New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

                                                Blue Absinthe 1 (Wash Pencil & Paper)                                                                                                


Blue Absinthe Parts 1 & 2

The waitress told me they were having a special for today on it. The cynic in me assumed that either no one was buying it and they were trying to bleed off their stock or that a vendor had given them some sample bottles for a trial run and they just wanted to get rid of it. I had my head down in "Toilers of the Sea" and so passively shrugged my shoulders. She lit a cigarette, her gaze traveling down the street looking for the cat whose territory this area was. The drinks came, it was really blue not the wraith like pastel blue as one would have supposed. I drank it anyways, it was a little sharper than the usual stuff, i popped peanuts from the little white bowl to counter act it. Finishing my drink at first I felt a coolness akin to when one steps outside on a cold winter night, then my body involuntarily shuddered...we were right down the street from home luckily...passing the Hemingway plaque I saluted it as I did when in a good mood. My shoes were cutting into my feet..my shirt was pulling tight across my back. Oddly I had to duck my head to get into the door which was not usually the case. I asked her to help me get my shoes off they were killing me with their tightness now. She laughed saying I was lazy as I had drunk much more than this before, I was just being dramatic. My body shuddered again...I got my clothes off just before my height shot up to what I estimated   to be between 12-15 feet. I was not used to the change in perspective nor the extra weight involved in my growth. "We have to cancel dinner..." The only thing that fit was my bathrobe and that covered nothing up, I kept knocking into furniture and bumping my head, I was becoming wound up like an animal from the wild who accidentally finds its way indoors. She petted my hand told me to calm down and suggested I just get into bed as I would be more comfortable and it was safer. I got in bed, she put some Jelly Roll on to further calm me. I was told;
"Ok now breathe in...breathe out...."
The panic stopped. Unless I was on my side or bent my knees I did not fit fully on the bed. The thought of the physical mechanics of us, with me in this state popped into my head. I said her name and was about to give her my look when a railroad spike went right into my forehead killing the mood and causing me to yelp. She said that she would make coffee and if that did not help she would run back to the cafe after to ask the waitress how long the effects lasted.
I drank the coffee which was too hot for my taste out of the little doll cup. I felt tired now.
"Want me to go?"
"You should run down and check, don't mess things up for me there, they just started pouring for me with a heavy hand and throwing free rounds my way, I do not need you ruining a hang out by breaking the waitress's heart. "
Where it not for the rest of the situation she would have pulled more of a face but right now things dipped in my favor on the scoreboard, there was always tomorrow though..

                                           Blue Absinthe 2 (Ink Brush Pen & Paper)                                                          

She said "Why did you drink it again, remember what happened last time?"
I was carefully trying to handle my Stravinsky record which had been reduced to the size of a game board piece. I pretended not to hear her but it was no good, I could feel her staring at me. I shrugged my shoulders.
"How much did you have?"
Before I could, she answered her own question.
"Obviously more, a lot more as you are even bigger than last time,,,,"
I told her I was going out, being careful not to step on the cat whose cries occurred at the same times every day making him a sort of neighborhood clock.


- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2013

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Once on a Beach

Once, when I was writing with my fingertips
on a beachbroad slate of sand, I turned to look
to where my feet had marred, and I wondered, then,
whether the wind would easily erase them.

I wondered whether every trace of myself
would suffer the frottage that is erasure,
as the wind would rub away my feet's passage
between its fingers as if contemplating.

And the wind had whispered low, and the sand hissed
as the grains were sporadically hustled in,
and I turned away then, as if born fearful,
afraid to see mortality in the face.


- Phillip Ellis 2013

BIO: Phillip A. Ellis is a freelance critic, poet and scholar. His chapbooks, The Flayed Man, Symptoms Positive and Negative and Arkham Monologues, are available. He is working on a collection for Diminuendo Press. Another has been accepted by Hippocampus Press. He is the editor of Melaleuca. His website is at http://www.phillipaellis.com/

New Poetry by John Saunders

Somebody

(im Shane Dunne)

I am somebody,

or maybe not.

Free bird with the wrought of metal,

a stand-alone – rebellious.

This dislocation of time

against the sunset

throws me a life line

that helps me ride the plains –

identity unframed.

I find a bird grounded

by a broken wing,

cup it to my breast

until its strength is found,

then it flies into the sky,

calls to me from high.

- John Saunders  2013

John Saunders’ first collection ‘After the Accident’ was published in 2010 by Lapwing Press, Belfast. His poems have appeared in Revival, The Moth Magazine, Crannog, Prairie Schooner Literary Journal (Nebraska), Sharp Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Boyne Berries, The New Binary Press Anthology of Po etry, Volume 1, Riposte, and on line, The Smoking Poet, Minus Nine Squared, The First Cut, The Weary Blues, Burning Bush 2, Weekenders, Poetry Bus and poetry 24.  

New Poetry by Nathanael O'Reilly

Ode to a Coffee Pot

Ah, Bodum! For two decades

you have travelled across the seas

my constant portable companion

dwelt with me on three continents

and never ceased to provide

comfort when called upon

Together we crossed the Széchenyi

endured American autumns in exile

survived a London winter in poverty

enjoyed marvellous homecomings

 

I gently spoon freshly-ground

Colombian coffee into you

and fill you with boiling water

let you brew on your own

allow you to take your time

like a teenage girl smoking

on the front step

of a run-down milk bar

before pressing your plunger

slowly towards your base

Together we make lovely liquid

smooth as the fleece of a vicuña

let us continue collaborating

far into the future

I will continue to protect you

whether journeying

or staying home, dear Bodum

- Nathanael O'Reilly 2013

Nathanael O'Reilly is the author of Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel Poetry Reviews Editor for Transnational Literature President of the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS).

A Poem for Dransfield

a previously unpublished poem for Michael Dransfield by Cornelis Vleeskens c.1973 found among his papers while i was working on them....pete spence

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Concert at Bernie's

When Bernie wakes at 6 a.m.

there's a piano on his chest

and Erroll Garner's playing "Misty."

Sinatra's on the headboard 

improvising lyrics

and Krupa's in the corner 

painting on the drums.

The music is magnificent.

Once the song is over 

Bernie chants his morning prayers,

shaves and showers and limps to work

for another day at the gherkin factory. 

The foreman, Mr. Simpkins, is an ogre 

nonpareil, a sumbitch unsurpassed, 

who stalks the catwalk all day long

with megaphone and stopwatch.

At 5 p.m. the factory spits Bernie 

and his cohorts out the door 

so Bernie limps to the Hot Wok Shack

and buys a carton of Egg Fu Yung 

and heads back home to wait for dawn 

so he can hear Erroll play "Night and Day"  

while Sinatra does the vocal and

Krupa punctuates the piece

softly on the drums.

Bernie spends each day in hell but dawn 

is always a concert from heaven.

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

New Poetry by Breda Wall Ryan

Childhood Sin

...the earthworm

we split

to see the head

grow a tail

the tail

a new head

instead

five simple hearts

failed

one by one...

another regret

- Breda Wall Ryan 2013

       

Stardrift

Nights we lay still as hares

in our grass form,

balanced the rising moon

on our toes,

skyward-stretched arms

finger-tipped with stars.

Tonight you sit alone

in the screen’s blue glow,

tea cold at your elbow,

while I watch

distant balefires,

light years between us.

- Breda Wall Ryan 2013

Breda Wall Ryan has been shortlisted for several international literary prizes for fiction and poetry, most recently The Fish Poetry Prize, and won the UCD Anthology Contest(poetry) 2011. Her work is published in anthologies and in journals. has won or been shortlisted for several literary prizes. A member of Hibernian Poetry, Dublin, she has an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity C ollege, Dublin. She has completed a short story collection, The Hardest Winter and Other Stories and a poetry collection, The Woman who Toasted the Owl. 

New Poetry by April Krivensky

Choppy

 The image of you in my head is nothing but a compilation of pixels. 
 Squares filled with shades to figure
 out what they’re actually there for once you’re completely zoomed out.
 I long to zoom myself back in and get lost. 

 Your technicolor checker board of
“I’ll tell you later”’s 
 and 
“I don’t wanna talk about it”’s
 make for a gift wrapped Capricorn horoscope served on
 a gold platter. 

 Inch back to me because inches provide a way 
 for everyone to understand the size of something.
 Like the top joint of your thumb or the 2.54 seconds 
 it took you to leave your apartment balcony.  

 Just talk to me like you would into a tin can.
 Childishly.
 Tell me you want to play.
 Let me teach you the abacus of my breath.
 Each bead that gets pushed is another heartstring
 you plucked.
 I’m still stuck on the other side.


- April Krivensky 2013


April Krivensky attends the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign pursuing a major in Creative Writing. She loves her Dorgi, a good joke, and eating toffee. She lives in Orland Park, IL. 

New Poetry by Kathryn Guelcher

Too Much. I Know.

Listen, friends. I probably either didn’t care about you or even like you

for a long time.  Sorry about that.  Inevitably, there was a moment—

something you said or did, or just exposure over time— when

I realized I was wrong, again, and we should be friends. Forever.

There is almost nothing that can undo this now,

whatever your wishes to the contrary—sorry again. 

And while I’m good for a laugh or two, this moment marks

the beginning of everything getting generally worse for you. 

I’ll forget your birthday, text too often, email too much

fail to ask important follow-up questions, make you read my poetry,

tell meandering anecdotes at a displeasing pitch or volume,

defend the person you are angry with, interrupt your story

with one of my own that is vaguely related, and maybe better.

But probably worse. 

I’ll be decent at unimportant marks of friendship of my choosing,

like remembering your aunt’s quirks, and terrible at any that really matter. 

But I’ll think kindly about you more than you’d suppose.

I’ll manage to suffocate and fail you with my love, simultaneously.

All this, I think you know.  You are not too many in number,

but you are not alone.  So, be irritated, perhaps, but not overwhelmed. 

I can’t help it.  Because once I’m finally done casually disliking you,

I can’t fully comprehend your importance to me. 

- Katyhryn Guelcher 2013

New Poetry by Ivan Jenson

Magic Bread

If you think it can 

be learned

then by all means

apprentice yourself

to a local sorcerer

and see if he can

show you how to 

saw your problems 

in half 

or levitate

above your competition

but as a practitioner

of the dark art

of bringing truth

to light by telling

little white lies 

and punctuating 

it with a punch

line to the psychic

groin

I can attest 

to my fakery 

and admit the flat bread

made by my bakery

is dry like rye

and like life

sliced

the first half devoured

the second 

savored and scattered

and what ever is left

is crummy 

and for the birds

that fly out of hats

- Ivan Jenson 2013

Ivan Jenson’s Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine. His art has sold at Christie’s, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo, Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Jenson is also a Contributing Editor for Commonline magazine. Ivan Jenson's debut novel Dead Artist is available as a paperback and on Amazon Kindle and Nook. His new novel, a psychological thriller entitled Seeing Soriah is now available as an eBook or in Paperback on Amazon.  A collection of Ivan Jenson's drawings and poetry will soon be published by Hen House Press, New York.

New Poetry by Julie Maclean

on love and war Gallipoli style

Contiki bus down a dirt road
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda 
on cd       The melancholy version I loved
Should I laugh or cry
on my way  
to the Nek
Lone Pine 
Larrikin
carrying the message
in faux rendering
in a gully, on the beach 
dot dot dash

I was in the wrong place in '87
Missing in Action
an old flame declared Love
GPS not on   not on 

Back home in slow motion
distressed by a freeze frame
at the end of the film
Bullet straight
to the heart of the story
I sobbed in the toilet
of the Wonthaggi cinema

Ataturk calls us brothers,
Your Johnny, Our Mehmet

What do you think?
Could I?
Could you?
I feel
Will you still love me?

Trenches dug   Daggers punched
love letters in the walls

White crosses
flicked over
like pages
of bad fiction 


- Julie Maclean 2013

New Poetry by James Mirarchi

DOLLS

Designer of  mushy Nickelodeon carrot cake stage

has dandruff-dolls in his hair

They’ve set up oil rigs on his scalp

to drill for creativity

When geyser erupts

they catch designer’s ideas in buckets

Then rappel down ropes of his greasy hair

onto floor where dust-trains

transport them to designer’s colleague

A man whose only accomplishment

is a lawsuit-attracting lemon slide

 

The dandruff-dolls hand over buckets to him

Within them

he singles out striking concept for crunchy Nickelodeon blueberry pie ramp

 

While trying to consummate this idea

he fails numerous times

since the main ingredient that is sorely missing

is Heart

- James Mirarchi 2013

James Mirarchi grew up in Queens, New York. In addition to his poetry collections, Venison and Dervish, he has written and directed short films, which have played at festivals. His poems have appeared in Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, gobbet, Boyslut, Bluepepper, The Mind[less] Muse, Dead Snakes, The Recusant, Subliminal Interiors Magazine, and Clockwise Cat.

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Caseworker Determining Eligibility

Cabrini-Green Projects

Chicago, 1963

The child, age two, hammocked in the half

moon of his mother’s arms, is locked

in palsy, yet moves an eyelid as I ask,

moves the other as his mother answers,

application form interrogation.

The father was a white policeman.

“Curiosity,” the mother says. “No more.

I didn’t go with him for money.”

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work published in Bluepepper and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

New Poetry by Barbara De Franceschi

Transformation

Songbirds find reason to splash

the bush track with cheerful trill.

I cannot hear,

too many deaf ears.

The mooted thud of dusk

invites another solitary night.

Eyes are blind, I miss the colours –

magenta and gold,

sunset mesmerises the horizon

with a peaceful calm

that does not stroke my skin.

I am hag stones in reverse,

unable to protect the heart,

or join fairies as they frolic

in rain-bubbles dripping

from branches laden

with a passing shower.

When did I transform

from an open wind into a closed sky?

Mettle is unwilling to share

the resilience of spear grass growing

in hardy tussocks amongst the rocks,

breath is tannic from the lack

of distilled love words.

- Barbara De Franceschi 2013

Barbara De Franceschi lives in Broken Hill. Besides two collections of poetry, her work has been published widely in Australia, in other countries, on-line and featured on radio. Since 2010 Barbara has engaged with the ENRICH programme (Enhanced Rural Remote Inter-professional Cultural Health) to determine if art based modules (e.g. creative writing) can be beneficial to health professionals in clinical practices by increasing skills such as observation, interpretation and communication.

New Poetry by Gerald Bosacker

BOMB BRAVE     Boston April 15,2013

You could view this killer on any street
but of all assassins you unknowing meet
horribly worst would be the coward disgrace
who lacks the courage to wear his face.

 

Apart from his murders must this weakling hide,
struck cowardly mute, bereft of claimed pride
not seeking blessing of his brutal deed
but somehow urged with his twisted creed.    

 

A clandestine bully, confused by blind hate
could ambush with bomb to assassinate
who he deems deserving, from borrowed throne,
anyone guilty of sin exceeding his own.

- Gerald Bosacker 2013

Note: While Bluepepper is not in the habit of publishing "newstand" verse, this seemed to us a special case.

New Poetry by Jim Piatt

The Stone

I have eternity in my being, but
My body is turning to sand
Under a hot August, sun:
The Sycamore tree is not as old
As I, but it is not turning to sawdust.
The river is much younger than
I, yet she is drying up . . . now just a
Lonely trickle in a stream bottom,
Who sets this all in motion?
Who allows her to dry up and
Me to turn to sand, yet saves the tree?


- Jim Piatt

New Poetry by Gerald Bosacker

YUCK

My parents  don’t agree with me
that broccoli is poisonous .
They  need an expert’s help to see
the reason why I fume and fuss.
I’d eat mud turtle fricassee
but nothing’s more ridiculous 
than momma's creamed broccoli.


- Gerald Bosacker 2013

Gerald Bosacker, Poet and tale teller lives in Arkansas, retired from the corporate world where he was successful although miscast as Vice President of a large chemical company. He now does penance for his sins against the environment with his anti-war activism and poetry.

New Poetry by Phillip A. Ellis

I Dream no More

My forebones crack while smiling, groan and grind
when my lips whisper, speak my heart's thin pain
(as cold and sly as rain that coats the pane)
and rattles, gnashes at night, against its rind
while I am falling far from my split mind,
a comet caught by the sun, its brilliant reign
hating the very thought of healthy rain;
despair, depression, deep ennui? Its kind.

I dream no more, lest dreams become as life:
I smile, my face collapses, falls apart,
releases the stench of weary, gnawing strife;
I dream no more, lest dreams fall stricken numb
like birds ensnared in lime, gravity's heart,
their tongues all torn apart and written dumb.


- Phillip A. Ellis 2013


Sonnet IV

Down in the chambers of an animal's heart
is the rhythm that powers the interplay
of Persian and sparrow,
the inexorable play of predator and prey
that echoes through the arms race of evolution;
when the cat stalks a bird I see it embodied,
in the play of muscles and hungering instinct
that also echoes through the songs of songbirds.

This is neither the time nor sestet
to mark that the process ends with all parties
running on the spot, as time turns the wheel
that sets the world in motion underneath,
like a treadmill or turntable powering the encounter
between fur and feather on the patio.


- Phillip A. Ellis 2013

In the loop

I have just heard down that great chain of robbers, the interwebz, that Tasmania's Island magazine have joined its only vaguely more terrestrial and iron-hearted true blue Overland, in only considering submissions from those who subscribe. Go figure in an apparently pluralistic society. The latter mag all for social engineering, the  former for, well, good old liberal whatever, but both with an apparent intolerance for anything resembling an audience beyond the jealous confines of St Kilda or Sandy Bay. 

As a failed publisher many times over (OK, twice), I appreciate there can be certain pressures, but in this case if, as I assume, the plug has been pulled from above, why not let the old dears die and move on?  Ivor Indyk manned up with Heat, but then I have always judged him to be made of sterner stuff than most.

I count myself one of a tiny minority that actually continues to subscribe to literary publications, but that's mainly because I like receiving parcels in the mail. I would never assume that because I am on one list I have earned automatic access to the other, to be both producer and consumer of product, but that appears to be the business model these two literary dinosaurs are going with.

Oh, and contrary to what the editors of such forlorn periodicals like to tell us, poets are not in fact the only audience for poetry, as my broad experience of people outside the fraternity (yes, I know, I mingle!) has taught me. But when you are peddling such a business model I guess it doesn't hurt to maintain the illusion.

New Poetry by James Mirarchi

Thieves

From a pulpit

a reserved raccoon with a love for classical music

quietly berates me

for fraternizing with some reality TV raccoons

 

Earlier

these celebrity creatures had burglarized my home

stealing my plasma television and Stephenie Meyer book collection

They even mooned my neighbors while fleeing with their cameraman

But the sycophant I am – still decides to hang with them

 

They teach me the fine art of garbage-sniffing

Climbing trees in Zorro masks

And alluringly posing with head tilted down in attack stance

All telecast for the world to see

I’m even recruited as a videographer

for an all-raccoon Pilates show

 

I’m so honored to be associated

with these exemplary extroverts

so different from their more shy nocturnal relatives

- James Mirarchi 2013

James Mirarchi grew up in Queens, New York. In addition to his poetry collections, Venison and Dervish, he has written and directed short films, which have played at festivals. His poems have appeared in Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, gobbet, Boyslut, The Mind[less] Muse, Dead Snakes, The Recusant, Subliminal Interiors Magazine, and Clockwise Cat.