look.

Warren.

     In the graveyard.

                With a head.

A battered Prince of Seediness, undead.

- © David Dumouriez 2022

David Dumouriez once won a poetry competition by accident and the memory of it still haunts him. His hobbies include cricket, horology, and finding new ways to avoid talking about himself.

New Poetry by KB Ballentine

Winter Triptych

I.

Wind rushes the house,

   growls around corners,

doesn’t rest though night

   has tumbled in. Lights

blinking, we wait

   for the blizzard, hoping

the logs, the candles will last.

II.

   Snow and light sculpt

the yard. A background,

   a page fresh and new.

No fussing gusts, only the chimes

   furred and frozen, oak and cedar

accepting the ephemeral. Ice

   crystals rising inside our breaths.

III.

Slipping on re-frozen tire tracks,

   slush shifting gritty and gray,

I watch blue skies, meager sun

   re-form the layers: top crust cracking

into dirt or gravel, asphalt slick –

   stiff fingers, runny noses tricking

our memories. Forgetting wonder.

- © KB Ballentine 2022

KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, launched in 2021 with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and others, her work also appears in anthologies including I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2022), The Strategic Poet (2021), Pandemic Evolution (2021), and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

New Poetry by Benjamin Fox

So Cliché 

Our earth circled sun appeared 

in the west this morning.

Everything under it was old.

- © Benjamin Fox 2022

Benjamin Fox is fifty. He’s had by a compromising wife and three tall children. Ben struggles while smiling in Salt Lake City, Utah. He does not buy into the predominant church or their politics, but strives daily to be a gentle and good force in the world. Ben is full of wonder and seeks after kindness.