New Poetry by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

a roman matron

! sisters of sabine, listen: all men
are weak when disrobed of state
(& composure. it is we, daughters
of the she-wolf, who shall bring 
him to his knees

   . come, we say
, rest that handsome nose on the 
bosom of our pillow & weep us
your insecurity: how what you 
feel is, by your own creed, not
real; that you know all empires
must die; why you are secretly 
guilt embodied for your theft of
the dead, battlefield's bowerbird
, a carrion of all culture, adjunct 
, an appropriation of everybody 
     
     . nothing you 
have is truly yours , & you have
the whole world in love with 
your roman nose

  . even we, the 
sisters of sabine, are borrowed

? your downfall: believing that 
we believe in you, are bound &
honour you true. that we are oh 
so dutiful

    ! ha, no, dear roman
fellow, we are just suckling an
opportune colosseum to bring 
you your fall

. rome wasn't built in 
a day, but it will burn to the 
ground in just one night, like 
everyman can ignite: we’ll
make you burn in more than
just one way

        . now come &
succumb & we’ll let our kin
-dling through the gates to
make night burn as day


- Scott-Patrick Mitchell 2014

Scott-Patrick Mitchell (SPM) is a performance poet and fashion blogger from Perth, Western Australia. His work appears in New Poets 1 and Performance Poets: Fremantle Poets 3, both published by Fremantle Press. At current SPM is Australian Poetry's July online poet-in-residence. For more on SPM, visit either www.scott-patrickmitchell.com or www.outrageous-adventures.com, or even check out his Facebook fanpage.

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New Poetry by Rico Craig

Suvorov Square

At night, novels stroll on gravel 
pathways; whispers and powdered 
cheeks lifting with each white 
breath. Their confessions are fur-lined, 
necessary, worn to the thread. 

Eugene tears a letter into wishes that trail 
at his feet, Pushkin follows aiming 
his quill. Anna Karenina sits with her daughter, 
picking strands in a cats-cradle; Tolstoy nibbles 
a banana and tries to ignore their laughter. 
Raskolnikov badgers his shoe laces 
thinking of the coffee house where 
Dostoyevsky waits, texting rhapsodies to his bookie. 

In the morning, their mute footsteps 
are raked over by sturdy women. Nearby,
oblivious children parse the ribs of fallen
leaves, collecting handfuls to flutter and crackle 
at the hush between each rasping scrape.


- Rico Craig 2014

Rico is a writer and creative writing teacher, currently sharing his time between poetry, prose and working on pantomime scripts with school students. Recent work has been published at Cordite and Doctor T.J Eckleburg Review, and is forthcoming in Meanjin. For links to publications please visit:  http://ricoandhisroboteye.wordpress.com 

New Poetry by Robert Halleck

ROTARY CHRISTMAS PROGRAM

They came from the

school next door.

the Thursday before 

Christmas Eve.

Boys and girls of

color in a hotel

of lily white.

Eyes wide they

gazed upwards.

White shirts

White blouses.

They sang like saints

and left silently

taking Christmas 

with them.

- Robert Halleck 2014

Robert Halleck is a retired banker living in Del Mar, California with two retired racing Greyhounds. He has been writing poetry for over 50 years and has published two volumes of his collected works. His recent poems have appeared in The Camel Saloon, The San Diego Annual Poetry Anthology, The Scapegot, The Boston Poetry Review and other publications.

Tail lights Fade

It has been quite some time since I graced the world of blog with my pickled observations, and for that I apologise dear reader. To be honest, events of both a private and public nature have overwhelmed me somewhat, but after a difficult twelve months I feel the old fire returning.

I probably don't need to point out that the world, like my garden, has got a lot less tidy in that time. Australia has morphed from something of a geo-political backwater to the sun-parched Belgium of a new Asian paradigm. The word "Caliphate" is back after lying dormant for almost 100 years, ensuring a widening rift between Sunni and Shia the world over. Israel Israel Israel, the background static of my life, like my crazy neighbour's un-tuned radio.

Need I go on?

But the great buzzword in this country at present would seem to be "fairness", an almost quaintly archaic concern with the widening gap between rich and poor in both income and opportunity. What has prompted this sudden shift from "me" to "us"? Well,  Bluepepper is yet to be convinced there has even been a shift.

The ideological position of the current Federal government should not be a surprise to anyone who has taken even a passing interest in politics over the past 20 or 30 years. They are merely the pointy end of the Thatcher/Reagan "revolution" of the 1980's, an untiring and ultimately successful effort to reverse the trend toward a more re-distributive society in favour of unfettered opportunity for the individual. That this happened to coincide with the rise of the so-called "Me" generation of cashed up boomers is no accident of history. As Thomas Piketty recently highlighted in his book, "Capital in the 21st Century", much of the "equalising" of the 20th century was the result of the dissipation of capital by two world wars and the recognition of a "shared ordeal" that propelled governments to take measures to distribute wealth and opportunity more evenly. It was, after all, that great Prussian militarist, Otto von Bismarck, who led the way by founding the first welfare state back in the 1870's, realising that by so doing he was stealing a march on the socialists. But memories fade. The "us" appears to have become a "them" versus "me".

In this "society" atomised by competition between autonomous entities, any sense of a shared identity is difficult to find. What has come to be known as "Identity Politics" has run parallel with a widening gap between the haves and the have nots, as those unable or unwilling to organise to promote their interests fall further and further behind. That racism still thrives in such a context should really be no surprise to anyone who has even the most rudimentary understanding of human nature. Either we yearn to be considered exceptional, singular, or to belong to a group that considers itself as such. Rather than accept, and revel in, our universal heritage and destiny, we seek to rise above, either individually or collectively. Empathy in such circumstances, like truth in war, would appear to be the first casualty.

I am not so blinkered as to advocate a return to the old politics and old economics of the last century, paired as they were with rampant nationalism, racism, imperialism, etc. But I am just old enough to remember a time when matters of justice and equity were at the forefront of political debate, when the economy was there to serve the people rather than the other way around. Although limited in scope by many of the "isms" alluded to previously, there was a sense of the collective good and a detestation for elites that many in this country now find risible. In its relentless pursuit of surplus value, capitalism continues to present a challenge to democracy which is, after all, nothing more and nothing less than the tyranny of the majority. Neo-liberals chafe at this definition, and in their effort to circumvent it have allowed oligarchy (the expression of minority will) in through the back door, and we have become entranced by this minority of glamour and wealth even as it robs us of our birthright.

This is where the role of the artist, and especially of the poet, is crucial. For poetry is above all the art, perhaps even the science, of empathy. The poetry of identity is not what I am talking about here. Such poetry is merely advocating tribalism by another name. It may capture the imagination of journalists for whom empathy is rarely a governing instinct, but it is not poetry as I understand it. Great poetry speaks to a universal sense of inheritance and destiny, and as such should serve as a counter-weight to the increasing influence of a wealthy and powerful minority.

In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi:

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

In other words, raise your head from the trough, dear reader, and look around.

New Poetry by Juan Pablo Duboue

Doleō

Pain is a part of me as much as writing is a part of me

Sometimes it’s bloating and unbearable,

Though at times it is quite manageable.

Migraines come and go like the jasmines in my garden.

Summer intensifies and 

Winter harbours grudges. 

Blame it on the rectified cervical lordosis

Blame it on my insomnia 

Blame it on you, on me, on them

On them, on me, on you.

Psychosomatic disorders 

you name them.

I know the Rorschach by heart 

and the inkblots dye my mind. 

Imagination’s running wild

as the oil spills on the butterflies.

Not a penguin, but a butterfly 

Not a penguin, but a butterfly.

Haunting crows circle 

my sheets, an orgy of feathers 

and cawing at midnight.

They tear my limbs apart

My intestines open 

My aorta bleeding poppies in July.

I do not see myself as fat

I am not overweight 

It’s the eating that I dread

For food makes me gag

I cannot seem to hold it.

Body rejects what mind decides is past.

Bags have transmuted from a grayish green to black 

People seem to stare at me

As if I were a terminal patient

There’s nothing terminal in me 

My conditions are chronic 

They let me rest 

They let me have my days

And then the cycle starts

Again and again and again.

An episode here and there 

When life’s good it’s every four months

Otherwise it’s every month

A cramp 

A shock

A needle stuck into my neck 

A syringe plunged into my back.

It’s dying and resurrecting every time

Every four months, lucky me.

Doctors say it’s in my mind

Shrinks say it’s in my blood 

Daddy says it’s on his family’s side

Mother says just stop the nonsense 

You’re fine.

Thank you for your insights

But the pain is still concrete

I can touch it 

I can grab it

I can chew it

Feel it twisting me

From the inside out 

A thousand claws 

Toying with my insides.

Feasting over me.

A common depersonalization,

fear of a heart attack,

a nervous breakdown.

The acute onset

cradles me to sleep.

I am one with the attack,

a sisterly feeling

of impending death;

Pain is a part of me as much as writing is a part of me.

I know the Rorschach by heart 

and the inkblots dye my mind.

- Juan Pablo Duboue 2014

Juan Pablo Duboue was born in Mendoza, Argentina in 1986. Currently pursuing a masters in Contemporary English Literature, he works as a teacher, interpreter and translator. Apart from writing poetry and short stories, Juan Pablo is also a singer and a ballet dancer. 

New Poetry by Craig Kurtz

Everything

The curious manner in which

you brush indigo from your laughter;

the quaint style you have so it’s true

you demur future out of your sighs;

the upwards of your carmine,

the almost of your close by;

what I like about you

is nothing less than these sounds.

The uncanny motion you now

when you coax golden from out of your when;

the original tone you perpend

spins lavender terms with a grin;

the oblique of your then,

the amber surprise of your that;

the part about you I like

is the everything far uppermost.

You might be simply circumstantial

or rather singularly definitive;

you have a manner unpredictable

that knows how to upend a circle’s return;

and when I hear your magical,

I can see a far geography;

what happens is openly in white

with additional ineffable. So, there!

The perplexing technique you affix

when you auburn the former utmost;

the classic soon of the next you possess

is inevitable with blue swoops of good luck;

the innermost was a hint,

the outer-seeming is this:

what I love about you today

is the everything achieved hitherto.

- Craig Kurtz 2014

Craig Kurtz lives at Twin Oaks Intentional Community where he writes poetry while simultaneously handcrafting hammocks. Recent work has appeared in Bird’s Thumb, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Blotterature, The Blue Hour, Drunk Monkeys, Fishfood & Lavajuice, Literati Quarterly, Indigo Rising, Harlequin Creature, No Assholes, Reckless Writing and The Tower Journal. 

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Mostly Basie with a Little Bach

Whenever I see a new woman, I know 

I should look at her hair and her eyes and her smile  

before I decide if she's worth the small talk

and the dinner later 

and whatever else she may require 

before she becomes taffy, 

pliant and smiling. 

But that never works for me.

Whenever I see a new woman, 

what matters to me is never 

her hair or her eyes or her smile;

what matters to me is her saunter 

as I stroll behind her.

If her moon comes over the mountain

and loops in languor, left to right, 

and then loops back again,

primed for another revolution, then

I introduce myself immediately

no matter where we are, 

in the stairwell or on the street

and that's when I see for the first time

her hair and her eyes and her smile  

but they are never a distraction since

I'm lost in the music of her saunter.

Years ago, tall and loping Carol Ann

took a train to Chicago, 

found a job and then one summer day 

walked ahead of me on Michigan Avenue 

while I surveyed her universe amid 

the cabs screeching, horns beeping, 

a driver's middle finger rising. 

Suddenly she turned and said hello 

and we shook hands and I saw her smile 

dart like a minnow and then disappear 

as she frowned and asked   

why was I walking behind her. 

I told her I was on my way to the noon Mass

at Holy Name Cathedral and she was welcome 

to come along. The sermon wouldn't be much, 

I said, but the coffee and bagels afterward 

would be plentiful, enough to cover lunch.

And Jesus Christ Himself would be there.

She didn't believe me, not at all, 

and she hasn't believed me since. 

That was thirty years ago and now

her smile is still a minnow

darting here and there but now 

it's more important than her saunter 

which is still a symphony, 

mostly Basie with a little Bach.

And I no longer traipse Michigan Avenue 

as I did years ago looking for new moons 

swirling in my universe. Instead, 

I take my lunch in a little bag 

on a long train from the suburbs

and I marvel at one fact:

It's been thirty years since I first heard 

the music in her saunter

and Carol Ann and I are 

still together, praise the Lord. 

Who can believe it? Not I. 

Carol Ann says she knew 

the ending from the start. 

Lord, Almighty. Fancy that.

- Donal Mahoney 2014

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney 

has had poetry and fiction published in The Galway Review, Revival, ROPES and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. 

Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/

New Poetry by Vladimir Swirynsky

11:15 AM GREEN THEATER

- for Barbara

Her name is Elizabeth Bishop,
bare footed and tipsy toe hanging
a picture on the wall, afternoon
peaking with the wrap-around-drama
of heavy drinking.
Half finished poem
in the typewriter reaches
out for the moon, for Lota
Lota de Macedo Soares.

I find myself with a tear in my eye,
the Cleveland International Film
Festival ushering me to love’s
doorstep, a hundred paces from
the House of Blues.

I needed this, the profane energy
of the Portuguese Romance language,
a chance encounter, the stop-motion
of happiness that keeps betraying me.

You—
lover of stone steps, the painter
of beauty, give me the empty hours
of mood indigo, the things the heart
has forgotten, the shoestring
of a sunset.


- Vladimir Swirynsky 2014


 Vladimir Swirynsky survived school and went on to serve and survive in Vietnam. In time he got married, but unfortunately, they didn’t live happily ever after. The marriage died, but a poet was born.

New Poetry by James Walton

Pax Romanus (I, II, III)

Spare us, the Conquered

I

The fascist weeds the garden
Such love in pulling out,
Care granted to save the soil and replenish
With self made compost of previous remains.
They should have known his bitter truth
Of all he did for them unrequited;
In gentle torture he weeps for his people,
And how the day goes down so normally
As the lorries remove without haste
The handiwork so finely crafted,
To bring in bloom again
The preferred order of lines.

II

The comrades have been in a good paddock
How they strut their fat nonsense,
Believe the message is about them
So polished now and commentators
On everything thing they know and don’t.
Credit cards of bosses in hand
Wheel and deal with the best of them,
Stroke the impatient flank
Believe the stories they tell
With such ferocious plausibility,
Saddle the old chargers
Taunt the capitalists with rust
Shake the state with the workers’ flag.

III

Death squads have no imagination
The graffiti has only one colour,
A backwash where the pockmarks
Are the dots we link with rainbows
Made from the tears of all lovers
Children mother father brother sister.
The old city glistens in this rain
Painted with our crayons,
Ground out each night with the latest news
Who is missing who will fight.
So  many colours stain our fingers
They make us face the wall now,
Not knowing  never seeing that hope
Is streaming incandescently
From the streetlamps in our hands.


- James Walton 2014

Lives and works in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland and has had work published in a number of anthologies and journals, and the Age newspaper.

New Poetry by Jeremy Page

Measuring Happiness

I suppose it would be possible
with enough scans, syringes,
charts and such, to say
with some certainty, ‘This is,
on the favoured scale, how
happy you are: seventy two.’

Not bad. Of course, not like IQ –
one expects less (fluctuations, too).
How one feels, recorded quarterly
and plotted. In five years
we could look back at our lives
like a seismograph:

compare notes, print and frame
certificates, give medals to those
nearest the top, the most improved.
‘Keep it up son,’ we’d say.

‘What improvement!’ ‘What growth!’
Like biro markings of height 

in a door frame. Yet, as we age
I suppose the medals, the certificates
would, like pens long out of ink,
be put in a drawer somewhere:
lost and forgotten about.

One can only get so tall.

- Jeremy Page 2014

Born in New Zealand in 1988, Sydney-based poet Jeremy Page has just completed a Master of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney. He was first published last year in the Australian anthology Stoned Crows, and with his study complete (for now) he is currently in the process of collecting and editing work for further publication attempts.

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

self-portrait

greyed morning a nightmare of waking into sobered light

the chilled palm still formed on the glass 

dry skin settles into the gale air without radiance

after blacked sleep  surges of wind disturb the senses

delusion  sets into consciousness   propels 

further obscurities   as the eye adjusts

    to be a poet is to live with ghosts

leaving the house  think of  misjudged breath 

fleeting in the lengths of unfamiliar bodies

and the night  no different wiped in its unresolved law

run through the miles of road   cars carried cityward 

grounded in the country dirt spread beneath brick as cinder

     in the centre of this thought continues   nausea lasting days

even this   passes time before the game

 will realise itself.

- Robbie Coburn 2014

robbie coburn was born in June 1994 in Melbourne and lives in the rural district of Woodstock, Victoria. 

His first book-length collection of poetry 'Rain Season' (Picaro Press) was published in 2013. He is well into a second collection, titled 'the other flesh'. 

A chapbook, 'Before Bone and Viscera' is forthcoming from Rochford Street Press in 2014.

New Poetry by Colin Dodds

The Urgent Center Expands

The urgent center expands,
takes the newspaper as its skin.

As it went in history,
so ran the NFC wildcard game.
The religiopolitical Saints
overran the astrological Rams.

Aside from that, the story was familiar and unchanged.

The linemen were terrifying,
though easily persuaded, hulks.

The receivers were handy
with the razor and the getaway.

The running backs went straight home
and would be foremen someday.

And the quarterback was the driven patrician
with nothing but an immense promise
and an immense burden for a life.


- Colin Dodds 2014

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s the author of several novels, including WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Pièce de Shakespeare 

Come, sheathe your dagger definitions —
the Father, Word, and Holy Breath,  
the swan of Avon, has returned to die.

Lord of language, auric egg, 
he lies laid out in stiffness —
bronzelidded in the secondbest bed, 
lips twisted by Venus into prayer,
coffined thoughts embalmed in a spice 
of words which rise like crooked smoke 
up to the nostrils of God.

Why even his errors are portals to discovery!
Following his lean unlovely lines
through spaces smaller than red globules of blood
we creepycrawl after his buttocks 
meeting robbers, ghosts, old men, young men, 
wives, widows, brothers-in-love;
the molecules all changing, the I becoming other,
the unquiet father reborn in the son —
but always, always, as we walk through him
we are walking into ourselves.

* A found poem sourced from chapter 9 of James Joyce’s Ulysses

- Michele Seminara 2014

New Poetry by Joseph Robert

Winter’s Clotting

Licking at the chary red hard candy

Of a liquid nitrogen cauterized wrist

I see you settle on your haunches to lap at it

In a wide open parking lot, dreary and grey slushy

Sweating, nervous and convincing myself

By moaning at uncaring passersby that it’s

Really rather quite charming in a way that is

Rather too excruciating to describe:

I hacked the hand off with my replica samurai sword

But that simply makes you worship the invalid

More and more

Snowflakes melt on your upturned brow

Lick like a momma cat, Sick Kitten,

A shudder amid big explosions of empty

I go and I come, time travelling again and again

To the solstice 

- Joseph Robert 2014

Joseph Robert's poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Decanto, Unlikely Stories, Dead Snakes, Mistress Quickly's Bed, The Commonline Journal, Pyrokinection, Mudjob, The Journal, Spinozablue, Black Mirror, Message in a Bottle, Eunoia Review, Inclement and the Insert Coin Here anthology. His poetry chapbook with wife Leilanie Stewart has been reviewed at Sabotage. 

New Poetry by Bruce McRae

It Touches Us

Tragedy lurks behind a buttercup.

It throws its voice down in the dust,

circling anti-clockwise on its insect-legs,

scribbling ambush in your diary,

singing like a window breaking.

Tragedy travels badly.

To be kissed by this abomination

is much like suffering frostbite.

Already the hours are missing.

Already there's a knife in the bed.

Mockery is its prime art,

its playground an earthen cellar,

its school hall a cold bath.

How many centuries has it looked up

at the stars from its well-bottom?

Beyond faith, luck, trust,

and God and love . . .

In the eyes of animals.

In the book of the soul.

In a time without time.

And you, with your soft hands,

safe house and niceties;

tragedy loves you best of all.

Already you're outwitted,

and the buttercup mourned.

- Bruce McRae 2014

Pushcart-nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 800 publications, including Poetry.com and The North American Review. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ is available from the Silenced Press website or via Amazon books. To hear his music and view more poems visit his website: www.bpmcrae.com, or ‘TheBruceMcRaeChannel’ on Youtube.

New Poetry by JD DeHart

Cling

the way the small one clings

you can tell she is a biter

with rows and rows of teeth

belied by the sweet expression

she gnaws the tender hand

of mother, will one day

break away, like all children do,

barely call, certainly not write

(who writes any more?)

arranging her own fragmented

adulthood from whatever scraps

she can find around a local bar

- JD DeHart

JD's writing has appeared in Eye On Life Magazine and Eunoia Review, among other publications. 

New Poetry by Michael Lee Johnson

Dead Grey Wolf Skins 

(Tribute:  Aldo Leopold)

Dead grey wolf skins hang

on white clotheslines across Baraboo, Wisconsin

the dark surface, side of the moon,

that only exists in memories hung high, long before.

Hunters in the past did their job well,

sold skins, collected a few bucks,

increased deer for hunting, saved cattle,

decreased fear, told tales, short stories, adventures.

The grey wolf face now emergent,

opens his mouth wide in the safety

open in blue sky.

Shows his white teeth against

background of black sky, shadow,

hears thunder again, releases 

fireflies at night, monarch butterflies

during the day, guts down pine tree spikes.

He walks once again over landscapes of turquoises.

He consumes dirt road dust, 119 miles to Milwaukee.

His keen eyes are sharp for growth of skyscraper, Pabst Building.

Traveling side roads over many years brings him to the present.

No more violators, hunters with guns, fake Jesus people

slender in His bathrobe Christ repeats two fishes, 5 loaves.

- Michael Lee Johnson 2014

MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in 27 countries, he edits 8 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 pages book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 69 poetry videos on YouTube.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

A Breathless, Feeble Wind

A breathless, feeble wind blows,
not even strong enough to stir the drapes,
too enervated and too insipid to be a breeze.
And I know it,
I do not feel my sweat evaporate,
but gather and trickle down my heated back,
and I seize the moment to turn on the fan,
and there is not one movement among the trees.

I am a child of the light,
I am a child who values reason and emotion alike.
Give me a poetry of the heart and head,
and I do not need a stiff breeze to relax.
I am happy with light long enough to read a rispetto,
and my life has three dreams: truth, beauty, and pleasure.


- Phillip Ellis 2014

Phillip's books

New Poetry by Tendai Mwanaka

WE WAIT AND WONDER

doctors have failed,

faith-healers have folded their hands.

witch-doctors cast no-lots,

prophets have shut their mouths.

tears have flown!

we now mourn and weep dry tears.

young and tender stolen.

nothing left, no tears to bleed.

we wait and wonder,

for a sign, a stop, a word from above.

- Tendai Mwanaka 2014

VOICES FROM EXILE, a collection of poetry on Zimbabwe’s political situation and exile in South Africa was published by Lapwing publications, Northern Ireland in 2010. KEYS IN THE RIVER: Notes from a Modern Chimurenga,  novel of interlinked stories that deals with life in  modern day Zimbabwe’s soul was published by Savant books and publications, USA 2012. A book of creative non-fiction pieces, ZIMBABWE: THE BLAME GAME, was published by Langaa RPCIG( Cameroon 2013) I was nominated for the Pushcart twice, 2008, 2010, commended for the Dalro prize 2008, work has been translated into French and Spanish. I was nominated and attended The Caine African writing workshop, 2012. From January- April 2014, I was a Mentor for 3 budding writers in CACE Africa Writivism. Published over  250 pieces of short stories, essays, memoirs, poems and photographic/visual art in over 150 magazines, journals, and anthologies in the following countries,  the USA , UK , Canada , South Africa, Zimbabwe, India , Mexico, Kenya, Cameroon, Italy, Ghana, Uganda, France , Zambia, Nigeria, Spain , Romania, Cyprus, Australia and New Zealand. 

New Poetry by Michelle Seminara

A Sudden Absence

When a sudden absence opens
where before there was a lover, or a child,
(a child’s worse, we must all agree
a child’s loss is worst), the everyday
grows almost perverse. 

Routine grinds around and round the lack
and identity, devoid of vital purpose
withers back…

Autumn’s raw draft rankles from her room —
but I don’t look; instead I close the door,
and try to cover up by loving 
the others a little more.


- Michelle Seminara 2014

New Poetry by James Walton

Autumn Break

Spooky day. Mist so low and custard thick
The river noiseless, a longboat prow
Could come across the veranda.
Cats have embraced all of yoga, curled
As mollusc shells where spines shouldn’t bend.
The orchard stripping crows are finally speechless,
Stooped in their overcoats, raggedly on guard
For something with the password.
The air’s gone tidal, receding to the call
Now of a forming universe in the melting:
A calf’s foghorn announces loss of presence,
Chickens rattle for release from the night keep.
Radio silence while this anabiotic lid
Occupies the space that was daylight saving.


- James Walton 2014

James Walton hails from South Gippsland and lives in the Strzelecki mountains. His work has appeared in: Eureka Street, Australian Love Poems - anthology,  Daily Immanence - anthology, the Wonder Book of Poetry,  and Australian Poetry. James decided to stop being a coward and quit work in January to concentrate on writing.  He is now starving, but happy, and lives with a Noah's Ark of animals.

 

New Poetry by Mark Roberts

poem (mist

it’s difficult to find the poem

in fog like this

    so thick

thoughts are shadows

a hint of meaning

you don’t dare follow

sitting here looking out

at the edge of the escarpment

         clouds

come up suddenly from the valley

targeting the house like a helicopter

in an action film

open the window & let some mist in

allow to it settle

       in a dark corner

i'll think of a use for it later

- Mark Roberts 2014

Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic. He currently edits Rochford Street Review and P76 magazine. He is also poetry editor for Social Alternatives journal. 

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

The face of my arms
But the past forms so naturally.
an overrun of trees, thick spirals of branches
assembled in the centre of the paddock

the silence disappears
or like a periphery of abstractions
a mind walks across the body in the farmland's clearing

sits down, the body a landscape torn open
widening into distance
coordinates of wind
dream beneath my eyes

feels dark out here alone
already so full of hysteria
start with my arms
protruding veins of crumbled tissue
deadening the nerve ends

searching up and down
not for an image but an emptiness

the perpetual change stuns
risking yourself
in transfusions of a feeble red line

the point of beginning.

- Robbie Coburn 2014