New Poetry by Jade Howdeshell

The sun is silly when I am silly

The clouds are careful when I am careful

The bird is brave when I am brave

The trees are tough when I am tough

But they are all happy when I am happy

The sun is sad when I am sad

The clouds are careless when I am careless

The bird is scared when I am scared

The trees are weak when I am weak

But they all are sad when I am sad


- Jade Howdeshell 2012

Jade Howdeshell is 7 years old and just completed 1st Grade at St. Lawrence School in Laramie WY.She loves to write poetry, play guitar and read. She hopes to become successful author when she grows up.

New Poetry by Nandor Teremi

Waves of dreams and blackcurrant trees

Sitting in my cave turning back
and seeing my film I know
There is a way between me and you
a path between caves under the water
between caves and blackcurant trees
Sitting in my cave turning back
seeing my film I go back
swimming under the sea
between caves and blackcurrant trees
on the waves of dreams
and I see you sitting in your cave
turning back and seeing your film
as you see me sitting in my cave
turning back and seeing your film
going back swimming under the sea
between caves and blackcurrant trees


Nandor Teremi 2012


Nandor is an Hungarian poet who is learning English via the internet and the writing of poetry, which he freely admits is like jumping from a plane without a parachute.

God no longer drinks at the Sando

I was saddened to read yesterday that one of the great Sydney institutions, the Sandringham Hotel in Newtown, has gone into receivership and is set to close its doors. The Sando has always been something of a bellwether for the health or otherwise of the Sydney cultural scene, and this latest turn of events, while tragic for those of us with a close connection to the dear old girl (she turned 152 this year), merely reflects the changing tastes of Sydneysiders and the demise of the pub scene fostered by an older generation. 

Back in 1996, when I was moved to write the poem "God drinks at the Sandringham" on which Tim Freedman based the oft-quoted song, those of us who had been around long enough could already see the writing on the wall for the live music scene as we had grown up with it, and sure enough 2 years later the grimy old, dog-friendly pub closed down (I still miss you JC!) to be re-opened as a pokie den (on which Tim based his other "Sando" song "Blow Up the Pokies", easily one of his best). Since then it has gone through a number of changes, the frequency of which is itself a reflection of the tenuous nature of the live music business in this new Sydney of ours.

I count myself lucky to have been part of a vibrant scene back in the 1990's in which the Sando paid such a pivotal part. I am sure the ghosts of Stevie and Alison and so many others are still dropping in now and then to steal someone's beer and get up to God knows what mischief in the cellar. Although I think God may have moved on, sadly, leaving Newtown to its fate.

Vale Rosemary Dobson, 1920-2012

Breaking off a piece of the willow
I say goodbye to my friend.
He will take it and plant it.

A tree will grow by the river
And the river will flow away to the ocean,
Will carry the leaves fallen from the willow.

Small important message they are for the future
Telling of times past, and the conversations of friendship,
Telling the ocean all about the willow.


Willows (Goodbye) by Rosemary Dobson (1987)

The last of perhaps the greatest generation of Australian poets which included the likes of Kenneth Slessor, Judith Wright, AD Hope and James McAuley (or Ern Malley if you are so inclined). I never had the privilege of meeting Rosemary, but she was by all accounts warm of heart and generous with her time to those aspiring to the great calling. 

New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

Sol/iloq/uy

after Williams S.

O God of Battles,

the raven is hoarse!

Is this a dagger?

Send the nurse

Gallop apace, you fiery-

footed steeds! Cut him out in little stars

Entreat her eyes

to twinkle in their spheres

At the point of death

virtues will plead like angels,

let the trumpets sound the tucket

sonance & the note to mount. The winds of heaven

hang on him, things rank & gross in nature,

& visit her face too roughly

- Stuart Barnes 2012

New Poetry by Robert Demaree

TO OUR SON-IN-LAW RETURNING FROM IRAQ: APRIL 2003

That you were a writer and not a soldier

Made you no less brave,

Your war short, hard to defend,

But no less noble.

You went to report on things Homer had seen,

In a land older than Hector.

We found you on a map of unknown places,

Read your dispatches, heard you on TV:

We tasted sand and young men’s fear.

We did not attend rallies of protest or support

But went instead with your sons

To soccer games and preschool plays.

I do not pray much but prayed for you.

We read your coming-home piece

And thought of Odysseus.

We tracked your journey—Kuwait, London.

That night I went back downstairs after midnight

And turned on the computer again,

To be sure that your plane had touched down.

- Robert Demaree 2012

“To Our Son-in-Law, Returning from Iraq” appeared in miller’s pond, January 2008.

NAMES

The American Legion hut

In their small town

Had been named

For her great-uncle,

The first to fall in France.

But after another war,

Another hut,

Named for someone else.

The basketball court

That honored the famous coach

Is darkened now and unused.

At the school where her father taught

They established a prize in his memory

She wonders if they still give it.

You can have something named for you

For a while

And then not.

- Robert Demaree 2012

Robert Demaree is the author of four collections of poems, including Mileposts (October 2009), published by Beech River Books. The winner of the 2007 Conway, N.H., Library Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. He has had over 550 poems published or accepted by 125 periodicals, including Louisville Review, miller’s pond, and BluePepper. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com

New Poetry by Ashley Capes

pre-collapse confession

you’re right I’m talking too fast

a bouncy-ball
red

for her lipstick

and clouds covering the bay
in ultrasound green

once a fortnight

I make this gesture to the future

but somehow still end up
treating it

too much like a safety lap

the possibility of gentle envy
turns up in tea leaves

joyriding the pipes
beneath our kitchen sink

so rich with old wives truths

the hopelessness of manhood

a glass of water and two pills
safe

an actual album of photos

last September the best
of
our lives

ten years coming up
unmarked

- Ashley Capes 2012

weatherboarding

the first night is Chinese take-away in a dining room that we never eat in again. the fire is unlit, its patience for winter is unbelievable. I unpack boxes of CDs and place them in a contradictory mix of genres, decades and even dates of purchase, though my obsession doesn’t match John Cusack’s in High Fidelity. you work on the kitchen and cannot believe how stupid the cupboards are, where the hell does the fridge go? in the half-gap we place a brand new clothes dryer, a white-goods knight for the eternal damp of the valley.

tre e trenta
an unfamiliar hum
crosses the room

when the streetlights blink out the last night is pulled down over my shoulders. I have cleaned the floors and walls, the trollish oven, the windows muttering and cannot find the strength to celebrate. the radio (later sold at a garage sale) keeps good company, as the BBC sends Noam Chomsky across heavy waves, until it is finally switched off.

no ceiling fan
overnight sweat
sets on my skin

- Ashley Capes 2012 

New Poetry by Mark J. Mitchell

KITCHEN LESSON

Fishing in a knife drawer

A finger slips.

The thin line, invisible

At first, broadens

To a red seam and spreads

Down the palm

Completely obliterating

Your life line.


- Mark J. Mitchell 2012



CHROMATIC

The page

Did not ask
For these words
To be dropped
Between blue lines
Like seeds on snow.

And it didn’t

Invite blackbirds
To pluck them off,
One by one, just
Before you closed
The red cover.

It just

Happened that way.


- Mark J. Mitchell 2012



Mark is a Californian poet based in San Francisco.

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.