New Poetry by Anne M Carson

This amplitude

Calder Freeway, past Melton, Victoria

Mesmeric miles on bitumen the same steely grey

as the sky. Wispy elongated white-line clouds

flash by. I take the sky highway, steering towards

cumulus, cirrus, getting my bearings from a flock

of galahs happy to lend their gen to a passing

motorist. My vehicle cruises into the stratosphere,

wheels eating air. Landscape shrinks to a painter's

smear on the horizon. The rump of hills is all that's

needed for definition, clefts in their flank – texture. 

Everything else is sky – as far and as high as ...

Panoramas of light-streaked vapour appear,

avenues of cloud-puff billow. I’ve joined the 

commerce of wind and precipitation, the traffic

of weather.  No buildings or street signs break

the day's open invitation. Where have they

been hiding this amplitude? When everything is

pressing in, where have they harboured this haven?

- Anne M Carson 2015

 Anne M Carson is an awarded and widely published writer who is looking for a publisher for Massaging Himmler: A poetic biography of Dr Felix Kersten.

New Poetry by James Walton

This is a half done fjord/wood splitting accident blues

Erik the Blood Eye can only squint
into the sun of homecoming
casting itself out along runways,
lined with the kelp of torn out hair
of all the waiting tendrils.

Those crowning glinting wisps
shaking down into the rising fog
lifted by the gentle hand of their bequest,
the finest remembered artists
mixing their beautifully poisoned leads
into the unspoken insanity of hues.

Amethyst in ice is the colour of souls
made whole by your return.


- James Walton 2015

 

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Your fierce face

on the pillow— 
brows spearing down towards
wide bisected koala nose
succulent lips 
acute resilient chin. 

Tonight you are troubled 
by concerns beyond your scope:
baffling sorrows
pervading childhood’s lair… 

Felt inside the strident pitch 
of your father on the telephone;
the tremulous tone 
of your mother's lullabies. 

Felt in the streak of the cat,
the slink of the dog;
felt in the dangerous pulse

of our home. 


- Michele Seminara 2015



Michele Seminara is a Sydney poet and editor of Verity La.

New Poetry by David Ades

Talking to Myself

It’s in silence, understand,

the inner voice of my inner voice

with all its nuances, its wry wit

for my ears only, its endless

loving monologue, its wakefulness,

its antipathy to silence,

its restless, un-stilled, always

looking-at-itself-in-the-mirror preening,

its wondering at what the inner voice

of my father’s inner voice

sounded like, and all those other

inner voices prowling in their cages,

day after day, year after year,

lifetime upon lifetime,

those voices it craves to speak to

and never will.

- David Ades 2015

David Adès is an Australian poet living in Pittsburgh since 2011.  He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979.  His collection Mapping the World (Friendly Stret Poets / Wakefield Press) was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. He was a volunteer editor of the Australian Poetry Members Anthology Metabolism. His poems have appeared widely in Australia and the U.S. in publications including over 20 of the Friendly Street Readers, and numerous literary magazines. In 2014 David was awarded the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was also shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Recently, one of his poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In October 2015, Garron Publishing will launch David’s chapbook, Only the Questions Are Eternal: see http://www.garronpublishing.com. 

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Character Flaw

Millie wants Willie to make up,

go back to the way they were,

be lovey-dovey, hunky-dory.

Willie wishes he could 

but that’s not the way he is.

He has a character flaw,

permanent as a birthmark

his mother told him 

when he was only six.

Some folks can forgive 

and then forget but that’s 

not you Willie, she said.

When he heard about 

the crucifixions in Syria,

he said that's genocide, 

plain and simple. 

Willie’s can't forget 

a wrong, big or small.

It’s hard to forgive, he says,

never mind forget ISIS.

You’re not ISIS, Willie,

his Millie reassures him.

You just have a conscience.

No nails, no hammer.

- Donal Mahoney 2015

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Naked Root

Ostensibly I was making my way deep down into the bowels of the marketplace looking for some books which I heard an indifferent merchant was using, piled up as a sort of makeshift coffee table. Part of the reality though was that I prided myself on a personal library of interesting tales, firsthand experiences which I could tell and never have to embellish the smallest detail of, to delight and hold the listener's attention with. 

 The stairs, all stone, became narrower and narrower which, on account of my caution, slowed down my progress. I soon reached that part of the marketplace where the flagstones had not seen sunlight since the day they were first laid down, before the rest of the market built up around and on top of them. A different marketplace existing concurrently with the one resting on its shoulders, here, the merchants would laugh and, once their shaking shoulders stilled, regard one with suspicion were you to ask about any fruits or vegetables. 

The heat was a wet thing now that clung about me as if a drowning man presuming on my concern for his salvation. The scent was unique in the dichotomy of notes, floral, rotting, cloying and an after the act, sexual muskiness. I looked far above me, where I had started, the little kiosk with its honey cakes. I once again calmed myself by  imagining all of this has already happened and that what I am feeling now is merely recall as I tell the story over drinks at Pierre's or slowly sipping tea with Sidi, as ever feeling her watching me peripherally from her place upon my couch. 

I could not find the shop with the books, the strap of my book bag grew teeth and began to bite into my shoulder despite the leather oval pad between me and it. I picked a shop whose un-shuttered windows were deeply recessed into the wall but still had intricate metal grill work which fascinated me. Inside an old woman wearing Ray Ban pilot sunglasses even though the place was dimly lit softly clucked at me as I entered announced by the tinkling of a brass bell. At first she looked like a small head among a pile of patterned clothes. She stood up clasping her hands together and stretching her arms towards the low ceiling. I said hello and did a half bow which works in any culture.

She started off by showing me all the usual tourist junk, curved daggers made of tin destined to end up on someone's desktop eventually birthing a story which never happened but believed down the line in old age. Blurred erotic postcards of models who were not really from here and of a jaundiced hue that made the bellied women seem as if doing the dance of the seven veils trapped in amber.

I laughed. She then crooked her index finger at me and I followed her bent form to the back of the store. There was an old dresser which leaned diagonally to the right. She opened one of its doors with a long drawn out creak whose sustain bordered on free jazz. She pulled out a bright green silk handkerchief too big for anyone to possibly keep in their pocket.   She then turned around and shuffled back to the storefront with myself once again following. 

At the counter she took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were kohled and intense. She was humming to herself but it was more a series of vibrations in her throat than any melodic sounds. Her impossibly long fingers managed to un-knot the kerchief. As the kerchief went flat against the opaque of the glass counter I was not initially sure what I was looking at.  

She presse,d something against my chest, her other hand taking mine and not letting it go until I held the thing as one would a very small child. She repeated this two more times. Once I was sure that she was done I looked down. A root type thing which had naturally grown in the shape of a fetish. 

True language barriers do not exist in the places tourists are, the luxury hotels, airports, restaurants but it is a great way to curtail too long of price negotiations with the Europeans. It is also a way to be a little rude and still make a sale, the attitude being chalked up to cultural differences. Down here though was different there was no need to bother with acts.

The old woman nodded to me and said three times:

"Ostium...Ostium..."

She then put her thumb and two fingers together and opened her mouth, the clustered fingers went from the flat of the palm of her other hand up to her mouth,  pantomiming eating something. I shook my head yes. I gave her some of the heavy coins and she nodded with a smile. I was given a dirty white cloth bag for the roots. Carefully I rearranged my book bag so nothing would crush them. I noticed way after the fact that the books and notebook which had been in there all permanently took on the perfume whose closest notes of comparison were Ginseng, sweat, earth and ozone. 

Back home in my office I placed the roots in one of the glass domes where I had kept a pocket watch who had fallen out of favor with me in on display. Aside from occasionally humming a snatch of song as I walked passed them, they required very little care. I noticed their colors subtly changed depending upon the season.   

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Linda Imbler

Man in the Bath

In this dark harbor,
A tsunami reveals its strength,
Quickly,
Without mercy.
Later, the partially submerged empty vessel
Rocks back-and-forth,
Knocking against pilings
With a constant, monotonous
Rhythm reminiscent of a stranger’s knock on the door.
This asylum,
Still shrouded in darkness,
Newly coated with red algae bloom,
Lies in wait,
For what, it's not known,
The harbormaster
Has already visited and departed.
The rhythm of the knocking slows,
As at once,
This shelter becomes alit.
The air is stirred,
And so begins
The shriek of the first gull
As the vision of what lies here
Is illumined.

- Linda Imbler 2015

Linda Imbler is the author of several poetry books including The Weather In My Head , Doubt and Truth, and Precious Vibrations.  She has written such diverse poems as “Tomb, ” “We,” “Leviathan,” and “Walking the Road.”  Her work has been called evocative, provocative and beautiful.  Linda has designed her own book covers.  This poet, yoga practitioner, and acoustic guitar player resides in Wichita, Kansas.

New Poetry by Annmarie McQueen

Conversations in high places

From those rooftops Brussels glittered

Before us like an open quarry

 

The centuries

Layered on top of each other

 

Books stacked

High on a crumbling shelf

 

Stories and secrets lost somewhere

In a sprawling city which rippled

 

When we touched it, seconds away

From shattering completely.

 

Dangling our feet over a

Brilliant abyss

 

We convinced ourselves we could

Step out onto the next building

 

And then the next

 

Bridging these night-time voids like

Skipping stones.

 

And I saw you running through

 

Empty streets

 

Burnt amber in my mind,

Searing down concrete boulevards

With your clothes on fire

 

Your smoking voice and

Barren eyes

 

Shedding the flames to rise from them

A phoenix in denim.

- Annmarie McQueen 2015

Annmarie McQueen is a recent graduate of Warwick University in the U.K, where she studied English and creative writing. An aspiring author/poet and previous winner of the Simon Powell poetry prize, she has been published in magazines including ‘Words with Jam’, ‘Reach poetry' and 'Buried letter press.' 

New Poetry by Bruce McRae

The Self’s Portrait

One portrait has no ears or hands.
In one portrait the eyes have gone
to wherever it is eyes go on autumn evenings.

Here’s a mouth that’s said too little too late.
Here’s a nose that ought to know better.
No beard. No scar. No symmetry.

An eyebrow’s lament. Light pooling on a chin.
That unfortunate hair lost in a forest.
And this portrait, of the self, of the self’s self.
Which resembles a heart-string and sings like a bird.


- Bruce McRae 2015

Pushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 poems published internationally, including Poetry.com, Rattle and The North American Review. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’, is available via Silenced Press and Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to ‘BruceMcRaePoetry’ on YouTube.

New Poetry by Pijush Kanti Deb

I Have a Drum

I have a drum
grammatically well tuned
as per the universal norm of  sweetness,
a keen longing to beat it
dancing and singing
traversing each and every cavity of human sense
and unfortunately a weakness too
as I lack an ethically authorized hand to beat it
but in the process
my young heart permits me
to purchase the authorized hand
in exchange for
my beloved money and self-respect both
while my old soul restricts me
saying
‘’No self respect --- no life in a life
so let your drum be beaten by others’’


- Pijush Kanti Deb 2015

Pijush Kanti Deb is a new Indian poet with around 261 published or accepted poems and haiku in around 90 nos of national and international magazines and journals [,print and online] like Down in the dirt, Tajmahal Review, Pennine Ink, Hollow Publishing, Creativica Magazine, Muse India, Teeth Dream Magazine,Hermes Poetry Journal, Grey Borders, Dagda Publishing, Blognostic  Black Mirror Magazine, Dissident Voice Journal , Indiana Voice Journal Aji Magazine Calliope Magazine and many more. His best achievement so far is the publication of his first poetry collection,’’Beneath The Shadow Of A White Pigeon’’published by Hollow Publishing is available on AMAZON.

New Poetry by William G. Davies Jr.

Probity

The sun slants, avuncular;

warming that side

of your rib cage,

opening for a little while

the path through woods

where darkness gathers

on either side

with gold lapels.

- William G. Davies Jr. 2015

William will be appearing at The Writer's Nook at the Little Buffalo Arts Festival at Little Buffalo State Park for a reading October 3rd. He will also be signing copies of his collection, "Before There Were Bones" at The Perry County Council Of The Arts building in Newport, Pennsylvania October 10th.

New Poetry by C S Hughes

In The Tropics

A mystery and a revelation 
An orange sunset burns my fingers
Stars blazon the bruised night (words blazon like stars)
A Van Gogh or Gauguin join-the-dots
Spelling strange characters
To which
The poet humbly submits
They are so much bigger than this
Sharks beneath glass green seas
Savage rantum scantum 
The genius of turning back
And asking questions
And the chance again to taste
Your coconut flavoured skin


- C S Hughes 2015

C S Hughes grew up on both sides of the tracks in ochre towns and charcoal cities. When he was young he hoboed across the country by thumb and freight train, before spending several years in reading and study. He has lived in parks and palaces and worse places, publishes innovative poetry pieces illustrated with his own photography and digital artworks in iBooks, and has occasionally had a story or poem published on paper. He writes commentary on popular culture and edits at nerdalicious.com.au 
He says he is getting older but no more wise.

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Fast Food at Midnight

A drunk comes into McDonald’s

staggers to the counter

is waited on by a young lady 

who looks like his wife

years ago when he proposed.

Drunk says nothing, just stares,

mouth agape, until the 

manager hustles forward,

sensing a sale

leans over the counter 

says to the drunk,

“Want fries with her?”

- Donal Mahoney 2015

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

New Poetry by Joseph Reich

Getting through the daze

Recently been having this vision

of the whole Peanuts gang nodding

out on heroin, heads really hanging

perhaps around that poor crestfallen

Christmas tree where all the pine

needles have posthumously fallen

with the fizzling lights, droopy star

teetering on top, all messed-up around

the mound by that makeshift lemonade

psychiatrist stand, or that wall where Linus

and good ole Chuck Brown make their final

stand, bow their heads, grief-stricken, contemplative

and question, Socratic method, kind and compassionate

their existence, contented. watching days pass right

in front of them, and see both their perspectives, their

moods and behavior, then crash with elbows eternally

leaned-up, head in hand and earnestly, existentially

discuss dreams and goals, resolve conflicts and try

to figure out the futile, impossible problems of the

world, the pained and perplexing suffering soul

exchanging thoughts and ideas and future plans

right where the seasons change, but scene always

seems to remain the same, the trees and leaves

and tops of bleak twinkling roofs, steeples,

temples, mosques, mausoleums, streets

and lamplight sputtering with a pastel

sun falling, big bulge of breathtaking

moon rising, turning from day to evening

leaving simply those stray starlit stoops

with a whole wistful windswept village

swept up in blessed silhouetted geometric

forms and images of the sobering season

The hyperactive and psychotic and driven

Snoopy who I never  much cared for

his overconfident personality

Marcy and Peppermint Patty

finally finding each other

Pigpen misunderstood

underestimated

Franklin the black

kid never taken in

Lucy the loud mouth

who just never shuts

the fuck up, but who

knows maybe I’m just

going through some sort

of mid-life crisis of sorts

most likely not and am just

trying to find ways to cope

and catch up on everything

I believe I missed out on

from a very complex

and competitive

overbearing 

and overwhelming

passive-aggressive

impossible Jewish culture

does that make sense at all?

And so thus maybe just prefer

seeing the whole Peanuts gang

strung-out on dope, not saying

a whole hell of a lot

a bunch of distant

disobedient dwarf

dope addicts

completely

out of it

contented

centered

blissfully

nodding out

to that brilliant

bee-bopping piano

and brush drums

of a mean and

moody magical

Vince Guaraldi solo

building up then fading

off in the background

all of them naturally

shuffling home

on their own

by their own

choice and

volition

pace and

space and

time and

leisure in

a constant

state of flux

through the fading

glow and opaque

drizzly autumnal

leaf piles of some

divine dwindling

disappearing season.

- Joseph Reich 2015

Joseph Reich has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated five times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books in poetry and cultural studies include, "A Different  Sort Of Distance" (Skive Magazine Press) "If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge" (Flutter Press) "Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half" (Brick Road Poetry Press) "Drugstore Sushi" (Thunderclap Press) "The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians" (Fomite Press) "The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world" (Fomite Press) "The Hole That Runs Through Utopia" (Fomite Press)  "Taking The Fifth And Running With It: a psychological guide for the hard of hearing and blind" (Broadstone Books) "The Defense Mechanisms: your survival guide to the fragile mind" (Fomite Press)

New Poetry by James Walton

DNA

there’s a madman in the square
people are closing their windows
he’s crying out he’s found the code

of how the house smelled of oranges
when we made the almond flour cake
and the scent rained through every room

stirring in a wing flap heart beat
not the dull flat bottom skiff of ducks
slumbering off the scoria embankment

but the savage embrace of a hurtling beak
I stalled face on in mid air unafraid
as the rushing gust pierced and passed

the skins fall away in pulsing forensics
my nose is buried in the aromatic aftermath
of how the house smelled of oranges


- James Walton 2015


James Walton lives in South Gippsland. His collection, "The Leviathan's Apprentice" has just been released through Strzelecki's Lover Press.

New Poetry by Rob Walker

sinister minister


the retired clergyman from the states ejaculates
a laugh of embarrassment  at everything

his philosophy as cut, dried & packaged as a tour

somewhere in the uk midlands he asks about australia 

what’s it like to live on the other side of the planet so
isolated                  & far from everything?

i reply that everything i need is quite close


it occurs to me that every one
thinks their hometown is
                                                                                          
universe’s                                       singularity



- Rob Walker 2015

New Poetry by JD DeHart

Space

Is this space we find

the quality of one mind

or co-created

by our observance of it

When we leave

and drive away into

separate dark places

does the space continue

(do we)?

- JD DeHart 2015

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.  His chapbook, The Truth About Snails, is available from RedDashboard.

New Poetry (and introductory note) by Holly Day

After a full summer of not being able to sit comfortably at my desk and work, there’s nothing so wonderful as having the kids back in school and the house and time to myself. Perhaps in cooperation with my determined vision of staying glued to my computer for the day, the weather has turned nasty overnight, and I’m already wearing a sweater around the house and wondering how long I can put off turning on the heater for the season. Outside, sparrows and chickadees cover the lawn as thick as snow, a shifting, twitching carpet of brown and gray reminder that my beautiful summer is coming to a close.

The Anniversary

Years later, they will speak of this anniversary

as though it had happened to other people, neighbors, perhaps.

They will speak lightly of her hospitalization

gloss over the details, mention her minor head trauma

the problems he had had with his temper

back then, in the past.

Their children will glare pointedly at each other

over the heads of the assembled party guests

because one of them should have intervened

someone was supposed to have been here.

- Holly Day 2015

Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Oyez Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, while her recently published books include Music Theory for Dummies (3^rd edition), Piano All-in-One for Dummies, The Book Of, and Nordeast Minneapolis: A History.  

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

I had to let her go on up the stairs ahead of me because of how she took them. Always, a jaunty dance of rapidly, three steps up then two back down.

The polished wooden floors amplified the sunlight, a golden glow of peace that I would always mistrust. I worried too that the angel was not real as I did not see how the vast expanse of wings could fit through the little slits in the back of the robe.

Her concern was enough to make the stairs gently creak. I do not speak. What was the point with only a few minutes to burn in heaven before falling back through.

Op 9, No 2

The sky is gray but in this drabness it makes the light from our place shine like a distant star or the blush of your cheeks during warmer months.

Inside the air is slightly smoky from wild boar sausage. It is not acrid but a heaviness which is a comfort.

The cool mineral notes of our drinks. Waiting for our meal, I start to tattoo the back of the card which announces the house drink specials. My pen bleeds from the neck and my hands echo in kind.

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Peter C. Venable

Angel-Dusted

and bath-salted,

he aimed a corkscrew into his palm

and twisted and twisted

until it screwed through

the dorsal skin nearly an inch—

like a badly botched titanium screw surgery—

and he reached for a bottle of wine

and I waited for the next twist.

- Peter C. Venable 2015

The Rational

“The Rational is Real and the Real is Rational,”

A buttress of Hegel's Mind

and my mallet-and-chiseled Absolutes.

How my Easter Island idols are adorned

with gull droppings and scales!

Come, tourists, and meander

in our taxidermist's museum of stuffed Beliefs—

are they winking at us with their glassy eyes?

Come, and ponder

as we go spelunking in Plato's Cave,

and meet our flickering shadows.

Let’s ascend our ancestral stairs

to Reason's Tower and marvel

at Syllogism's sculptures.

What, then, are these Monuments

which assemble our Real minds?

- Peter C. Venable 2015

The writer has written both free and metric verse for over fifty years and been published in such humorous poetry journals as Parody, Word Riot, Laughing Dog, and Hobo Pancakes. He is a semi-retired clinician, volunteers at a prison camp and food pantry, leads vespers services for senior citizens, and is graced with a happy marriage, daughter and son-in-law, and Yeshua. Hagar the Horrible is a role model