New Poetry by Gale Acuff

Graduate School in English

Wally Sandburg sits across from me

at my small round white-topped table in my

converted garage apartment. I write

the last paragraph of a needless paper

on Yeats. He hasn't started his yet. Wise

man, to save his lust for the best 'til last.

He's brought a bottle of Jim Beam, enough

still left for us both. I don't want any

--I do like a drink, so I don't drink it

anymore. When he was in the bathroom

he was singing, as if in orgasm,

O God, I love to pee, I love to pee.

Hold it down, I said. Don't wake the landlord.

He returns and takes his seat. Pours a drink.

Silence for five minutes. He's trying to

think. And then he says, while my head is bowed

to complete my final sentence, like a

scribe at work, Your mother swallows. I cross

my t and look up. He suddenly adds,

I'm sorry. Like he means it--he never

does, but he seems sincere this time.

I smile. I chuckle. I wonder if she

does, I think. Or did--the last time she saw

my father was eighteen years ago. Could

it be that I had a younger--older?--

brother, sister, lost among her lips, her

throat, her stomach? It's sure something to think

about. It might make a poem. I'll try it

on him now. I start to speak--all that comes

is Give me that bottle. I chug it. Straight.

Four gulps. Without gagging. You mean like that,

I say. I guess I showed him. Mother, too.


- Gale Acuff 2013

Gale has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. I have authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).

Gale has also taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

All Dried Up

I

an old lady

waiting in this parched bed

for something to happen

which cannot happen.

I

an old lady

with an impatient

unsated belly

that will not rain.

I

an old lady

whose slow mind spreads out

so far her eye has

lost sight.

I

the one

who age must not tame -

May my drying up cause this spark to flame!

- Michele Seminara 2013

Michele Seminara lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and three children. She studied English and Australian literature at Sydney University, but then went on to train and work as a yoga and meditation teacher, with a passion for Buddhism. Although not new to writing, she is very new to poetry. She blogs at http://micheleseminara.wordpress.com/.

New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

Rape Rules

—cursive,

coral,

massive—

the very last

thing I expect

as I

unloose my fly

at the urinal.

—plausive

words—

disgrace

king-hits

my penis; my anus

hotly fists. 

- Stuart Barnes 2013

Stuart Barnes lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he writes & edits PASH capsule, an online journal of contemporary love poetry. This poem was written on encountering some particularly sickening graffiti.

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Beowulf with Dr. Engelhardt

When Normal Norman takes his seat

in Room 220 in Dumbach Hall

to hear the eminent Dr. Engelhardt

recite Beowulf again,

Norman knows that he can suck

the boredom from the hour

  

if he can write a poem for his wife

better than the one he gave her yesterday.

This time, however, no poem comes

  

and so he knows that he must choose

one of the tricks he's used before

to drown out Beowulf again--to wit,

  

he can say the rosary till the bell rings,

sketch his wife's magnificent ass

or write something strange like this.

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work published in Bluepepper and other print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. 

New Poetry by BZ Niditch

IMAGINATION

A cool greeting
prolongs your day
makes the bread
taste sweeter,
the Matisse
"Red Interior"
look brighter
than any vase's rose
over the blue table,
gives a aimless dawn
a patchwork of sunlight
you never expected,
or the mystery person
in the ski lodge
you are about to meet
over a new trail
on the snow lift
who follows you,
or the crossroads
of words which leads
to an exciting poem,
or a daybreak monody
sings to us alone
which stays with you
all winter
reminding you
of a close friend
visiting on a week end
and not returning
until you hear it again
as friendly shadows
of a whispering solo;
a luminous welcome
enters your world
and you again belong
to what you hope for,
an unexpected moment
at nature's communion
as a tree, the pine woods,
an ice pond
circles your quiet body



- BZ Niditch 2013

                                                                                                    

B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. 

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including:  Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.  

He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Access Only

The death of the young prodigy Aaron Swartz is deeply felt at Bluepepper, as all such endings are. He was 26, just about a man in our time scale, and yet apparently still trapped in that bitter-sweet aspic of "child prodigy" that has sounded the death-knell of so many great hearts and minds.

That his death may have been as much a product of a certain strain of dogmatism in his formidable personality as any callous and nefarious dealings in the Attorney General's Office of that most equivocal of federations is less clear, but for Bluepepper it is far the more pressing consideration. 

The world can ill-afford to lose such minds in what may well be remembered as the most mindless of ages over which the venal and wilfully ignorant appear to hold sway. And here was a good young man accused by the very same of fraud and theft. 

But for all that, the age can equally ill-afford such brilliant minds to be hobbled by dogma. Left and right have no place in reasoned argument. 

In a nutshell, and for the sake of those who might be living in one, Aaron Swartz stood accused of stealing  up to five million articles from JSTOR (an invaluable storehouse of academic articles old and new to which, in the interests of full disclosure, Bluepepper admits to be a willing and satisfied subscriber). He allegedly did so by leaving a laptop in a utility closet on MIT campus and allowing his ingenious program to do its work. His intention was to release these invaluable academic articles for free to the general public. There was no profit motive, nor anything John Pilger could sink his shiny teeth into. Aaron Swartz as such was a child of his times. There are, after all, no cabals in an open and pluralistic society. Nowhere to hide your loose change. But to many the ivy halls of academia can often appear like a secret cabal influencing, either directly or indirectly, every aspect of our lives with no obligation for full and frank disclosure (other than in the peer-reviewed publications that are the very nub of this problem).

Aaron Swartz hoped to utilise the extraordinary power of the very medium I am using to brow beat you now, dear reader, to correct a glaring discrepancy in our attempts to foster the full potential of each individual in the human community. In doing so he committed a fairly serious crime. He stole. According to a US attorney, "..stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars." 

It would seem dogma is not a stranger to that most politicised of judiciaries. 

What perhaps this officer of the court should have mentioned (in the interests of full disclosure), is that the "stolen" articles in question are otherwise so prohibitively expensive that many public and campus libraries simply cannot afford to subscribe to the publications in which they are originally published, and not because the authors or the editors are charging a king's ransom for their services (with the inevitable and enduring exceptions), but simply because the distributor/s in this vital but admittedly specialised market are.

JSTOR, to its credit, was an attempt to surmount this formidable hill of beans, but the problems of copyright, and what is public and private property remained. Not, as stressed above, so much the obsession of the author, the original "owner" of any given idea, nor necessarily of the publishers and editors of said ideas, but of the distributors whose business plan appeals to the greying legion who have never had an original thought in their entire superannuated lives.

Aaron Swartz sought to correct this creeping "theft" of our collective potential in the best way he knew.  Perhaps no case could have better gone to the nub of our times than this one. The Assange case is already written on yellowing sheets, but by his tragic suicide Aaron Swartz has brought the world's attention to the fact that there is a gross inequity in the distribution of that most trade-able commodity: ideas. And that in this abiding inequity sits the kernel of future sorrow.

New Poetry by Abraheem Dittu

False Advertising

Scarlet mountains in the afternoon.

Coyotes scavenging at night.

Abrasions from coarse sand.

Vigorous scents of skunk and citrus.

Volatile Santa Ana winds.

Smog blocking the skyline.

Smoking hash in the canyon.

Tumultuous vibrations .

Suburbia littered with palm trees.

Congested freeways.

Dope fiends shooting up under a bridge

Vast deserts and valleys.

Mini malls and movie sets.

Gangbanging warzones.

Hookers on sunset.

Swapmeets on Crenshaw

Eighty degrees in January.

Fraudelent star tours.

Porn stars at CVS.

The city of angels.

- Abraheem Dittu 2013

Abraheem Dittu is a 20 year old poet, playwright and college student.

New Poetry by Les Wicks

Avoid Direct Heat

We toy-men are not mean,

can’t help it we’re afloat

in plasticine.

Tin lake with stale water I will be free.

Climb the cardboard wall -

my thirst on a children’s carpet, trailing flecks of my feet

green slippage that enrages

the hard, narrow god that can ruthlessly tidy & vacuum across my tribe’s

Rama Rama panscape panoramas.

The pet flings a survey,

both dismissal & rape.

Centimetre chasms maw beneath that

scree of cornchip crumb snow on September Mountain.

Felix & Margaret marvels

had built an adequate truth in wire.

Fenced in dignity we grew bored...

free on new fibres

we fail towards life.

- Les Wicks 2013


To view Les's extensive bio/bibliography, visit Les Wicks' bio

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

The Morning After

When she sees him in the morning he’s

all foamed up and in the mirror shaving

so she stands behind him, saying,

“Bill, your father was a ladies’ man--

that's why you have this way with women.

Deirdre, you kissed once, light on the lips.

Bridget, ah, the melon of her hips

you kept inviolate, whole, entire.

But since your father was a ladies’ man,

you will be a priest instead.

You will never fill a woman,

never watch her swell,

and she will be the better for it,

won’t she, Charming Bill.”

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work published in a variety of print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Phillip Ellis reviews Adrienne Rich

Rich, Adrienne, Tonight no Poetry Will Serve (New York : W. W.

Norton, 2011) ISBN 9780393342789 $15.95 US.

Tonight no Poetry Will Serve is the last book of poetry by Adrienne Rich that was published in her lifetime. As a result, it is easily read as the culmination of her long and fruitful career as a poet. Yet leaving aside questions of whether it can truly be the summation of her career (for which a collected edition of all her poems is the true measure), it can be asked, not whether the poems are worth reading, but what are the strengths and the weaknesses of the poems. In my opinion, there are far more strengths than weaknesses. And that these strengths are of form, language, technique, among others, that they are evidence of the skill and voice of the poet herself.

There are a number of strengths displayed by the poems of Tonight no Poetry Will Serve. Among these are an imaginitive use of white space, the avoidance of too much punctuation (which throws the range of interpretations back onto the poems' performance), and an assurance of voice that is testament to the poet's confidence and skill. This is not even to venture into the language, or the poems' techniques.

The language of Tonight no Poetry Will Serve is strong and sinewy. In saying that, it does not mean that the idiolect does not change according to need and situation. It does. And the language ranges from the effacing “Saw you walking barefoot” of the title poem, to the more clotted “Princes of predation let me tell you” and other lines of “The Ballade of the Poverties”. This is a mark of the breadth of the poet's vision.

The range of techniques is consonant with the poet's skill and place in contemporary poetry. I need not note the assurance of the free verse and prose poetry, each, not unique, but consonant with the poem in question. The use, also, of the pauses of the lines' ending helps score and mark the poems' meaning and gravity. Read aloud the following strophe from the title poem, and you'll hear this: “Tonight I think / no poetry / will serve” – there is a real weight here.

There is one obvious flaw to Tonight no Poetry Will Serve. The sole use of a fixed form as the basis of a free verse poem fails; the ballade of “Ballade of the Poverties” does maintain the repetend to a point, as well as keep the four line envoi with its obligatory address, but the failure to maintain the basic length and number of the preceding stanzas does break the poem's back, and it does diminish its impact. The other poems, freed from this need to work within the strengths and limitations of a fixed form work far better.

I repeat my opinion: there are far more strengths than weaknesses in the poems of Tonight no Poetry Will Serve. This is evident through the strengths I have mentioned, such as the use of technique, and the language involved. And it is to be expected that there will be some flaws, with the only real problem I had with the poems in the misprision of the form of the ballade. And I could add, at this late stage, further remarks, such as mentioning the clarity of the poems' insights into our contemporary world, or how the fractures of the poems' narratives open up possibilities of breaking apart the mundane fictions which we create to approach the world. But I will, rather, end on this note: the poems of Tonight no Poetry Will Serve work, not just because they speak through their subjects, but also because they work wonderfully on their own, technical terms.

- Phillip Ellis 2013

New Words and Pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

THE JOB Part 2

A 3 panel movie. Cheap Marker on 5x8 Paper 2 minute sketches, late night free jazz of the pen. Soundtrack: Clifford Gilberto "The 10th Victim" from Xen Cuts (Ninja Tune)

Part one; It's On

"I have known you all these years, you are really going to make me stick a domino through the mail slot?"

I remained silent,

"Look I got the money right here, cash of course and probably more than the job is worth"

I shrugged but after quickly looking around rweached my hand out.

"My sister says hello by the way."

I pocketed the money.

"You still owe me a domino."

End part one

Part Two; Hard Eights

I went to Spontini's to make my final arrangements. We went over the last details, I always liked to have a back up plan too, What if I did not find him, what if I did and he was with her? How much did Aubrey want me to weight in either situation? 

"How are you going?"

"I will drive."

"But you hate cars, you never drive."

"That is exactly why no one will notice or expect me"

From the corner stool Ana was nursing the first drink of last call. She never talked out of school and so had witnessed who knows how many scenes like this. A Dutch-Cuban beauty with an over riding thing for feet of all shapes and sizes. 

"If you get tired take your shoes off, drive barefoot."

I half raised my glass to her in salute without turning my head. 

The half a second he bent below the bar I had to ask myself as anyone in my position should,in between two hard heartbeats, is this it then. is this how it ends? He popped back up and slid a manilla envelope across the bar. I put it in my coat pocket. I turned around to leave.

"Oh one more thing."

I turned around, a double six, white with black dots was handed to me.

End Part Two

END SCENE; A Lion Alone

I had found them together, His idea of laying low had been the back table of a Chinese restaurant. The scent of jasmine tea and burnt cooking oil. His first instinct had been to sacrifice her and that I thought was about right. He begged, pleaded and when the futility of that became evident threatened which was followed by a sort of wide eyed hands over mouth regret for having done the later. Of course he brought up the old times, the "good old days" .

"They had not been that good for me."

He pushed her into me as to run for the back door, the first mess made. An exhaling of breath, the icon stare towards a cheap drop down ceiling that had seen its share of pu pu platters and late night pai gow games. I lay her down on her back in the booth and nodded to the waiter that it was ok to call somebody. I chased him but knew it would be over before it became interesting. I read somewhere once that when a child is lost he will automatically head up where as an adult to the center. He had-had it soft his whole life his positions always being given because he was a legacy member. And even as he rose in the organization he did very little actual work, save entertain out of town guests taking them to all the places to do the things he would have been doing any ways but now he did not have to foot the bill. He ran up the fire escape. I followed but could take my time as there was nowhere left to go. The roof top. He stood with his back to the neon skyline. He was babbling in a panic now. I let it flow for a minute or two.

"Look, even if I let you go, they know where you are someone else will come. You have never been good at saving that is half the reason why you are in this mess. I am sorry, it is over."

He decided not to go out with grace, he began taking off his watch extending his hands from which it hung off clammy fingertips towards me. I did not say anything which he took as hope but was really my temper about to flare up.

"Why, why do this, you are not even one of us, you are just a lion alone, you can let me go, give them the money back, I will give you the fee."

It was starting to rain. I thought of something funny, not an articulate thought but a small component of something. So vivid was the image I started to laugh which momentarily mixed with a scream, an opera duet as could have been described by Dante and it was over.

FINIS 

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2012

New Poetry by Kevin Del Principe

Carnival

Welcome to the sacredly profane and always sanguine carnival

A bare-bones world made with saxophones trombones

And cigarette smoke rings blown from hot lipstick lips

Anyone willing to sweat out god’s lost fever may enter

But once admitted the shadowy tent you cannot readily get out

Because savage light swings wildly casting phantom glances

And the cacophonous chords played by fallen watchers

Disorientates sinners and saints alike who clap and stomp together

It is not yet morning and the drive to abandon reason is strong

Let her go son let her fade into the slippery atmosphere

She belongs among all things vacuous and ethereal

Fight the devil’s knife tongue attached to your hallowed ear

Perhaps the most desperate character is also mostly honest

And the greatest revenge is spitting daffodils instead of flames

Maybe the only way to get out is to let go again

Because in a shadow world only real objects can be lovers or friends

- Kevin Del Principe 2012

In addition to writing poetry, Kevin Del Principe writes for the screen and stage. He is currently an M.F.A. Writing for the Screen and Television candidate at the University of Southern California.

Seasons Greetings

Bluepepper would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a peaceful and productive 2013. And if you're an Aussie, don't forget to blow those candles out!

New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

Eucalyptus resinifera

in drizzle

in humidity

i

squat

post

-three o’clock

from gnarly

hearts, mahoganies

nine

million fruits!—

all marbled

& where were you

Italians

Madagascans

- Stuart Barnes 2012

Stuart Barnes lives in Melbourne, Australia. His poetry's been published in print, online, & anthologised. He also writes plays & creative nonfiction, is working on his first novel, & edits PASH capsule  (http://www.facebook.com/pashcapsule), a poetry magazine.

New Poetry by Benjamin Dodds

Struggle Street

A pitbull pup launched
through the void of a screenless
second-storey window breaks
four legs and siphons
from readers a soup
of tears and muttered tutting.
These toothless/heartless owners should be
licensed and where do they get the cash
to buy their Crayola cartons of
Horizon 50s anyway?

- Benjamin Dodds 2012

Cygnus olor, Tokyo

In rain-pocked
eddies
of human smut
the greasy swan
swims bound up
by ligatures of
plastic packing
string
at the high walled
corner of an
inner city moat.

Her black
mask
and the mute
way she
bends herself
from his
searching rape
echo half-
remembered
scenes
from Kubrick's
final film.

- Benjamin Dodds 2012

Benjamin Dodds is a Sydney-based poet who grew up in the Riverina of NSW. His poetry has appeared in various journals, newspapers and anthologies. His first collection Regulator is currently seeking a home.

New Poetry by Julie Maclean

In search of Noir

Clark Kent in thin black frames,
smooth as blonde wood,
pale as a white-washed wall
charms the girls   boys too

Seems tired as he talks

of Nordic crime…

more blood   more guts
more rapes  more scalps
more sticks up arses  

snuff stuff      burning at stakes
serial death   more girly bait
in soft focus    hand held camera

grist for the mill    bread and butter  

thinking...not more wannabes

wannabe famous
get off the slush pile
out of this shit hole
wanna break
Kit Kat
burger
bargain
wanna be loved
see sky
hear twang
see sun
smell a gum tree
get duty free

see mum
go home


- Julie Maclean 2012

Lamb Silence

Blank libretti either

side of the Oresund Bridge

till we got to Oslo

Walls of the harbour
rose and fell with House,
Sounds of Soul, a grass toupee

lifted off the castle wall

Ice block Operahuset
framed by nouveau

kroner from oil,

banged a steel drum
It sounded out of place

Like the skinhead

in the butcher's apron,
with the mohawk,
muscled in honey tones
of the Viking

flour dabs in gently

fingered timpani

taking orders

for moules frites
with the grace & style
of a symphony,

face pastorale

- Julie Maclean 2012

Originally from Bristol, UK, Julie now lives on the Surf Coast, Australia. In 2012 short listed for The Crashaw Prize, (Salt,UK). Her debut collection of poetry, When I saw Jimi, will be published in June 2013 by Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK. Poetry and short fiction features in UK, US and Australian journals including Cordite, Overland, Southerly, Wet Ink and The Best Australian Poetry (UQP).Short listed for Press Press and Whitmore prizes.

Blog at juliemacleanwriter.com