New Poetry by Earl Livings

Long Haul Flight

Learning to leave things undone

is a training for death

When you set foot on that plane

for a long overseas trip

what doesn’t get done

on that 200-item To-Do List

stays undone

You may ache for who

you leave behind

as you journey

but not what

And in death, as in travelling,

you take your memories with you,

leave others behind with theirs

can do nothing about this

and all things left undone

but stare at clouds

threaded with starlight,

wait for touchdown

- © Earl Livings 2022

Earl Livings has published poetry and fiction in Australia and also Britain, Canada, the USA, and Germany. His work mainly focuses on science, nature, mythology and the sacred. His second poetry collection, Libation (Ginninderra Press) was published in 2018 and his fantasy verse novel, The SIlence Inside the World, is due to be published mid-2022. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and their ever-growing piles of books.

Bluepepper will once again be open for submissions from 9am 26/4/2022 (AEST). 

Bluepepper regrets to announce that we have tested positive for COVID and will not be accepting submissions until our health has improved. Stay safe people.

New Poetry by Darcy Mueller

Windows 

This room has no windows 

No above no below 

A single bulb dangles lazily 

Casing shadows on your face 

As it meets my eye 

But all I want is a window 

To let in the sky 

This room has only the tick of a clock 

Hung upon the wall 

There are no syllables uttered 

To break its constant dull 

But I want a window 

So I may feel the breeze 

This room has a chair 

In which neither of us sit 

To offer it to the other 

A small but honest gift 

But I just want a window 

To see the passers by 

Your voice, it has a stutter 

As you slowly walk near 

Though you always speak so clearly

These words, I cannot hear 

But I just want a window 

So it may be opened to the sounds 

And with noise of city cars 

May drown this quiet around 

Your hand it has a tremble 

And does not reach for mine 

It looks for something safe to touch 

Then fiddles with the time 

But I only want a window 

So I may breathe the air 

This room now has a silence 

With the clock now in your hands 

And this lonely silence 

To the walls expands 

Oh how I want a window 

So I may hear the sounds 

This room has no chair now 

As you sink into it slow 

My weary feet are aching 

But dont know where to go 

I wish for a window 

So I may sit upon the roll 

In a moment of rest 

Could my feet finally be still 

This room has a door 

That’s been opened but a foot 

But light seeps through it 

So I go and take a look 

I do not need a window 

To see the world outside 

For with this opened door 

The room now comes to light 

This room has a boy 

Who sits upon a chair 

When I look back at him 

He will not return my stare 

He does not want a window 

I did not know before 

That he does not want to see 

The outer world's allure 

This room has an emptiness 

As he does not answer my calls 

My voice floats around the room 

With naught to catch it when it falls 

But I do need a window 

In all the rooms I see 

I do need a window so that I may be free 

That room has a boy 

And he is all alone 

For I am forced to leave him 

I know I must go 

He will have no window 

And therein lies the shock 

For I have known him for many years 

But he is not the boy I thought 

So I shut the door behind me to leave him in the dark 

One lightbulb to guide him 

It nearly breaks my heart

But I must have a window 

For the world I want to see 

And if he will have no window 

Does he not wish to be free? 

- © Darcy Mueller 2022

Darcy Mueller is a second year student at Tufts University studying History and Italian who greatly enjoys writing in her free time. She is originally from Jackson Wyoming where she lives with her parents, two brothers, and sister.

New Poetry by Tony Hughes

That Feeling Like No Other

Under the cover.

Of a thin, worn corrugated sheet 

On a bed. 

In a shack.

By the sea. 

With thunderous southerlies. 

Raining rivers. 

Thick fat 

mud leeches. 

Stuck to us.

Chasing after beer cans. 

Rolling down the hill. .

Relentless nor easters. 

Blowing up sand 

and sand 

and more 

sand 

from the seventh sea. 

All the sand from 

from all our summer's.

shipwrecked 

on your ankles

Jet black, fast on your finger. 

From the carbon mantel lamp.

The kero fridge melts.

Banksia cobs 

turn to coal. 

On a cooking fire 

built for fish 

That feeling only love knows.

That feeling like no other

- © Tony Hughes 2022

Tony Hughes is an Australian actor and singer. As an actor, he starred in The Lost Islands (1976), Chopper Squad (1977–1979) and the film adaptation of Puberty Blues (1981). As a singer he has fronted Bellydance and King Tide. The beach shack referred to in this poem is owned by the family of the poet's late wife, Cassanadra Woodburne, who passed away on 22nd November 2020 after a long and courageous struggle with cancer. 

The accompanying picture of the legendary shack at Era Beach is by the renowned Sydney artist Lucy O'Doherty, daughter of Mambo artist Reg Mombassa.

New Poetry by Paul Mitchell

 
Three on the Tree

Gold HG Holden Premier nineteen seventy-one
sedan with single dint on side door panel
installed a decent hi-fi in it played
Red Hot Chili Peppers on it took
fifteen minutes to warm up
each morning backed into a ditch
on the school run workmen
hauled it out with a winch.
 
Drove it drunk to a pub with mates
listening to Bee Gees Tragedy or something
bought it with the help of a mate who said
it’s gold could see that and what he meant.
 
Cost three-thousand five-hundred
two years later needed money divorcee
dad on the wrong side of what
there’s no right side of.
 
Sold it to a bloke who said
he’d put a new motor in it
mag wheels on it got three
thousand five-hundred for it.
 
Tired of being watched
wherever it went wanted to go
in cognito bought a Daewoo
Station Wagon didn’t have to go
that far but did so sorry at least
let me show you the photos.

- © Paul Mitchell 2022

Paul Mitchell is the author of six books, including last year’s essay collection Matters of Life and Faith, a novel, We. Are. Family, a short story collection, Dodging the Bull, and three poetry collections: Minorphysics, Awake Despite the Hour, and Standard Variation. Minorphysics won the IP Picks national prize for an unpublished Australian manuscript, and Standard Variation was short-listed for the Adelaide Writers’ Week poetry prize. He’s judged the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry and his poems, essays and stories have appeared over the past twenty-five years in numerous magazines and journals, most recently The Guardian, Westerly, Antipodes, Meniscus, and Eureka Street. He’s written several works for stage and he’s currently a co-writer with director Chris Nelius on a commissioned feature film for Madman Entertainment. He also co-wrote Actions to Live By, a recent AFL documentary on the Brisbane Lions of 2001 to 2003.

 

New Poetry by Bradford Middleton

A Little Bit Longer

A miraculous arrival has come along and caused a

Massive shift around in mind and room as at last

This place feels almost like home.  It’s not a woman,

Not even a new friend but a couch, beautiful and

Elegant it straddles the space in front of my window

And, often, since Friday night have I slept on it,

Feeling it sooth my aching body after years of

Sleeping essentially on my floor.  I look at it now

With a fondness usually reserved for a new lover

As it taunts me, it’s only 8:27 you’ve got to wait a

Few more hours yet.  This morning I woke and

Couldn’t bring myself to leave its warm confines

As I rolled over a few more times, whispering to

Myself, just a little bit longer.  Tomorrow will

Almost certainly be the same as at last I find it

Easy to get to sleep without the aid of drinking

Myself to the brink of death on way too many

Nights.  At last, a good nights’ rest.

- © Bradford Middleton 2022

Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on the UK’s south coast.  He began writing poetry fifteen years ago when he first landed here knowing no one and with no money he holed-up and did it merely for something to do.  He’s since had four, sold-out, chapbooks of his poetry published as well as seeing his work feature in the likes of the Chiron Review, Rusty Truck, New Reader Magazine, Paper & Ink Zine and the Mad Swirl.  Follow him on Twitter @BradfordMiddle5.

New Poetry by Paul Tanner

jerk’s circle  

there’s the:

bloated one who eats all the free biscuits

the: chain smoker

the: one who keeps draping a veiny chicken fillet thigh

over your leg

when she’s not blowing kisses at the others

the: one with a new puncture mark on his skinny arms

every time you see him,

long grey spotted arms that shake

the: nail biter

with fingers like bled sausages

the: empty chair

where the guy who keeps doing overtime

would’ve sat

and they all praise jesus

and why? well, why not?

so a long-dead socialist baby coos

as the chicken thigh clenches around yours

like a vice that has goose bumps, as

Melissa, she says “me boyfriend just died”

with a smile

and then there’s

the: you.

- © Paul Tanner 2022

Tanner is barely qualified for minimum wage and he's allergic to cheese for crying out loud. His cat knows your sins.

 

New Poetry by John Tustin

This Hawk

There is this hawk

That careens along the currents

With the sea foam in his eye

And the mountain peak

Churning in his gut.

There is this hawk

Who snatches prey in midair –

His talons

Are the tomahawk chop

Of a shirtless brave bending

On horseback.

There is this hawk

Whose wings are flawless feathers

Of steel and bones

And you watch his silhouette

Getting smaller

Against the setting sun

As he flies far

Far

Far from you,

His final shriek

Piercing the ears

And the heart

With the battle cry

Of retreat.

- © John Tustin 2022

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

New Poetry by George Gad Economou

the swing 

the old, dirty tire hanging from two chains 

seesaws, always 

empty, 

it continues to sway praying for one 

person to use it, give meaning to 

its existence. 

it’s been there for years—unused, 

unwanted. a lonesome swing, 

the tire never felt the joy of being 

enjoyed and used. 

all it wants is to hear the giggle of someone. 

kids and adults flood the playground, 

day and night—not even soused teens 

sit on the most lonely of swings. 

one fine summer day, three 

robust men arrived with 

sledgehammers and shovels. 

they tore down the swing, tossing into 

a fire the tire and its wooden poles. 

instead of proffering joy and laughter, 

the swing polluted the air; its 

spirit haunted the playground. 

it watched the visitors sitting on the fancy new 

swing, invisible tears watered 

the playground’s dirt; come spring, black roses flourished 

amidst the toys. all were bewildered from the roses that 

swayed back and forth,  

back and forth, on occasion 

shedding a drop of water, like a tear for 

the spirit that no longer lingered on. 

- © George Gad Economou 2022

George Gad Economou holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and resides in Athens, Greece, doing freelance work whenever he can while searching for a new place to go. His novella, Letters to S., was published in Storylandia Issue 30 and his short stories and poems have appeared in literary magazines, such as Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Chamber Magazine, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, and Modern Drunkard Magazine. His first poetry collection, Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds, was published by Adelaide Books in 2021. 

New Poetry by Rob Schackne

Caritas

My friend has made 

an atomic chilli sauce 

and given me a small jar 

and a warning to be careful 

it tastes wonderful 

it has a beautiful colour 

this existential dilemma 

where two roads diverge 

on the one hand 

the contents will last forever 

on the other hand 

a little goes a long way 

I tighten the lid 

and place it in the dark 

where its dreams resolve 

the problems of the world

- © Rob Schackne 2022

Rob Schackne has been living in regional Victoria for several years since returning from teaching for many years in Asia. He write poems. He also likes taking photographs. Autumn is his favourite season. He listens to lots of jazz. 

New Poetry by Fred Pollack

Christiania *

Silly to be reading the guidebook

on a bench in waning light ...

All day the sun had never quite escaped

the clouds. But he was struck

by the image of a town burning,

and the king and everyone

fleeing up here, then descending to contrive

this city. He had been to the island

where the rich lived; would remember

the statue of a little girl

with her bicycle, alone and safe

yet somehow brave, and an allée;

but the houses had seemed merely those

of the rich. He had gone to see

the Viking ship in its museum, but either

it was under maintenance or he had

the wrong day; he wouldn’t recall, later;

that sort of thing happened to him often.

It seemed a tough town. Not like Naples,

Hamburg, other places he had been,

but busy, beery, hard-working,

its pastel houses built of wood for winter.

At the Vigeland park the unvarying, stocky

stylization of the grey

figures overrode maternity, courage,

grief, strength, whatever quality

each meant, which seemed to show

an inadvertent insight. Briefly the sun came out;

lovers strolled and hugged. I’ve always been

a thief of others’ high moments,

he thought. It was a line from a novel.

Then up here at the Fortress

he had stood a long time

in the Museum of the Resistance

before a replicated cell with figures

of an SS-man and a resistant

about to get down to business;

and the wall with gracious thanks,

in English and gold letters, to the Allies.

Closing his book, he may have thought

that sentimentality derives

its energy from a tenderness

applied to oneself, which at some level

one knows should be applied to others.

At that point, the sun slipped

below the cloud-layer. The whole long fjord

between its mountains gleamed. The full

and ancient trees, some growing through

the battlements, turned gold-on-green,

the ivied brick of walls a golden red.

The old-world cannon seemed alive, but not

with threat, only some loyalty. Along

the shadowed paths, couples

and solitary people walked and met.

It’s possible, he may have said aloud.

For me. And rose and walked. He was 35.

- © Fred Pollack 2022

Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Two collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc.

* Christiania, capital of the Kingdom of Norway, changed its name to Oslo in 1925 (editor's note).

 

New Poetry by Aidan Coleman

Dream Careers Awaken

1.

                   Still

you have to hang out with other footballers,

           their wives and girlfriends.

2.

       Your clue is this:

crime begets paperwork

                           begets crime.

3.

        This is what it’s like to be

                    in a band

     carps the singer, shackled

                     to a microphone stand.

4.

            Take Thirty-seven.

 

5.

                    Stare long enough

         and the blank page

             suggests

better ways of wasting time.

- © Aidan Coleman 2022

Aidan Coleman has published three collections of poetry, most recently Mount Sumptuous (Wakefield Press, 2020).

 

New Poetry by Robin Cantwell

Open Mic Night feat. Ernest Hemingway

Six bucks for a cup of coffee —

glad I didn’t live to see the day.

Robot wizards, gizmo galaxies —

for love of god, will someone

wipe that smirk off Dali’s face.

Pay me pal, stick a dollar in my wallet —

I’m having stag for breakfast

before I hitch a ride

on that information superhighway. 

What’s a guy gotta do to get a smoke round here —

excuse me, waiter

there’s seaweed floating in my shake.

Think I’ll head back now,

sow a lineage in my name —

that Super Mario gives me the creeps,

and will someone please tell me

just what the hell is going on

with Toad and Princess Peach?

- © Robin Cantwell 2022

Robin is a London-based playwright, poet and fiction writer. With themes ranging from toxic masculinity to the technological singularity, his work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, Pure Slush, The London Reader, Fauxmoir, A Thin Slice Of Anxiety, Bright Flash Literary Review, Silver Birch Press, Molecule Literary Magazine, Poetica Review, Visual Verse and Nine Muses Poetry. Robin is a graduate of the Faber Academy.

New Poetry by Heather Sager

We danced

You and I danced

in the living room

near the ottoman chair

and azure blanket

as the guitarist from Mali

played through his soul

on the stereo

Enthralled, we didn’t notice

the thick cobwebs

hanging over our heads

and we forgot the particular 

dread and fear

that made us drink 

so much red wine:

how could this life and love

ever dovetail to an end?

- © Heather Sager 2022

Heather Sager lives in Illinois, USA. She writes poetry and fiction. Her most recent work appears in The Orchards, Magma, Fahmidan Journal, Red Eft, Version (9), The Bosphorus Review of Books, Shabd Aaweg Review, The Fabulist, Willows Wept, and more, and her poetry has appeared in Bluepepper in the past (in 2020). 

New Poetry by Jedediah Smith

Shall We Gather: Beginning with a Line by Kenneth Patchen

See how those stars tramp over heaven,

how vagrant trains below wrestle with dark earth and time. 

And we with vacant eyes sleepwalk 

through the pitiless splendor of the crowds. 

See how jetliners roll drops of blood across the night, 

how cars carry knives from one house to another. 

And we blame rats for the squeaking 

of our bones as we press tighter together. 

You, know nothing; I, know nothing; and they, 

only know that they are not us and never will be.

What if behind the walls of every apartment great black machines are running?

What if the lives we left unlived really dried up long ago and blew away with the ashes 

and dust of wildfires?

What if the glitter of broken bottles on asphalt is all we will ever know of heaven?

What if murder is all we hold to be self-evident, that all murder is equal, that murder 

alone is inalienable from us? And we are not us and never will be?

- © Jedediah Smith 2022

Jedediah Smith works as a freelance writer in the Bay Area of California. His poems and stories have been published in Chiron Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Every Day Fiction. His chapbook of poems, The Gunslinger in Technicolor, came out in 2020. He can be followed on his website: jedediahsmith.net

New Poetry by Jason Beale

A Marriage

My wife is sleeping by my side,

I hear her breathing in and out

in the chilly, early morning air.

Now, after nine years together,

we coexist with question marks,

pinning down fears and doubts

as most of us do in our hearts.

That's life is her favourite phrase

and There's nothing you can do -

anodynes for the troubled mind

she takes as ontological proofs.

But day by day we thrive as one,

surviving trials that always come,

holding closer, each to the other.

My wife turns over in her sleep

and reaching out my hand, I touch

her warm arm with my fingertips,

thinking of something called love.

- © Jason Beale 2022

Jason Beale is a writer from Melbourne. His poetry has been selected to appear later this year in Quadrant and The Canberra Times.

New Poetry by Peter Mladinic

Wake

A doughy doll bundled in black sat in

a corner, white hair piled in a Gibson bun. 

Pecking her doughy cheek I got a whiff

of withering.

An early night in May.  Her husband

lay in the casket, white hair parted

to one side, black rosary beads

in waxen hands.  My uncle’s hand

on her shoulder.  “He’s with God.”

I wasn’t old enough to believe

or disbelieve.  To say yes, there is

or no.  Outside, under a canopy

I waited to get into a parked car.

- © Peter Mladinic 2022

Rain

The Viking Bar had sawdust on the floor.

Martino’s had waiters

With towels on their arms and the Mohawk

Tavern waiters’ white jackets were cut

at the waist. Henry was at our table in

Martino’s in Juarez, his Spanish passable.

Round, pale, he was with me

under a tarp in a grove of trees one

afternoon.  The rain stopped.

We rode down dirt roads in Pinyon Draw,

which was green.  It was tranquility

seeing, hearing the rain with Henry.

- © Peter Mladinic 2022

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.  An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

New Poetry by Linda Adair

Steeped in history

The afternoon slumps ---

habit calls for a cuppa.

The mind craves something staunch

to reboot as the coffee-fuelled resolve dissipates

a bold breakfast brew would do the trick.

As the jug boils, I consider

my comfortable options versus

those offered by history ---

the green tin or the red

the Irish and English blend respectively.

The choice would have been clear once.

Dusty leavings swept off a factory floor

became the green, after first pickings

were boxed in red, and

chopped leaf takings of the cheaper Assam

fortified the displaced natives of Erin

whilst the best Indian  leaves that money could buy

steeped in the teatime parlours of an Empire

built by war, plunder, and brutality.

Why else would the troopers wear redcoats

but to hide the bloodletting of battle?

Gold letter status 'By Appointment to Her Majesty' on the tin

that emblematic red coat my great-great grandfather once wore.

At Lambing Flat the Crown’s men

read the Riot Act to stop the slaughter of Chinese miners.

But that was on a good day.

Usually the ‘traps’ defended ‘squatters’ rights

as they took over Wiradjuri lands.

- © Linda Adair 2020

Linda Adair is a poet and editor of Rochford Press/ Rochford Street Review who lives in Leura on the unceded lands of the Dharug and Gundungarra peoples. During Covid, Melbourne Poets Union published and zoom launched her debut book The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering. She has been published in 25 Miles from Here Pure Slush Vol 21, Messages from the Embers (Black Quill Press, 2020), To End All Wars (Puncher & Wattmann, 2018) and various journals. Her work will appear in  the forthcoming Work Lifespan Vol 5 Pure Slush.

 

New Poetry by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Pidgin (speak white*) 

Today I heard a young man

speaking in tongues 

from a televised platform 

in the heart of downtown 

Cameras rolled banners waved

and the passion of his audience

warmed the deliverance seeking  

If what the man said made sense 

to those in attendance 

it bewildered everyone else 

but as a form of recompense 

we’ve been promised an encore performance 

Meanwhile a man with an eagle feather 

sits on a train track in the middle of nowhere

he is accompanied by several others 

beating drums singing songs in a display 

the powers that be say is a threat to commerce

In this country we have two official languages 

two solitudes of which “tongues” is not (yet) one 

but there is a lingua franca a dialect that unites  

It is called Speaking White.

- © Jeremy Nathan Marks 2022

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. New and recent work appears/will appear in places like Flash Fiction Magazine, Garfield Lake, Expanded Field, Unlikely Stories, Ginosko Literary Journal, Wondrous Real, Microfiction Mondays, and Eastern Iowa Review. His full length poetry collection, Of Fat Dogs & Amorous Insects is published by Alien Buddha Press (2021). 

* [The phrase “speak white” is apparently a racist insult used by English-speaking Canadians to shame French-speaking Canadians for speaking their language in public.- Editor]