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New Poetry by Howie Good

After Auschwitz

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” – Theodor Adorno

I share the cold, windy beach with exactly one gull, and it displays zero interest in me, preferring to investigate the tidal pools for scallops and clams. As per doctor’s orders, I am walking pain away – or, rather, trying to. Up on the dunes, the dead beach grass rustles, a stiff old voice telling stories from the Bible, a surprising number of which concern shitty fathers, estranged brothers, barren wives. I turn back toward home when I reach the life guard station, shuttered until summer. A gust of wind rattles the metal sign that says Swim in Designated Areas Only. Spooked, the gray gull rises into the sky with a series of heartrending shrieks, a language very few can understand. Such a waste of wisdom.

- © Howie Good 2023

Howie Good's newest poetry collection, Heart-Shape Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

New Poetry by Rebecca Dempsey

Survive by design

Windows shatter upon impact. When

diving across, and out the passenger side door,

heart in my throat, chips bite into the heels

of my palms like gravel. I pick shards

out of the divots in my hands by the

freeway. In the pulse of emergency lights,

star glass glitters on car seats, clothing, my hair.

There’s a graze along my neck

where the seatbelt rode too high.

An obvious injury, my doctor instead

checked where seatbelts are intended to cross.

I’m deemed safe by insurer assumptions

yet I’m not adjusted for. Female

crash test dummies were made

mandatory in 2011 but I’ll never fit design

percentiles. But we can’t all fit, can we?

Life’s not customisable. And anyway,

the 2011 change didn’t apply

to my old hatchback, as it expired

before dawn. My replacement car’s

seatbelts adjust, but again,

don’t sit right, because they’re

not made for me. Like the world:

steps I stumble over, tread too broad,

jar lids like phones, too wide for

glass scarred palms, benches I climb

to reach the plug, shelves beyond reach.

Too much to remake for my comfort,

in this man-made world. But I drive,

and while women are less likely to, 

and men are involved in more accidents,

women like me and many not,

remain 47 per cent more likely to die.

- © Rebecca Dempsey 2023

Rebecca Dempsey lives in Melbourne / Naarm. Her recent works appear in The Ekphrastic Review, The Primer, and Triggerfish Critical Review. She can be found at WritingBec.com.

 

 

 

 

New Poetry by Peter Mladinic

Undercover

With help she trains them. Contacts made,

details tended, she never drops her guard.

At night, a barn far from town, her pit yelps,

lunges into blood, turbulence, animal terror. 

She towels blood from its snout.  It limps 

at her side to the truck. A carcass dragged

from the barn lies in dirt, the edge of grass,

throat torn. Money goes out of her hand,

the hand that brushes her five year old

daughter’s hair, feeds her Golden Retriever.

She’s one of them, the depraved human ring

till, the handcuffed shoved into patrol cars, 

two pits safe in a van, a driver puts a key 

in the ignition, hits the gas petal, pulls away.

- © Peter Mladinic 2023

Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is forthcoming from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

  

New Poetry by Sebastian Brooks

Time capsule

Little tin womb

asleep beneath the forest floor 

insides scrunched in scrolls,

and paper slips like sycamores.

cat-like 

on your back

Plump as a loaf

and quiet as Pluto 

Bearing aspen images 

of gleaming smiles

and dead aunts 

with forgotten names

Lost to time

just like you.

memory morgue.

Ready to be peeled open 

like an egg.

By some bright-eyed historian.

Spilling your polaroid guts out

over a counter-top,

your paper genome.

Risen from the earth

The Urn Child

Resurrected

Performing

what your 

photograph 

friends

cannot

- © Sebastian Brooks 2023

Sebastian Brooks is a 15 year old student and aspiring writer based on England’s Southern Coast.

New Poetry by Percy Olsen

To my daughter

At first we all shared in it

Over an oval table

Let it fill our homes to the brim and billow out the windows

There was plenty to go around

When a man in a stale room

Brushed the dust off his rounded shoulders

He put up his fences

And claimed some for himself

When we saw what the man had done

Most met this divergence with a shrug

We still shared in it, bottled it and let it carry us to unseen places

There was plenty to go around

But there were others who imitated the man

And their shoulders were too pushed forward

And they stole from the pool and said it had always been theirs 

But we didn’t mind

There was plenty to go around

And when we poisoned it

We said don’t worry

We said there was plenty left

And when we burned it

We said don’t worry

There was plenty left

And when it was infected

We ran from the cure

And our shoulders tipped forward

And we said there was plenty left to build a fence around

- © Percy Olsen 2023

Percy Olsen lives in Astoria, New York, where he practices law and spends quality time with his family. This is his first writing submission in over a decade.  

 

New Poetry by Celeste Oster

On Your Dead Brother’s Birthday

You will not go home.  You will walk

your adult self through your adult neighborhood 

and you will try not to notice the virginia creeper 

has turned the same blood red as your childhood home.  

You will have to think of it then, its red stained 

shingles, a matching fence more pike 

than picket.  Remember how it tore 

at clothes and tender flesh—the cost 

of your freedom so often stitches.  

How prettily your mid-century ranch sat, so

smug in its suburb with its crisp white trim, 

a blue Galaxie 500 in the drive, your proud mother

tending the flower box, so slim and pretty, so

well-meaning—the perfect heroine for 

your horror story.  How disappointing 

you were, you and your brother, screaming 

down her hallway past the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 

sliding messily into your own thorny lives. Even now, 

with shingles painted the softest cream and fence 

pickets blunted, something inside stirs.

That house will always haunt you.

- © Celeste Oster 2023

Celeste Oster’s poems have appeared in various publications including Thorny Locust, The Kansas City Star, Tiny Frights, and Potpourri. She lives in the Midwestern United States.  

New Poetry by Mark Danowsky

Scarcity 

Priced out of produce

I turn to frozen, canned

Boxes & bags 

searching for less 

Salt, long blocks

of chemical lists 

Nothing but bloat 

these bright red flags 

Selling life short 

to those without

- © Mark Danowsky 2023

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is author of several short poetry collections including, most recently, Meatless (Plan B Press). His poems and other writing have been curated in many journals including Alba, The New Verse News, anti-heroin chic, Right Hand Pointing, The Broadkill Review, Gargoyle, Otoliths, and elsewhere. 

New Poetry by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Cane Syrup

I meet a man with many missing teeth

in the Maryland panhandle

he serves me pancakes with a Dixie accent

says if he had his way I would pour

cane syrup rather than maple sugar from the table 

tracing this preference to his people having cut cane

on the Brazos

They worked from sunup until past dark

sweat so slick in muck so thick it made them

think tree sugar thin and cold clearly Yankee

and therefore inferior

He tells me what I eat should put a fire in my belly

a divine blaze like that angel who took the hand

of baby Moses when he reached for gold placed it

on ashes so the Deliverer scalded his tongue

then sucked his fingers until

Like my waiter

he required dentures.

- © Jeremy Nathan Marks 2023

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. He is the author of Of Fat Dogs & Amorous Insects (Alien Buddha Press, 2021).

 

New Poetry by John Grey

The Game 

A tree snake gutted

the robin’s nest.

A hawk snatched

a mourning dove

as it was splashing

in a bird-bath.

A raccoon was hit

by a passing truck.

A wren thumped its skull

on a plate glass door.

If you’re counting,

that’s two for nature,

two for mankind.

Meanwhile,

I swat at a mosquito

that a swallow

has in its sights.

Death’s a competition

in this suburban neighborhood.

The next moment or

two should decide it.

- © John Grey 2023

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

New Poetry by James Croal Jackson

Production Dinner, 2022

I.

  tonight it is free to clink

           glasses with luxury

      at the steakhouse downtown

              my first

                 Manhattan

               since Day One

       I have been

                              red meat squeezed

                                   of all its blood a puddle

        at your recommendation

                on our plates a weight

                      to our long

         day

                  but hey

                                                    a hundred bucks?

     you produced The Hunger

                                                Games

& film’s

                        a hungry hundred days

                                     believing

the dream is not a struggle

 

II.

                                              trout on dry

                              land among

          the cattle

                              wriggling

                    out the net we lose ourselves

              in work

yet

                           gorge

       on appetizers

          bacon-wrapped around

each other

                    the shrimp

is not taboo

           nor endless

                                 with buttery bread

I can’t end

                              this twelve-hour

               shift

III.

I long to spend

free time free

but you close

your eyes when

you talk to me

like you can’t

bear to sit

at the same table

in the down-

trodden way

I say hey

this could be

my favorite

restaurant

over and over

to no one

- © James Croal Jackson 2023

James Croal Jackson works in film production. His most recent chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, SAND, and Vilas Avenue. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

New Poetry by Nicholas Shields

Dead meat 

dead meat

and a pretty girl

junkies of poetry

and poorly rolled darts

I should be doing ketamine

in a dirty and dark club

where no one asks

what I’m doing with my life

instead, i sit across

from your pink hair

and dozens of piercings

that each hold a story

feeling nostalgic

I decided to start smoking again

even a corpse,

needs a cheap thrill

you are hotter than my laptop battery

and you might kill me

but in a good way

the way where i actually die

it’s cold

smoking in the rain

as neon lights glow

matching the colour of your hair

I went home and did ketamine alone

then stared at this poem

expecting something to be different

nothing.

the only life in dead meat

is hope that loiters

slowly eroding

through getting the things i want

nothing changes

except my chain to the world

my care for its corners

its supposed secrets

that is why the cigarette

burns so beautifully

- © Nicholas Shields 2023

Nicholas Shields is a 24 year old male from Melbourne Australia who works in a pub, and writes when he can.

New Poetry by Richard LeDue

 

A Dusty Al Purdy Book

Dust is illiterate,

unable to tell the difference

between a hotel drawer bible

and an award winning poetry book,

and our only answers

are sneezing and clearing our throat,

as if we had something important to say,

but we end up reading the silence instead-

our dilated pupils pinpointing a metaphor,

which seems deeply personal

until we close our eyes and realize

we're just plagiarizing the dark.

- © Richard LeDue 2023

Richard LeDue (he/him) is the author of eight books of poetry. His work has appeared in the Eunioa Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Duck Duck Mongoose, and other publications, both online and in print. His latest book, “Secondhand Salvation,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in February 2023.

New Poetry by Glenn Bach

38,299 acres, 3%

 

w/ flanking and spotting smoke is better

now that it’s shifted southwest good

news for us bad news for Mt. Wilson

Arcadia and Sierra Madre and here’s

Cogswell Dam that West Fork trail

road will likely be off limits for a

while with these thermals which is

the smoke whirl though I remember

the fire started closer to the dam

 

 

41,231 acres, 3%

 

though we used to have mountains

unknowing the answers because nothing

is easy upslope runs thru canyons we had

a good night whoa that is WILD seems

premature the impressive #bobcatfire

continues to climb Mt. Wilson will it

reduce the observatory to ashes?

 

 

41,773 acres, 3%

 

uphill with crown runs spotting across

the canyon hotspot by hotspot battle

a burning hell hill but the threat isn’t over

when there isn’t a wildfire or pandemic

as the lights of Los Angeles grow brighter

- © Glenn Bach 2023

Glenn Bach is a sound artist recently relocated from Southern California to the Doan Brook watershed of Cleveland, Ohio. His major project, Atlas, is a long poem about place and our (mis)understanding of the world. Excerpts have appeared in jubilat, Otoliths, Plumwood Mountain and others. He documents his work at glennbach.com and @AtlasCorpus.