New Poetry by Brandyn Johnson

DOMINION

“Fill the earth and subdue it,” Genesis 1:28

Grocery bags tumbleweed through a valley, greened

by beer bottle stalagmites among aged paper terraces,

eroded by the grey exhale, whistled from steady traffic.

Styrofoam patches cluster the overpasses, leaving tiny

meltless snows and coffeebreath pebble bits scattered

with tire stitches soldered to pavement cracks as scars.

The sun, ornamented by its metropolitan rind sparkles

mechanically, bronzing a condom – buoying the brook

of ditchwater and oil ribbons – and tarnishing the red

french fry box, folding on itself below the “welcome,”

                                                                 And it is so.


- Brandyn Johnson 2012



MEN BRAGGING ON VACATION, COSTA RICA

“And dude, she was like, 18 and 90 pounds,

felt like I was gonna break her in two,

needed a tub full of ice this morning though,”

he said,

after tossing me a beer by the pool.

His tanned lawyer laughed behind

sunglasses and a bronze gut,

“made her earn that money.”

I have nothing to add

so I nod, and sip my beer and nod,

not thinking about my newlywed upstairs napping,

not thinking about my sisters,

not thinking about someone’s daughter,

offering good times in broken English

to men who travel with their lawyers,

not thinking about the packs of men who

toss jokes like cans of lo-calorie beers

and pay to fuck what is closest to children.

I finish my beer and thank them

on my way to the air-conditioned room,

bumping into a 90-pound housekeeper,

her turquoise shirt shadowed with sweat,

clutching the wrinkled bills she found

on the countertop.

- Brandyn Johnson 2012

Brandyn Johnson, is an American currently living and teaching in China.

New Poetry by Benjamin Dodds

Others

Will they appear silently
on our horizon’s doorstep

heralding their sudden arrival
with flashes of Alessi chrome

or send word in advance
from across gulfs of time

a message to fold out the sofa
for envoys not yet

born at the time of transmission?
Perhaps they’ll simply pass us by

indifferent in sleek behemoths
on the way to a place less

parochial than here. Of what
real interest is a floating

termite-mound to possibly
non-corporeal entities? Human

awe has always aimed skyward.
Unfocussed waves

radiate from organic transmitters
waiting for a wave back.


- Benjamin Dodds 2012


homeostasis

slowly, slowly lentamente
the density of water lessens
and that of air increases

nobody notices this but me

only genius machines
with glacial ticking patience
can detect the change
from thick to thin and vice versa

nobody sets them to check

on the day of equilibrium
our larger lungs
grown in measured secrecy
in the earth of our chests
will share the briny air
with futurefish
as tidewinds bear up
kites with hook-strung tails
reeled out by
ever-enterprising boys


- Benjamin Dodds 2012

New Poetry by David Ades

Cotton

Everything went into this —
the needle and thread of our mothers,
the thimbles, their dextrous fingers

and soothing voices, patching
and mending tears in our clothes,
our frayed edges, the children we were.

They were lavish with their inheritance
the way women are, steeped in love
and family, passing it on among

themselves through generations
stretching back to Egypt
and before that past records,

past knowledge and memory,
perhaps all the way back
to Isabelle and Ferdinand in 1492

and before that, who knows,
perhaps back to Moses at Mt Sinai.
We reached for thread

and found our ancestor’s lines,
some remembered
like your pépé and mémé,

my aunts and uncles
and others never known
yet present in a gesture perhaps

or a tone of voice
or the strength to dream.
Everything went into this —

the twirled thread, the braid we made,
two lines gathered into one,
steeped in love and family

and now we look both back
and forward, we shine a light upon
our ancestors


lowering the braid for tiny fingers
to reach and hold
and follow.


- David Ades 2012 

Sex, Anticipated

In Darwin it is called the ‘build up’:
moisture gathering in air after months
of cloudless dry days, clouds gathering,
the air becoming heavy as ripe fruit.


It is a slow gathering, unhurried,
sure of itself, day by day moving towards
the horizon’s contraction, the sky’s darkening
cloak. Humidity rises: beads of sweat on skin,


damp sheets, a whir of ceiling fans,
the frogs’ loud croaks. It is the dance before,
moving towards intimacy – a first touch, a drop,
a deluge, earth waiting in its bed.


When your arms open I will begin to fall,
begin my downpour, drops of water
on the hungry leaves, the green fronds,
flashes of lightning lacing the sky, your eyes.




- David Ades 2012

David Adès moved to Pittsburgh from Adelaide, Australia in April 2011. He has been a member of  Friendly Street Poets since 1979. His collection, Mapping the World, was commended for the Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award 2008.

New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

At the Synagogue

Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him

– Psalms 37:7

A Festival of Lights, of Dedication.

A night of celebration. A picture show in Perth.

In ruffled outskirts Balaclava'd guards—ex-

IDF—interrogate the ones who wait with patience

—my Holy Joes, their daughter, nappy rifled. I burnish

each menorah, then glare nairs in every sexton.

- Stuart Barnes 2012

The Führer^†

strait-razored my lustrous black hair to cushion submarines'

machinery, to weave clothing, felt and blankets for his stormtroopers

(from my fine white scalp Eva Braun handsewed a lampshade).

uprooted every molar, gold melted into Switzerland's

ingots. cleaved my right breast (had I had the brawn of an

Amazon his heart would have been dissected); my left arm, tattooed

bluely, plies the spines of breathless Shepherds.

lastly mined my vagina for pearls, soaped his cock,

his balls and his arsehole with my adipose tissue.

From his bedside dresser my skull, like Yorick's, mocks.

†on watching Paragraph 175

- Stuart Barnes 2012

Be Part of the Fireworks!

While Bluepepper is slowly building a reputation north of the line, its reception Downunder has been fitful at best, a little prickly-cool at worst, at least judging by the stats (and some of the comments), and the proportion of Australian poets I see in my inbox. I am beginning to think my compatriots wished I were somewhere else. 

OK, so I don't purr and coo at every gathering of two poets and a cheap cask of wine, but cut me and I still bleed hexameters!

Some time this week Bluepepper will be celebrating its 20,000th visitor, and I am planning more HTML fireworks than the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics combined. Come on Aussies and be part of the fun! Send me some of your best pyrotechnic panegyrics!

New Poetry by Mark Goad

Credimus

Every poem –

don’t be fooled –

is trying to convert you

to its own small god.

Every poet

is selling her own

version of beauty or

truth or pretended absence

of either or both. There

are no simple statements here

and innocence – what? – the most

beautiful dream of all.

Poetry breeds credulity, that’s the fact of it, and

poets are the truest believers.

- Mark Goad 2012

Mark's most recent publications include Assisi and analogpress.

New Poetry by B.Z. Niditch

BY THE KIOSK

Sensing warmth
in the earth
a young widow spider
climbs up the rose bush
sunshine devouring
everyone dazzled in sight
the boy on the bicycle
now fixes a tire
near the gazebo
watches the flute player
with urgent fingers
hob nobbing with Mozart
on the sand dunes
soon passes the plate
to the veteran card player
for his last supper
on the island
before the rainy season
grows utterly dark.

- B.Z. Niditch 2012


BZ Niditch's latest poetry collection is "Lorca at Sevilla" March St Press, North Carolina. USA, avalaible at amazon.com. New poems in Grasslimb,N American Review, Pacific Review, publishes internationally in UK. Australia,New Zealand ,France, Austria,Germany and Japan.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Te Rerenga Wairua

The wind was whickering from the west the afternoon
I came to the cape, keeping the sun
high in the ocean's air above me,
knowing that nothing I knew was as beautiful.

Under, the waters were held by the wind
with whitecaps worn like a wasteland blooming
with white wildflowers, fleet and impermanent,
but blowing with a transitory trance of blossoming.

I was reminded of traces of talc, slightly
coloured, but essentially the sight of calcium
as it rises, clearly, like clouds of white,
in the fingernails of a dreaming drawer, unnoticed.And the sea and ocean seemed to dream
while the brilliant green grew over
the hills and the cliffs, climbing into
the salt air, entering legend.

And I remembered, my memories emerging like a fine
mist, knowing not if knowledge could serve me
or save me, knowing not of certain words,
for the world was wild, like a warrior sailing.

And the land was slowly, slowly sailing
into the north, as an enormous waka
that leaves whiteness in its wake, and I seemed
to see, in the ocean, what seemed a vision.

But I speak no vision; the vision eludes me
in my world of words, and willful naming
of phenomena, while knowing nothing of dream,
the cape with its water and whitecaps, and ocean.


- Phillip Ellis 2012


You can visit Phillip's site in the "links" section on the right sidebar.

New Poetry by Aleksandr Smechov

DFW The Night Before The Morning He Hangs Himself

Finishing his prandial grub,

Wallace lays recumbent

on his saffron divan.

A minutia fly gives a sort of like

meddling look,

like “what are You planning in that sinuous head,

Wallace ol’ boy?”

He stares at the curlicues bifurcating on the ceiling,

merging and convolving and abdicating.

Him thinking,

that’s how my life’s been.

And then thinking like that last thought was a tad bromidic, no?

A Big Red tonic, empty, standing on his magenta lacquered bureau

reverberates the sharp sun rays that break through

the off-white venetian blinds.

Wallace, supine for like two hours by this time,

ruminates on infamous penultimate and ultimate

Last Words.

“See you tomorrow,” and then

“I love you.”

Some African parrot the night before the morning the grief-spasmed owner found it

supine on its back.

The fly’s landed in the jamb of the

open-just-enough-for-a-bit-of-oxygen window.

it dances a sort of Greek dance,

a sort of Kalamatiano,

Wallace figures.

He recalls the Ambrose story, with the Confederate.

The soda bottle’s not reflecting the rays anymore, and the fly

has eloped and Wallace

is alone.

A skullcap is what he would don,

if he had to choose what his personal hat would be,

and not because it matches his quiddity or anything like that,

just that it feels right.

- Aleksandr Smechov 2012

Frederick the First was a rock

I found him one grey day

While climbing the Vilnius pines;

From a gaunt bough I spotted him,

Lying there, insolent and haughty, like

He owned the damn meadow.

I Don’t Think So, I though, and

Took him home,

Washed him,

Even gave him a nice spot by the window.

I figured he’d be lonely there, so sometimes

I took him with me.

We rolled down mountains,

Climbed mammoth trees,

Braved mud pits with our bare feet.

One day I threw him off a hill, and

When I rolled down he wasn’t there. Grandma and I

Searched for hours.

We looked every day,

but Frederick I was lost.

How easy it is to kill a king

When he’s not in his palace.

Fredrick II was a giant cockroach.

He lived under the bathroom’s washing machine,

In his moist castle.

I tried to assassinate him many times,

But I always failed;

He was too fast, too lean, too small to get caught.

One day my mom screamed.

Fredrick II was in the bathtub.

I turned on the steaming water

And he washed down

His watery tomb.

How easy it is to kill a king

When he’s not in his palace.

- Aleksandr Smechov 2012

Aleksandr was born in Belarus, moved to Lithuania for a year and then immigrated to the United States. He has lived in the Bronx ever since, going back to Lithuania several times. He attends Baruch College where he majors in journalism. He plans to become an investigative journalist, but what he truly wants to do is write fiction. His favorite author (for now) is David Foster Wallace. He is also a Borges junkie. Taking a class with poet Laurie Sheck was what really improved and galvanized his poetry. He is 20 years old.

New Haiku by Bill Wolak

stretched to the ceiling
legs spreading even wider
sleek as forked lightning


- Bill Wolak 2012


only nakedness
deepens
where kisses thrive


- Bill Wolak 2012














interlocking legs
pressed tighter than flames
twisting around kindling


- Bill Wolak 2012

Bill Wolak is a poet whose haiku have appeared in many literary magazines such as, Bear Creek Haiku, FreeXpresSion, Ginyu, Haiku Canada Review, Haiku Novine, Haiku Scotland, Harvests of New Millennium, Illya’s Honey, Kokako, Lishanu, The Mozzie, Notes From the Gean, Paper Wasp, Prine Number Magazine, South by Southeast, Taj Mahal Review, and Whirligig. He has just published his third book of poetry entitled Archeology of Light. Recently he has been selected to be a featured reader at the 2011 Kritya International Poetry Festival in Nagpur, India. 

New Words and Pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Cesar

 When they killed Cesar uptown it came about by sheer dumb luck and a lie. His wife had not wanted him to go to work that day for her sleep had been all nightmares full of what had to be portents, an empty bird feeder swinging in the breeze, creaking like a hanged man, with every to and fro. A line of ants dead in their tracks, the bodies forming a wavering arrow whose now stilled tip touched the very base of their hill. 

 He kissed her forehead and told her that he would be fine but when she persisted he snapped, telling her that her anxiety was only because she had mixed her drinks despite having been warned not to. He had made his mind up to go, besides, it was too nice a day; had it been raining or even overcast he would have been half tempted. 

 At the office, the lobby receptionist and the guard who shared her desk seemed pensive. Everyone else was milling about, snapping into action every few minutes like freshly wound toys whose purpose was to pantomime a work routine until the key once again wound down. 

 Cesar sat at his desk debating on whether or not to send for coffee. He looked out his window, down upon the skyline he had worked so hard to rise above. If he could not relax or indulge himself every now and then, then what was the point, aside from the good of the people of course. He grabbed a few files that he could skim at home if he got to feeling guilty. In his mind he was already deciding upon which record he was going to put on first; Jelly Roll Morton, smoky but not dark. 

"Waiting For Pasta To Cook" (Marker & Paper 5x7)

Wayne Wolfson

 Brutus came in and asked him to poke his head into the conference room, just to sort of give his blessing to the end of quarter reports. He agreed, managing to not let his shoulders sag nor sigh too loud, giving the caveat that he did not have long as he was already late for a thing. 

 The door clicked behind him. The numbers on the overhead in black and red, in the future would they have any meaning? There was a coldness, it kept popping up, all over his body but mainly in the abdomen, chest and back. From outside came the soundtrack, the plaintive horns of rush hour traffic, the only thing that would have been even better, a chorus armed with old tin noise makers from every New Year’s Eve parties past. 

 No one made eye contact with each other, nor would they do so ever again even if shaking hands in public for etiquette’s sake. 

 As he lay dying, Cesar had managed to roll onto his side. For one mad minute there was a collective fear, each man suspecting the rest had held back on the ferocity of their blows and now none of the corsages blooming out of the white were mortal strikes. His arm curved at the elbow and he pulled his tunic up to cover his face. No one knew why, although Brutus suspected that he had been attempting to retreat into blackness with the hope that it was just a dream from which he could emerge upon uncovering his eyes, Such too is old age sometimes viewed by those in it.

- Wayne H.W Wolfson 2012

Click here to visit Wayne's website

New Poetry by Kathryn Guelcher

Contradiction

Lauren is exactly the student who apologizes then

asks a question she should know the answer to

by now. So when I asked them to circle

contradictory imagery on a copy of Strange Fruit,

and she said, “Sorry, what’s imagery?”

I was not surprised.

She who is pretty and small and

who sometimes calls me Mom and often

fights to pass and pay attention.

After we watched Billie Holiday’s 1939 rendition-

heartfelt, courageous, and defiant in that white only club-

someone else in class noted the slowness of the singing.

And it was Lauren whom I overheard casually impart

that the drawn out pace of the performance might

reflect the lynching itself,

that such killing does not happen mercifully,

“But, I mean, I don’t know,” she finished.

And her audience had not truly been listening.

- Kathryn Guelcher 2012




In addition to being a mother of three, Kathryn has been teaching high school English in a suburb outside of Chicago for 12 years.  This is Kathryn’s second appearance at Bluepepper.

West End

According to a report just released by the Australian Treasury, two centuries of Western global  fratricide and hegemony came to an inevitable, if somewhat abrupt, statistical end on March 28, 2012. Statistics are like that; underwriters of the binary world we all but a special few inhabit. 

For according to the most credible and exacting our Commonwealth has to offer (other than yours truly), it was on the 88th day of this year of the Mayan apocalypse (and 88 being a propitious number for the Chinese, by the way) that the wealth of the planet shifted from west to east, returning Asia to the prime place in Old World economics to which it (by which I mean China) had grown accustomed for some 1500 years until about 1840.

Could be in years to come March 28, 2012 will go down with those other landmarks of the slow eclipse of Western hegemony, but I doubt it. Like the birth of the internet, it is a slow, painful, yet ultimately fruitful thing for which no-one will openly declare patrimony.

In the short-term, of course, nothing much will change. Hollywood will continue to leach this country of its best and shiniest to no good purpose. India will continue to insist it is a stand-alone while shoring up its borders east and west, and the likes of Melbourne critic Peter Craven, or our very own Sydney-institutionalised Gerard Henderson, will continue to bend an ear to their ghosts, blinkered to the new possibilities.

Nevertheless, this seismic change variously and often vaguely trumpeted since the 1960’s has now passed across the desks of the bean-counters, and from there, as we all know, there is no going back.

I can’t help wondering, though, what this epoch-defining moment will mean to those dedicated to the destruction of the Western hegemony? And I am not just talking about the Taliban. Will they turn their attentions further east to patterns of life at least outwardly at odds with their medieval obfuscation? Not that such a thing as "Western hegemony" has ever really existed, of course, but even if it had, its time has passed now, or is at least well on its way to passing. The subjunctive “legacy” will start to rise on the word-count, matching the flow of the smartest and brightest north to Shanghai where managers (even now) have begun to nod their heads when they are actually awake. 

The next two decades will no doubt sort the creative, malleable minds from the more doctrinaire and regimented, particularly in resource-rich and increasingly skills-poor countries such as Australia. I owe a doubt here, of course, to the late Donald Horne. But doubts and misquotes aside, the next twenty years will either sort those prone to incessant hyperbole from those less inured to extremes of behaviour (predictive or otherwise), or bring them closer together. Student of 1914 as I am, I hope it is the former, not the latter.

So, at the risk of falling into my own trap, I predict a kind of digitalised belle epoque being the new political divide for the foreseeable. Not the tired old left-right polemic of so much of the “urban” poetry peppering my inbox, but the malleable and empathic against the so-called agents of “change“ who are anything but.

And while we are on the subject of those apparently unable or unwilling to understand the forces and historical trends against which they so publicly rail, what in the world was Julian Assange thinking when he signed on with Russia Today for his show The World Tomorrow? The title's bald assumptions aside, was Assange not aware of the track record of this Putin-backed outfit? In fact, if any media organisation could be regarded as the living embodiment of everything Wikileaks purportedly aims to take down, it is Russia Today. His maiden performance was wooden and obviously heavily-scripted, and his reference to Hassain Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, as a "freedom fighter" was as trite as it was inaccurate. I appreciate the Aussie ex-pat and hopeful Senator has some serious legal bills, but this latest chapter in the Assange saga confirms a complete lack of judgement which can only lead any thinking person to question both his and his team's essential motives.

New Poetry by E.F. Schraeder

Ramona from Assisted Living Tells us, the visitors, about yesterday’s emergency outside work, where the ringing bells remind us of death with every tone; how a small girl wandered, an archetype through a corn field. Text messages alert hundreds who gather, hand in hand for three hours walking the cold rows long past sunset to find her. Lost, like these ones we look over to talk, while they slumber in wheelchairs, tilt toward perpetual dusk until a waiting hand finds them. - E. F. Schraeder 2012 For the Birds Every visit past the glass cage where bright canaries and gray lovebirds nest, their orange beaks pecking at straw and string, I worry for them, watch the mindful cat on the cushion. My concerns fall from the glass, collapse to the floor like heaps of empty husks and seed shells. They wait out their lives, pecking and sleeping, chirping their stories to residents, visitors, nurses, anyone who pauses long enough for hello. Most pass them on the way to mothers and fathers, grandmas and grandpas. They behave like the framed prints on the wall, unassuming and decorative, overcrowded and sad, small eyes looking for something not found. - E. F. Schraeder E. F. Schraeder's creative work has appeared in Haz Mat Review, Corvus Magazine, Bluepepper, Kicked Out, Whitechapel 13, and elsewhere.

New Poetry by Ryan Stewart

MSK 

I thanked my doctors once
And then I went away -
I'd sooner not annoy them twice
(I had some catch-up play)

 But little did I think
How much I grew inside
What pleases doctors most -
Old patients swinging by


- Ryan Stewart 2012

Ryan is a professional dog trainer and aspiring writer. He has been shuttling back and forth to LA to peddle scripts for the last couple years but most enjoys writing poems, essays, and children's stories. This is his inaugural publication.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

A Credo in Metre

I dream of the world and sleep, and, when waking,
I find I am caught, a fly, and in amber
so solid. I dream the world as I slumber
and find, when I waken, something so dreamlike.

The world is a dream no God could imagine:
so complex the world, so flawed that it's likely
all creatures evolved, and were bidden
to rise from one cell through time and by nothing.

The beauty of magpies carolling mornings,
the currawongs chiming evenings have given
a shape to my day, and beauty of singing
no God could imagine, being so petty.

So turn I my back on gods, as a mortal
and limited man, and peace is my trophy;
afraid of no Gods, I live, and I know this:
I'm saddened I'll miss this world with its beauty.


- Phillip Ellis 2012



Late Swim (After David Brooks)

The coping strategies of the wind
that echo around my head, like roof-iron
and rust torn into the air, seem as though rock
is forever cold to the palm, and then are gone.

The thought's disappearing, as storm-clouds
are after an infodump of rain on islands
haloed by the light of the newborn moon.

The only true light I can think is 'star',
not as in celebrity, those who walk amongst them,
or those whose cuddled dolphin in the bay
is in reality rapist without arms,
weighing choices as though choices were a bird.

I would speak of this one star, speak of her
that dreams of me in Aotearoa, but no tear,
the fading sea that carries no tree
or foam forwards, will fall again:
the wind has not yet torn away that roof.

But to speak of her with adulterous
and adulterated thoughts, is it not like bones
and cartilage, and nothing more as man, as being enough?

I will not speak of that star then, that is down
in the low skies, as if it were in bed
and toasty warm, over the dawn sea.

Perhaps
it will not fade in the dawn, be
too wan to shine when the day is late.

Perhaps this is the only poem that I could make


- Phillip Ellis 2012


Phillip's new web page is www.phillipaellis.com/

While you were sleeping

The recent announcement that the newly elected LNP government in Queensland will soon be scrapping the prestigious Queensland Premier’s Literary Award should come as no surprise to anyone but those guileless few still trying to sell us the Bronte girls as serious literature. 

The LNP (the Liberal-National Coalition of laissez-faire urbanites and socialist - no sorry, I mean heavily-subsidised primary producers) is, after all, the new coalition of the people (according to the degraded line run like old Telstra broadband), and the Australian Labor Party that of the political elites so practiced in the arts of demagoguery that they cannot see past their bellies (or arses) to the corn supply. That is the new paradigm. No prizes for guessing who are the Gracchi brothers and who the new little Caesars.

Forget for a minute that it was John Gorton, arch conservative and advocate of the “all the way with LBJ” approach to matters on or around the 17th parallel, who way back in 1972 founded the Australian Film Commission, from which such flowers as “Rusty” Russell Crowe, Mel “Mad Eyes” Gibson and “Bouncing” Baz Luhrmann were later to bloom. Not to mention “Our Kate” Blanchett, but then she does not fall into any of these categories; she floats…..

Or, on the obverse, that it was the pronounced lefty in anything but what mattered most, Bob Hawke, who set in motion the corporatisation of “aunty” ABC. 

Last year (2011) the Queensland Premier’s Award allotted almost $250,000 in state and federal revenue to 14 no doubt well-deserving and hard-working writers in as many fields of endeavour. It took just one change of government with no pronounced mandate regarding the arts (other than the usual grainy Photostat) to reverse 15 years of what some would call a job well done, others a waste of time.

And in a parliament with only one chamber since 1922, and the most overwhelming majority in that lone chamber's history (Labor managed to hold onto 7 seats in an 80-odd seat chamber). 

Some would call that stultifying, others just a smoky room. 

What it tells me, social democrat though I am and anarchist though I am about to sound, is to trust no patron, however large or small, whether of the people or (apparently) against them. You will soon enough find yourself dancing for drinks in dog-leg bars.

Writers should not live on stipend, inoculated to fate, the menial, the hard landing.  

Work the long shift, the long haul, free the lobes, cure yourselves of sinecure.

New Poetry by William Wright Harris

bride

russian beauty

kandinsky

painted in

winter hues

bubbles of

whitespace

form her gown

& crown of beads

her hair a veil

falling in

lines

capable of rendering

all

creation

- William Wright Harris 2012

William's poetry has appeared in ten countries in such literary journals as The Cannon’s Mouth, Ascent Aspirations, generations and Write On!!! A student at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville, he has studied poetry in workshop settings with such poets as Jesse Janeshek, Marilyn Kallet, Arthur Smith, and Marcel Brouwers. 

Poetry workshop with Les Wicks

AP’s online workshops provide poets nationally and internationally with the opportunity to connect with Australian poets and poetry.

Online workshops run for four weeks and operate by participants emailing the tutor their poetry a few days prior to the first scheduled day of the workshop. The tutor will respond with feedback and direction. Participants will then continue to submit their work, improving their piece based on feedback offered weekly, for the duration of the course. Please enroll by clicking the register button below each workshop. You will then receive confirmation that you’re in the course and be contacted a few days before the workshop begins by the relevant tutor.

$75 AP members, non members $95

http://www.australianpoetry.org/programs/professional-development

New Poetry by Rachel Barenblat

FEVER

You're on fire beneath my lips,
hot as the coal that Moshe grabbed
when the angel forced his hand.
As we rock in the dark
I want to pray for healing
but I'm muddled with sleep.
I sing to you in two holy tongues.
You whimper. My eyes are closed
but I have known your face
since it first appeared, blurred
and grainy, on the ultrasound screen.
When I replace you on cool sheets
you cry out once and then curl
clutching yellow bunny in one hot hand.
The white noise machine croons.
What do your fever dreams show you?
How long will you remain a furnace,
incandescent in my arms
and exhausted from the burning?


- Rabbi Rachel Barenblat 2012



COMFORTER

you wake in your crib's embrace
from the dream of a distant heartbeat

a voice says cry out!
and you cry out

bewailing the tragedy of separation
until I gather you to my breast

glowing numbers shift silently
and your desperation eases

someday you'll learn to fumble soft stars
into their places

to nuzzle your giraffe
and count adinkra like talismans

but for now I am consolation
I make the rough places plain


- Rabbi Rachel Barenblat 2012

Rachel's first book-length collection of poems, 70 faces, was published by Phoenicia Publishing in January of last year. 70 faces is a collection of poems written in response to Torah. Rachel is also author of four chapbooks of poetry, and her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, among them Phoebe, The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, and The New Orleans Review. Rachel holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and was ordained as a rabbi by ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Today she lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and son.

New words and pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

"Last Call" (Paper & Marker)

Last Call

A clown in a baggy brown and yellow checkered suit bends down to pick up a balloon, with every step forward to get it, the tip of his foot moves it ahead a little. The band had gotten off the stage to take a break but the trumpeter who had been lingering as he waited for his girlfriend, one of the dancers, plays a slow lament from his stage-side table. Nearly falling over in the process, finally the clown gets the balloon. He cradles it in his arm like a baby and tenderly presses his cheek up to it. The waitress asks me if I would like anything else before settling my tab, a girl with a round ass from Rome plumps down onto my lap and there is the sound like a shot ringing out of something popping. 

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2012

"Marina Has The Blues" (Watercolor & Paper)