New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

Bear Hill

Evening, he’s alone atop Bear Hill,

no longer ‘Bear’: no barbered beard, no buzzcut.

Moonlit bats renew him with a squeal.

Three years back he flushed his crystal

meth, his skunky crack pipe down the dunny.

Evening, he’s alone atop Bear Hill,

supine, arms a crosspiece, eyes ascensional.

Tawny Frogmouths mimeo his wonder.

Moonlit bats renew him with a squeal.

I tried to make myself so ill, so ill,

horny as a cane toad for nine months.

Evening, he’s alone atop Bear Hill

where the darkened musky grasses fill

his lungs with larks that can’t be shushed.

Moonlit bats renew him with a squeal.

Far too many weeks of vinous meals,

that Godlike quack—I should be cuckoo, nuts.

Evening, he’s alone atop Bear Hill.

Moonlit bats renew him with a squeal.

- Stuart Barnes 2012

The last refuge (e)

Last week I signed the on-line petition calling on Alan Jones' advertisers to account for their continued support of one of the most bellicose and least-informed public figures in this country. And while not completely regretting my decision to do so, I see now that the 100,000-odd of us who signed the petition have been complicit in one of the classic fall-back positions of the venal.

For those not fortunate enough to count themselves amongst this island's sun-kissed 23 million, Alan Jones is an ex-Rugby coach, failed Liberal (conservative) candidate for a safe northern Sydney seat and now dominant (or domineering?) mouthpiece for Sydney talk-back AM station, 2GB. The call sign owes its provenance to the great Renaissance martyr to freedom of thought, Giodarno Bruno, and Alan Jones wears it like a flag, although I would argue that his particular preoccupation lies more in freedom of speech than freedom of thought, an important distinction too often glossed over in the interminable debate about the effect such "shock jocks" are having on our fragile democracy.

Such public figures assume a position (always on the high ground and well-entrenched) and await the serried ranks of ill-disciplined "bleaters" to come. They, like much of their audience, see themselves as a fixed point on the moral compass, and their opponents as the sorry remnants of some lost tribe of moral equivocators. It is, largely, a battle between the surviving members of the boomer generation that has been spilling over from their campus days these past 40 years. None of it has been particularly fruitful. Quite the contrary. And yet it has continued to dominate public discourse in both Australia and the United States. 

Some weeks ago Alan Jones, at a private function, quipped that the Australian Prime Minister's recently deceased father, John Gillard, had "died of shame" over his daughter's lies in parliament. Whether he went on to itemise these "deathly lies" seems to have been lost in the ether of outrage and invective that followed. His public apology for this thoughtless, heartless comment was a loathsome piece of bus stop sophistry. And yet he is still on air and still ranting against those who would dare to call him to account, espousing the cause of free speech while undermining the cause of freedom of thought and expression by denigrating anyone who dares to part from the dominant paradigm of his target audience.

But it behoves Bluepepper to acknowledge the enduring grievance of this sizeable demographic of older, well-heeled Australians against the perceived dominance of a progressive slant in public discourse that in one way or another appears to threaten, not only their future prosperity, but the legitimacy of their collective past. The carbon tax is merely the latest and most salient example of a trend amongst Western democracies to unsettle those who thought they had bought sole rights to the apple cart. 

The American Tea Party movement has played on this, although inevitably the movement has devolved into a last gasp for the GOP as the party of the "white", rather than as the guardian of the values that made the US the astonishing melting pot it is today. It has been just as difficult, nigh on impossible, for Barack Obama to list his successes in this wind tunnel of invective as it has been for the federal Labor Party of Australia, the "wonder downunder". And yet the far right are able to play the victim card with impunity because they are able to project themselves as the mouthpiece of the "forgotten people", the "silent majority", that Thylazine otherwise known as the middle class.

And I blithely signed a petition confirming them in their victim hood, dear reader, oblivious to their tragic destiny as "fringe dwellers" of the cultural paradigm for the steadier part of a roiling century. Forget, if you can, Celine, Malaparte, Bukowski, Pound, Larkin, Lowell et al. Alan Jones and his ilk do not favour the nuanced thinker, whether right or left. Nor, dare I say, do his more vocal protractors who have once again played politics with my conscience. But I guess that's the point. 

Call out from Kit

Call for Poems for an English / Chinese parallel text anthology of Australian and New Zealand Poetry for Children and Young Adults

ASM / Flying Islands are now calling for contributions for a new project – a bilingual parallel text volume of Australian and New Zealand Poetry for Children and Young Adults. Deadline for contributions is Sunday December 2 nd, 2012. (Please feel free to send work as soon as you have it to hand!) Previously published work is acceptable, but in this case please provide the proper accompanying acknowledgements. It is hoped that selection of poems to be published will be made by the end of the year, that translation processes will be completed in the first half of 2013, and that the book will be published (initially by ASM in Macao) by the end of 2013. No payment is offered for inclusion in the volume, but if it is possible to sell it on to a Mainland, Taiwan or Singapore publisher, then payment/royalties arrangements would be negotiated at such a time.

Please send contributions to me (KitKele at umac dot mo) in word file attachments. Please identify the project (ANZ poems for the young Chinese reader) and your name in the subject line of the email and in the title of the file you are sending. Please include contact details and a short biographical note in your word file with your poem/s. It will be helpful if you can include notes for the translator to accompany the poem (though please note that it is not our intention [at this point in time] to publish these with the volume. Your notes may however be helpful in the translation process).

New Poetry by Thomas Michael McDade

Bowls

Sitting in a booth at Andy’s Diner

I can’t help but eye a fellow alone

so thin he’d fit though most gaps

between prison bars.

At a table set for six he’s staring

straight ahead as if a defendant

minutes away from a verdict,

hands clenched in prayer

real or disguised maybe hoping

for extradition to Maine

Idaho or Long Island.

The outcome is a mixing bowl

of mashed potatoes and a basket

too small for the bread it holds.

Attentively dividing the butter

among thick slices and the spuds,

he dines robotically, oblivious

or indifferent to his audience.

His methods whisk me back years

to Laura’s Luncheonette

where a man, much heftier and not

as assiduous with toast

and an identical vessel

containing a wealth

of thick oatmeal.

A woman beside him, chin

on palm, smiles in amazement.

Had her friend somehow made bail

and is making up for stingy

prison portions I wondered.

Devouring, as if any second

a judge would renege, send

him to place where porridge

is instant, servings small.

A chunk flies off his spoon,

lands on his lady’s arm

and they laughed away

any early morning counter

grogginess the caffeine missed.

I do at Andy’s as at Laura’s, sentence

the newest member the brotherhood

of the mixing bowl to an evening

ice cream helping

of equal largesse—

chocolate sprinkles

like the filings

off a thousand jailbreaks.

- Thomas Michael McDade 2012

Tom McDade lives in Monroe, Connecticut with his wife, no kids or pets. He's a former computer programmer who served two hitches in the U.S. Navy. He's been most recently published in Literarily Erotic: 

http://www.literarilyerotic.com/literarily/00003/dizzying.html

New Poetry by William G. Davies Jnr.

Comfort And Aid

After having been

Speared, jabbed

And splintered

Through a pine tree,

The sunlight

Steadies on the books

Who treat

The wounded light

Like so many nurses

Responding to

An emergency.

-William G. Davies Jnr. 2012

Mrs. Dalton's Science Class

The pond

Like a potion

Spilt by a

Runner-up in

A science fair

Spreads to

The tall grass.

The greasepaint

Of a Petri dish

And a convalescing moon

Darkened the water.

At dawn,

Pirouettes of mist

Gather into perfection

Their nimbus musings.

All the while

A boy dejected.

- William G. Davies Jnr. 2012

William G. Davies Jnr. has had work published by The Wilderness House Review, Gloom Cupboard, Jellyfish Whispers, The Blue Lyra Review and others. He has been married to his wife, Theresa, for 38 years and lives in rural Pennsylvania where they make their own wine, "Rooted Womb." They have three grown children and four grandchildren who live in Florida. 

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Caledonia Australis

The harbour morning's soft with clouds. The cold,
alike long-legged flies, is striding over
the surface of the world. I can't imagine
anything less than this, this dream in time
and echoing a certain poem. There's none
that muses on the passage of the fly
that is the cold, no dreaming eye, none seeing,
a poet making words memorable.

The ship is stalled so near to land. The people
are restless, test their balance, and they moan
into the morning light. Nobody stays
their fear with words or warning hands. The sickness
is stirring on the ship. They do not stir,
but talk in silenced tones; McMillan comes.


- Phillip Ellis 2012

New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

Bone Scan

in memory of Gwen Harwood,

who encouraged the eleven-year-old

me to write poetry

In the twinkling of an eye,

in a moment, all is changed:

on a small radiant screen

(honeydew melon green)

are my scintillating bones.

Still in my flesh I see

the God who goes with me

glowing with radioactive

isotopes. This is what he

at last allows a mortal

eye to behold: the grand

supporting frame complete

(but for the wisdom teeth),

the friend who lives beneath

appearances, alive

with light. Each glittering bone

assures me: you are known.

- Stuart Barnes 2012

Bullfighting

Seven

years ago

sentenced by

a picador

to be herded three times a week toward

a barely furnished dusty room

a ghastly plastic calla

a banderillero

that drove

the diagnoses

in my neck

like vivid sticks:

panic, bipolar, schizoaffective,

obsessive-compulsive, generalized

anxiety, borderline

personality and

substance-induced anxiety

disorders.

So many Romantic syllables!

In seven years a wounded bull

can lose a million pints of blood.

I charged and gored

a matador

when it redly strode

inside my ring.

- Stuart Barnes 2012

New Poetry by Ivan Jenson

Totality

Not having the faintest

idea how my brain and

body function

standing in wonder

at the wonderful

wonder of nature

awestruck by

the promise of

a hereafter

which might come after

and confounded

by the metro system

under

the metropolis

transfixed by

the tongue-tied

triumph which is

language

freaked out

by the farfetched

fantasies of

authors, actors

singers and

those who turn

heartbeat

into drum beat

and who ride

airwaves like

sonic songwriter

surfers

overwelmed

by the billion

baby march

and the

trillion tragic

obituaries

and outnumbered

in every way

by a galaxy of

stars and population

explosion

of sights and sounds

and technological

sorcerers transforming

everything into fairy-tale pixels

I stop for a moment

in prayer, meditation

gratitude and fear

inhale, exhale

then put one

foot in front of the other

and walk

- Ivan Jenson 2012

Ivan Jenson’s Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine. His art has sold at Christie’s, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo,Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Alternative Reel Poets Corner, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Jenson is also a Contributing Editor for Commonline magazine. Ivan Jenson's debut novel Dead Artist is available as a paperback and on Amazon Kindle and Nook. His new novel a psychological thriller entitled Seeing Soriah is now available as an eBook or in Paperback on Amazon.

New Poetry by D.M Aderibigbe

GREEN

She sits before her sadness and his mother,
praying they disappear, before he appears,

It will take a miracle for him to forgive her, if
he meets them in her house,

she wishes, her brain is feverish,
she could have walked out.
Her fear arrives in a green Pajero jeep,
putting on a grey shirt and a green short,

his face is green with anger,
he goes to sit alone on a green chair,

she plucks a leave of green holiness,
apologises to him,
he frowns,

she tickles him,
he frowns,

she kisses him,
he makes a green grin.


- D.M. Aderibigbe 2012

D.M Aderibigbe is a 23-year old writer from Lagos, Nigeria, an undergraduate student of History and Strategic Studies of the University of Lagos. He writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays and lyrics. His work has been published or forthcoming in the UK, Canada and the United States by, Vox Poetica, Pressboard press, UP Literature, HUSMW Press, The New Black Magazine, Misfits' Miscellany, Thickjam and Ditch Poetry. His debut novel Sisyphean, will be published in America, soon. He lives and schools in Lagos.

New Poetry by Robert Demaree

LINGUISTICS CLASS

1.

What must it sound like,

The idiom of our tongue,

If you have come from other shores:

Listening to tapes

In classrooms below ground,

Beads of dampness on cold cinderblock,

Trying to apprehend small meanings

(Preposterous proposition):

Run in, run over, run down;

Dress down, dress out, dress up.

Would it be the same

For someone to come on to you,

Or come out?

2.

Language, quixotic, carries weight

It cannot bear.

A boy spent hours in practice—

Tennis, piano scales, free throws.

Later he practiced medicine,

His sister practiced law,

Always getting ready, it seemed,

For something else.

At the restaurant

He thought of a bad pun

And made a note:

He also waits who only stands and serves.

3.

Language tells you what it sees,

So pejorative becomes

Normative.

I want to hear about people

Who are ept, couth,

Ruthful, clueful souls with

Shevelled hair.

Do you remember when we

Worried about creeping -ism’s?

Neologism;

Barbarism,

An ancient word, meant to

Mock the sound of

Those who do not talk like you.

- Robert Demaree 2012

Robert Demaree, a retired educator, is the author of four collections of poems, including Mileposts (2009), published by Beech River Books. He has had over 550 poems published in 125 periodicals. He lives in Wolfeboro, N.H., and Burlington, N.C.

New Poetry by Mark Murphy

Anniversary Dinner with Borges

So the poet pauses as he passes

a few words

of Borges to his beloved.

She does not know he has been reading

Tigres de Oro, nor that he has learnt

the short piece by heart.

She does not know the words,

nor yet her own part

in the distinct possibilities of the future.

How could she know that in the night

her husband

had declared war on the past?

Today we feast on cheese curd

and curried peppers

he had said, with Borges as our witness,

whilst the obscurants and bibliographers

assign the profits

of oblivion and pedantry unto themselves.

- Mark Murphy 2012

Mark A. Murphy was born in 1969 in the UK. He studied philosophy as an under-graduate and poetry as a post-graduate. His first full length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse is due out in 2013 from Salmon Poetry, (Eire). Murphy’s poems have appeared in over a 100 magazines and journals world wide.

Words and Pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

"The Job Parts 1 & 2" 

 "Did you bring them?" I gave a look without saying anything that let him know I found him a fool. He stepped back from the table as I unrolled the soft felt case. "Just two of them, I would have thought three..." I only needed one and a pad of paper. The other was less a back up and more to keep the first company when not in use.

Holed up for a week living on coffee and egg sandwiches. Now and then I would buy a bag of oranges from the man on the corner but after the second time of making my purchase without inquiring what else he had for sale I made him nervous as all the locals knew the oranges were just a pretense for conversation so that the police would not bother him too much. Every few days I would duck out to have a shave, it was all right I could still see who was going in and out of the hotel lobby. The barber had a picture of his niece on the counter next to the glass cylinder in which combs hung suspended in blue liquid. I tried to imagine what her voice sounded like. It was erotic but more important than that as I may be called upon to birth her fully realized from my pen.

Wayne H.W Wolfson  2012

New Poetry by Emily Strauss

I.

Spiritual Geography

People always say, I love the smell

Of rain, but all I smell is dirt as if

The sky is washing itself and what

Pours off the dusty ceiling is dirty

Brown water we see as rain, reeking

Like car washes or beaten rugs

Dripping muddy rinse water down

The street, Persian carpets

Lying out soaking wet with soap

Flakes and the woman squatting

Her chador gathered between her legs

Scraping the surface with a bowl

And the passing cars driving over.

This is the dry California rain

Disturbing the dust only rarely

Bouncing off dried oak leaves

Down smooth madrone bark

The earth washing all its facets

Into my nose, pungent before

The sky dries again and dirt

Returns to its normal lifeless

State.


II.

Waiting for Words to Come

While I wait for the words to come

I exercise my fingers by digging into

Rock, guiding sticks that float down

The stream, stroking flower petals, feeling

Their moist softness as if velvet came

Alive and gathered morning dew.

While I wait, I notice the wren under

The bush hopping among the dense

Foliage, the spider web arching

Over the stream at dusk, the peaks

Turning pink. Now I am ready.

I will try my hand at sorting pebbles

At the bottom of the rapids, parting

Branches at the creek, I will become

Warm to the air shuffling the leaves

Until they tremble and the deer tracks

In the damp earth, the bird calls and

Night crickets.

Then I will begin to write.

III.

When spring runs feral

obsidian nights crack

over the plains leaving

sharp splinters stuck

in the old moon dory.

The sky breaks on the points

of black shards while cottony

fog waits far out among silent

Swells with the trade winds.

The land is articulate

in the intervals of time

that includes every moment

Space is an arena of smells

Signaling desire without end,

Emotional reticence is lost

Amidst bay, heather,lavender

And we can’t see that the mind

Is infinite, or breath limited only

By the perfume of gardenias

Orange blossoms, and jasmine

As spring taunts us with incomplete

Couplings and summer is almost

Born.

- Emily Strauss 2012

Emily is a retired English teacher from California, and often focus on the natural world that she encounters and how it reflects her own emotional interior. Emily has over two dozen pieces published here and there online including Poetry Unlocked, Every Day Poets, and the South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal.

New Poetry by BZ Niditch

WINTER BLUES

Snow wraps
around our faces
crawling on fields
in nightswell mounds
by a country-side poet
carrying a pawned sax
refusing to sleep
on the earth-wise bench
by the ice fishermen
visiting the waterfront
in his cold fatigues
with insomniac silence
and hunger pains

- BZ Niditch 2012

A SLICE OF WINTER

Sleep unavailable
only a re-run
of "Breathless"
and a few sparrows
on the night sky,
outside city winds
swirl by the pond,
a time deserted
like matches trembling
in our hands
with a cautious spark
of new year wishes
frozen by frescoes
on a slippery iced park,
imagining Belmondo
in his self-quoted
sensibility
framed about love
now only photographic
of unnamed memory. 

- BZ Niditch 2012




BZ Niditch's poetry appears in Columbia, London Grip, Atlanta Review, Pacific Review.

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.