New Poetry by Michael Lee Johnson

Dead Grey Wolf Skins 

(Tribute:  Aldo Leopold)

Dead grey wolf skins hang

on white clotheslines across Baraboo, Wisconsin

the dark surface, side of the moon,

that only exists in memories hung high, long before.

Hunters in the past did their job well,

sold skins, collected a few bucks,

increased deer for hunting, saved cattle,

decreased fear, told tales, short stories, adventures.

The grey wolf face now emergent,

opens his mouth wide in the safety

open in blue sky.

Shows his white teeth against

background of black sky, shadow,

hears thunder again, releases 

fireflies at night, monarch butterflies

during the day, guts down pine tree spikes.

He walks once again over landscapes of turquoises.

He consumes dirt road dust, 119 miles to Milwaukee.

His keen eyes are sharp for growth of skyscraper, Pabst Building.

Traveling side roads over many years brings him to the present.

No more violators, hunters with guns, fake Jesus people

slender in His bathrobe Christ repeats two fishes, 5 loaves.

- Michael Lee Johnson 2014

MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in 27 countries, he edits 8 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 pages book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 69 poetry videos on YouTube.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

A Breathless, Feeble Wind

A breathless, feeble wind blows,
not even strong enough to stir the drapes,
too enervated and too insipid to be a breeze.
And I know it,
I do not feel my sweat evaporate,
but gather and trickle down my heated back,
and I seize the moment to turn on the fan,
and there is not one movement among the trees.

I am a child of the light,
I am a child who values reason and emotion alike.
Give me a poetry of the heart and head,
and I do not need a stiff breeze to relax.
I am happy with light long enough to read a rispetto,
and my life has three dreams: truth, beauty, and pleasure.


- Phillip Ellis 2014

Phillip's books

New Poetry by Tendai Mwanaka

WE WAIT AND WONDER

doctors have failed,

faith-healers have folded their hands.

witch-doctors cast no-lots,

prophets have shut their mouths.

tears have flown!

we now mourn and weep dry tears.

young and tender stolen.

nothing left, no tears to bleed.

we wait and wonder,

for a sign, a stop, a word from above.

- Tendai Mwanaka 2014

VOICES FROM EXILE, a collection of poetry on Zimbabwe’s political situation and exile in South Africa was published by Lapwing publications, Northern Ireland in 2010. KEYS IN THE RIVER: Notes from a Modern Chimurenga,  novel of interlinked stories that deals with life in  modern day Zimbabwe’s soul was published by Savant books and publications, USA 2012. A book of creative non-fiction pieces, ZIMBABWE: THE BLAME GAME, was published by Langaa RPCIG( Cameroon 2013) I was nominated for the Pushcart twice, 2008, 2010, commended for the Dalro prize 2008, work has been translated into French and Spanish. I was nominated and attended The Caine African writing workshop, 2012. From January- April 2014, I was a Mentor for 3 budding writers in CACE Africa Writivism. Published over  250 pieces of short stories, essays, memoirs, poems and photographic/visual art in over 150 magazines, journals, and anthologies in the following countries,  the USA , UK , Canada , South Africa, Zimbabwe, India , Mexico, Kenya, Cameroon, Italy, Ghana, Uganda, France , Zambia, Nigeria, Spain , Romania, Cyprus, Australia and New Zealand. 

New Poetry by Michelle Seminara

A Sudden Absence

When a sudden absence opens
where before there was a lover, or a child,
(a child’s worse, we must all agree
a child’s loss is worst), the everyday
grows almost perverse. 

Routine grinds around and round the lack
and identity, devoid of vital purpose
withers back…

Autumn’s raw draft rankles from her room —
but I don’t look; instead I close the door,
and try to cover up by loving 
the others a little more.


- Michelle Seminara 2014

New Poetry by James Walton

Autumn Break

Spooky day. Mist so low and custard thick
The river noiseless, a longboat prow
Could come across the veranda.
Cats have embraced all of yoga, curled
As mollusc shells where spines shouldn’t bend.
The orchard stripping crows are finally speechless,
Stooped in their overcoats, raggedly on guard
For something with the password.
The air’s gone tidal, receding to the call
Now of a forming universe in the melting:
A calf’s foghorn announces loss of presence,
Chickens rattle for release from the night keep.
Radio silence while this anabiotic lid
Occupies the space that was daylight saving.


- James Walton 2014

James Walton hails from South Gippsland and lives in the Strzelecki mountains. His work has appeared in: Eureka Street, Australian Love Poems - anthology,  Daily Immanence - anthology, the Wonder Book of Poetry,  and Australian Poetry. James decided to stop being a coward and quit work in January to concentrate on writing.  He is now starving, but happy, and lives with a Noah's Ark of animals.

 

New Poetry by Mark Roberts

poem (mist

it’s difficult to find the poem

in fog like this

    so thick

thoughts are shadows

a hint of meaning

you don’t dare follow

sitting here looking out

at the edge of the escarpment

         clouds

come up suddenly from the valley

targeting the house like a helicopter

in an action film

open the window & let some mist in

allow to it settle

       in a dark corner

i'll think of a use for it later

- Mark Roberts 2014

Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic. He currently edits Rochford Street Review and P76 magazine. He is also poetry editor for Social Alternatives journal. 

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

The face of my arms
But the past forms so naturally.
an overrun of trees, thick spirals of branches
assembled in the centre of the paddock

the silence disappears
or like a periphery of abstractions
a mind walks across the body in the farmland's clearing

sits down, the body a landscape torn open
widening into distance
coordinates of wind
dream beneath my eyes

feels dark out here alone
already so full of hysteria
start with my arms
protruding veins of crumbled tissue
deadening the nerve ends

searching up and down
not for an image but an emptiness

the perpetual change stuns
risking yourself
in transfusions of a feeble red line

the point of beginning.

- Robbie Coburn 2014

New Poetry by Libby Hart

Virtus

A memory of dancing with my grandfather: my feet placed on his feet,
each step lifting me across his living room. The air between us a trusted
loop as suburban light leaches. The touch of lace curtains, the smell of
dusted life, as I brush up against them. Once a turn takes hold I will rest
beside him—my small body acting as talisman to ward off death. I hold
his warmth to keep him even warmer. I listen for the song of his
faulty heart. I will him back from the halfworld. When tidings fall from
his mouth I breathe anew. I listen to a tale of the Japanese in New
Guinea. I learn something about Errol Flynn. Somewhere inside this
moment there is a chuckle, a squeeze of hand to keep me anchored—otherwise I am like the wind.

- Libby Hart 2014

Eugene Schieffelin

I take this dark flight-body, its suit of speckle.Throat of feathers loose and long.Mimic chatterer, insect stalker, hunter of seed—this love-heart-wearer who stirs implicitly.I murmur safe passage and with upturned hands,with onlooking ‘O’, I watch her rise and wamble.

- Libby Hart 2014

Wild

A new collection of poetry from Libby Hart

“Drawing upon fable, myth and on the mystery and wonder of the natural world, Libby Hart’s poetry takes the reader into astonishing and beguiling territory. She is able to reveal relationships and realities that for most of us are hidden and beyond our ability to describe. Her language is seductive, questing; her vision is daring. She writes with a lyrical fecundity few can match. I love these [Wild] poems for the way in which they embellish each other and keep faith with their convictions. These are poems I will be returning to again and again.” —Judith Beveridge

Wild is forthcoming from Pitt Street Poetry in 2014.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Beyond the Curvature

Beyond the curvature of the world,
beyond the immediate world,
there is a wider world,
a world of seven billion, and so it goes.

The world that turns is the world I love,
a world that I can take snapshots of,
and construct a set of images of,
and do something positive for.

On nights like this, when the sky is humid,
and the heat crawls over me,
I wonder for whom this world is the same.
Does it move others to make poetry,

patterns that quote those that have been spoken,
and those that utter echoes that others refract?


- Phillip Ellis 2014

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New Words and Pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Cecilia & Emily

"Do you Remember that time in Vienna?"
"Of course.."
"Is it a good memory, that was the first time that...."
The pause to see if I would change the subject or walk into the other room and start puttering about as we talked.
"It is..."
"Do you think it is for her too? "
"Wouldn't I play the part of the bad guy in the whole thing were it not a fond memory?"
"No, not at all, you had come into the bar after meeting with that collector, the one whose wife had the crazy eyes. We had already been sitting there talking for an hour or so, drinking that heavy wine. I think initially I did lead her to believe there would not be any men, a man, you, involved..."

With the passage of time more and more of the story I had not been there to witness came out. And why not, we three now had so much dirt on each other now, drunken jests aside, there could no longer be any judging. 

"I think her recollection, the flavor of it depends largely upon her mood but that is how it is for her anyways."

We stood there, her cheeks flushed and I could tell a mobious strip of tangled limbs was replaying in her mind's eye. She used up her allotted silence in reverie. I put some Lester Young on letting his soft clouds float across the room to be melted by her heat.

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2014

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday I saw Quinn again,

first time in years, sailing the streets,

weaving through people,

collar up, head cocked,

arms like telephone poles sunk

in the pockets of his overcoat,

 

the brilliant pennants of his long red hair

waving over the stadium

where years ago he took my handoff,

bucked off guard, found the free field,

and heaved like a bison 

into the end zone.

 

Tonight, when Quinn wove by me muttering,

I should have handed him the ball.

I should have screamed, “Go, Quinn, go!”

He would have stiff-armed the lamppost,

found the free field again,

left all in his wake to gawk

 

as he hit the end zone

and circled the goal posts,

whooping and laughing,

flinging the ball like a spear

over the cross-bar,

back to Iraq.

- Donal Mahoney 2014

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work published in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.  Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.

Vale Matthew John Davies (1985-2014)

It was with great sadness that Bluepepper recently learnt of the untimely death of Matthew John Davies, a frequent contributor to this site and an extremely gifted poet. Below are a few words penned by the poet Robbie Coburn in Matthew's honour.

Matthew John Davies sadly passed away this month.

Born in 1985, Matthew was a Brisbane poet who was published in many journals including Rabbit, Page Seventeen, Regime Magazine, Bluepepper. He was educated at the University of Queensland. His favorite poets included William Blake and Francis Webb and he adored Leonard Cohen. He also had a keen interest and knowledge of cinema. 

I first became aware of Matthew's work when we shared the pages of the first issue of West Australian magazine, Regime in 2011.

Revisiting his work now is difficult, as so many signs present themselves. His poetry has a raw and haunting quality, filled with longing, yet he would often remove himself from the text as if writing about someone else. 

On the night I heard of his death last week, I read through all of his poetry I could find, and felt the devastation of it all. There was a prevailing feeling of emptiness within me that uprooted any notion of understanding and amplified the shock and Grief. 

His poem 'Shortcuts' is one that encapsulates the trial of a life clouded by an unrelenting darkness, discussing attempts at positive change, culminating with the character's death in order to 'find a heaven'.

I was aware Matthew was struggling and depression was a battle he was fighting uphill, but was shocked when the news came through of his passing. It's not something any of us wanted to predict. Most of the poetry community, the connections of which exist largely online, only knew parts of Matthew, and it is harder to accept when we only see a poet who is with us one day and gone the next. We feel we know the poet, but in fact only know parts of the man. 

Matthew's parents have stated since his death that "his poetry and the friendships of his fellow poets  sustained him" and it is clear his short life was one of significance to many people all over Australia.

He lived for poetry as so many of us do, and his life was rich with his art and love for those who influenced and loved him.

The widespread outpours of love for Matt are astounding, with so Many of us moved and effected. So many poets and writers have expressed their sadness and condolences and we come to realize matt was never alone in life and certainly isn't alone now that he has left. Many poets have written poems in Matthew's memory.

We still have Matthew, who exists through his work and the memories his loved ones hold of him.

Bob Adamson told me something regarding the situation, as we shared our grief, that has stayed with me and helped to heal immensely. I told him how pointless everything felt and he Said that " It's not pointless, it's up to us to keep alive his lovely spirit and his work, that's his legacy and his love.  As long as we have him in our minds and hearts he will live on."

Bob is absolutely right and I think these words apply to everyone looking for answers and closure during this difficult time and beyond.

It serves no good to remember only the hell that claimed him; we instead can rejoice as Matthew John Davies has found his heaven and is now eternally breathing poetry in paradise.

- Robbie Coburn

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Young In the Old City

flood of winter morning. the bleak city skinned by daylight.

transfusions of colour and shade

thrown from an absolved sun against embodied streets.

at the edge of the footpath 

you release the day into delusions.

breath protrudes the breeze.

coerced into a position to hear, to listen. you walk through streets of pattern-work designed by years

lost in the parade of bodies

with a throat of toxins, your eyes bottled by sobered hands. the outskirts are a transition, a distant solitude.the lightless city strangles them with smoke and time. crowds revolve, there is no fixed life form. nothing here is staying. you see yourself statistically.

parks and gardens are imagined sites. sit down and then walk again through the repeating clutter. an ocean of cloned shadow.

these people do not recognize you. cannot name your face but know all about where you're going. expect nothing articulate from your mouth. to discover  the generation you're a part of is lost obliterates you.

- Robbie Coburn 2014

Paddocks of Rain  - for Matthew John Davies

I walk alone in dark rains. thick wires empty
from a greying sky
traced though the air onto the grasses
striking open paddocks

every voice ringing from the rain is imprinted,
seeping into the hollowed fence posts beneath
the smoking clouds
within the night yards
dogs snarling at a faceless prey

this far from town, waters set a barrier-
a distance between bodies, separated flesh.
a single pair of
footsteps immediately covered by
the dampening ground

transparent threads filling trodden soil
like breath in a cold paddock,

silent in the rain, a car
persists down the road.

- Robbie Cobuen 2014

Robbie Coburn was born in June 1994 and lives in the rural district of Woodstock, Victoria, Australia. His poetry and critical work has appeared in many publications including Going Down Swinging, Cordite, Voiceworks and Rochford Street Reviw. His first full collection of poetry Rain Season (Picaro Press) was published in 2013. He is well into a second collection, titled The Other Flesh.

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Everything

Everything's so full of lasts,
quivering, on the brink.
Time thrusts forward.
The body vehicle will not cease
decaying, children growing 
ever distant, the umbilicus unraveling 
to unbearable lengths
 as we circumvent this world. 

Pause pause pause!

People pass by in a slurry 
of incessant transformation.

Surely there must be a limit?
(There is not.)

Death, inbuilt in those I've born
is yet half grown in me; 
close to flowering powerfully out 
of my grandmother's powdery furrows.

Routine lends the illusion of solace:
tranquilised to truth we sleep
fitfully, swaddled against horror.

- Michele Seminara 2014

Michele Seminara lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and three children. She has been practising and teaching yoga, Buddhism and meditation for fifteen years. Her writing has been published in many online and print journals, and she was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her passions are emptiness (the Buddhist kind) and poetry. She blogs at http://micheleseminara.wordpress.com/ and is on twitter @SeminaraMichele

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Surprise, Surprise

The mother's dead. 

Thirty years later 

you meet the daughter 

and realize the daughter 

is the mother again, 

poking her finger 

in your chest half an hour

after her plane lands. 

The same laugh knocks

folks in the elevator 

back a bit.

Every time the daughter 

grabs your arm 

to emphasize a point

the way the mother did,

you want a ticket

to the Maldives

or maybe Bulgaria.

Sofia in the summer

might be nice.

This time, however,

you stay put.

She found you

on the Internet.

You must admit

the freckles 

across her nose 

scream she's right: 

You are her father. 

Surprise, Surprise.

Her mother never said.

- Donal Mahoney 2014

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

New Poetry by William G. Davies Jr.

At The Cemetery

 

January is such

a conducive month

to die in.

Its cold, dark.

The trees are blank

and that uncle

who's cheating

on his wife

invariably arrives late

to a chorus

of vapory exhalations.

- William G. Davies Jr. 2014

 

 

The New Year

 

Snow endows

January's torpid light

with a CFL aura

as if the incandescence

of Christmas

had been so long ago

and those four packs

of GE colored bulbs

never looked better

than strung on the tree.

- William G. Davies Jr. 2014

New Poetry by Michael Brownstein

Entertainment

I am not at war now,

I was not at war then.

The music of air and fire

warmed us, the cascade

of flames, the river

light and glitter

and the balconies where we stood

looked over the black clouds

of gunpowder and beauty,

of harmony within screams.

Along the road, along the high rises,

glass and concrete melted

and everywhere around us,

symphonies ebbed and fell,

changed cadence, changed notation,

and cannon fire added confirmation

and just the right amount

of counterpoint to the composition.

- Michael Brownstein 2014

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011) and Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011). Brownstein taught elementary school in Chicago’s inner city (he is now retired), but he continues to study authentic African instruments, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators, designs websites and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.

New Poetry by Sharmagne Leland- St. John

La Kalima

Like swallows they return each year
their vermilion scarves stirring
in the relentless,

oppressive, scalding Siroccos.

They come amber scented
from Tunisia
the hems of their lilac kaftans
fluttering in Zephyr's
white-hot breath.

They come from Kashmir
with mehndi stained hands and feet,
physical graffiti,
their silk saris whispering raginis
pitched to sultry winds.

They come from Cairo
their kohl eyes
searching the bazaar
for the delicate spider web lace,
the rondels woven by

needle pricked fingers.

They come from Andalusia
with jessamine and geranium
pinned into the lustrous ripples
of their burnished ebony hair

They come and they go
to return each year like swallows.

- Sharmagne Leland- St. John 2013

(Prize winner Ina Coolbrith 86th Annual Poets Dinner Berkeley)

7 time Pushcart Prize nominee, Native American poet, concert performer, lyricist, artist, film maker, Editor-in-Chief Quill and Parchment.com

Widely anthologised.  Published 4 poetry collections Co-authored Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artis.t Co-editor of Cradle Songs: An Anthology of Poems on Motherhood (winner of the 2013 International Book Award) 

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Zodiac's Form
         Setting: an outback station

 Washed dry by rain
 on this dry earth
 under our sun,
 bull's skeleton--
 Zodiac's form--
 on this hard earth
 under our moon,
 crumbles to dust.

 When the sky's cloud
 loudly mutters
 thunder under
 summer stars, there
 bull's skeleton
 waits for the rain
 tumbling, fumbling
 to coax new growth.


- Phillip Ellis 2013

The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hundred Years Ago

 James Marquette was born at the ancient seat,

 he was very desirous of conveying
 Canada and its savage tribes
 on the banks of the St. Lawrence,
 upon which no eye of civilized man
 had ever yet looked.
 At certain seasons of the year
 the Indians came by hundreds,

 endowed with their store-house,
 and, most prominent of all,
 canoes, light as bubbles,
 between the two parties
 of civilized and uncivilized

 sins of the world.



- Phillip Ellis 2013