New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Found in an Attic: 

World War II Letter to a Wife

When I get home

things will be the same.

I haven't changed.

The sling  

comes off the day

I get on the plane.

I'll be able 

to cut the grass,

rake the leaves,

shovel the snow,

all the stuff I did before.

And every morning

in summer, fall,

winter and spring, 

when we wake up, 

I'll draw rosettes

with the tip 

of my tongue

on your nipples,

await your orders to 

bivouac elsewhere.

Nothing has changed.

I'm feeling fine. 

We'll cleave again.

- Donal Mahoney 2015

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Bluepepper (Australia), The Galway Review (Ireland), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey) and other magazines. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com.

New Poetry by Rob Walker

The Fresh People Food

stuck in a 1980s timewarp
the muzac bland, Mainstream
middle-of-the-road. nothing changes.
there is no War on Terror, no poverty

just row after row after row of groceries
stacked in columns and battalions
soldiers erect and in uniform
And when the front line is consumed
the back is moved to the front.

nightfall. depletion. replacement.
nightfill boys are expendable too.
no award rates here.
individual items
nonessential.

the machine grinds on.

an illusion of changelessness.
continuous consumption.

broken packages put out of sight.
spills are wiped up
collateral damage.
profits are up.

clean.    tidy.
and nothing

appears to

change.


- Rob Walker 2015

rob walker is a South Australian writer, composer and poet, with three collections of poems published in Australia and one forthcoming: tropeland (Five Islands Press) this June, and recent poetry published in The Cortland Review, Illya’s Honey and Red River Review (US), 4&20, (UK), 21D, foam:e, cordite,  Australian Poetry Journal, Mascara, Rabbit Journal, Unusual Work, Verity La and Best Australian Poems (AUST.) He has also published short stories and collaborates with other artists to produce audio poems and musical tracks at ccmixter.org.

Personal website:  www.robwalkerpoet.com

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Hymn to Solitude

“Amour”, she would say that and little else. Then she would rest her head on my shoulder. After, she would disappear for at least a week or more. One of us was lying. The way that she said it, so gently but with such intensity, it kept me waiting around.

Of course I worked but gave very little thought to exploring other options when my brush was not in my hand.

“Amour” she sighed. Her eyes were a dark sky from which stars had drifted low to beauty mark her chin. Once again no definitive plans had been made and as I walked home in frustration, I realized that all this time she had not been talking to me but merely echoing the prayer that someone had once recited to the sky.

I had been working hard but still found myself feeling lonely. I was bitten and scratched by this feeling, especially at night when the heat from making dinner required me to open a window and I could hear people passing by down below. I taped a picture of Stravinsky to the refrigerator as in my head it made sense to do so. 

The corner as viewed from the window by my bed. There is a traffic light, the red one; it is the understanding of desolation. I am grateful for that light. No one walks by and even the trees offer only a limited lattice of shadows akin to clarity of thought.

A hymn to solitude.

Sorry, I have this prayer to share but recite another one instead. In the early hours of a new day the street light is crowned with a halo of mist, sainted for all it has witnessed and for always standing alone as all who are holy must do.

Thanksgiving, the local churches were offering their free turkey dinner complete with all the fixings, donated by those in need of assuaging their guilt. Each had a long line spilling out their doors and down the sidewalk. Regardless of the denomination, the queue for each church was comprised of the same people clapping their own shoulders to stay warm. Some talking to themselves others with dull gray blankets thrown over their shoulders looking like extras from a Goya painting.

Not tied in to this but seeming so by coincidence, a long line of cars moving with the traffic light induced stuttered rhythm. Groups of people of varying abilities try to dance a choreography in sync as they exit the city.

Later jaundiced squares of light from apartments which offer no evidence of humanity despite their illumination, intermittently mark the sidewalk. Counterpoint to this light, the dark silhouettes of bushes, their roughhewn edges making them appear as a series of tiny waves frozen at the moment right before breaking upon the pavement. If I could see a cat, even from a distance down the end of the alley, then this night would be perfect. I am drunk off of sweet desolation.

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by David Ades

The Upside to Being Down

  

The Ferris Wheel circles

through vibrating air,

rising into skylines,

into harbours and cityscapes,

into puzzles of sky and cloud,

caught in a jigsaw of

steel cables and rocking carriages,

moods dissipating

like burnt off fog,

children rising into laughter:

and the day holds so much more

in the palm of its opened hand.

- David Ades 2015

David Ades is a poet and short story writer. His poems have appeared in many Australian and American literary publications. Since April 2011 David has been living in Pittsburgh where he was one of the editors of the inaugural Australian Poetry Members Anthology metabolism.

New Poetry by Richard Hillman

I Got Drunk Last Night

            (and couldn’t find my way home)

after Lightnin’ Hopkins

 

Swimming face down in the irrigation ditch

With the cane toads and the snakes beneath

This spiralling black and blue night where

Stars on some strange map cannot help

The stranger slapping at the ignoble sides

Some mud-streaked water dragon wriggling

Its drunken way towards the Tumbulgum pub

Where another beer awaits another drowning

Of even stranger spirits to come

- Richard Hillman 2015

Richard's last collection was Raw Nerve (Puncher & Wattman, 2009).

New Poetry by Julie Maclean

Pacific traits

You know the sea is
over the hollow tops

of worn volcanoes

darkening the distance

and you know it's hours
before you'll be under

a cocktail umbrella dipping

a tongue into a gin sling

And while we're in the land
of cane prosperity

palms and white slats
give a colonial clue

to a slave trade past
& on a foreign archipelago

pretty girls are groomed
to practise dark arts

Out there somewhere
a giant turtle bumps

a cruise ship heading for
Happy Hour

- Julie Maclean 2015

Julie’s third collection, ‘Kiss of the Viking’ was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2014. Poetry appears in international journals including Poetry (Chicago) and The Best Australian Poetry (UQP). Blog: www.juliemacleanwriter.com

New Poetry by Janet I. Buck

The Robber with the Biggest Guns

He never announced his real name,

Grim Reaper of the innocent,

until he raided liver cells, your lymph nodes,

and your fragile ribs, then stole your treasured sanity.

Cancer is taking a gun to your head,

cracking bats on window panes,

shattering the firmest glass

in every room of every home

where people adore the shape of your soul.

Remember when we thought a simple thundershower

could wreck our hair, soak our freshly ironed shirts─

now it seems petty as a broken nail

and I'm ashamed I ever saw the world like that─

with dirty glasses on my face.

Now I know that blossoms of a daffodil

last less than two short weeks at most.

Won't you take my coffee mug,

pour in tears you're holding back.

You tell me we can "beat this thing,"

but doctors' children learn too much,

so doubt and fear crawl up the stairs

I'm falling down.

You are standing tall and straight,

when I am leaning awkwardly,

arms upon a countertop,

afraid my elbow knots will slip,

and I'll be landing on the floor.

I guess it doesn't matter where you pray,

on kitchen tile or carpets scraping at bare knees─

or beg a distant deity to fix a theme you cannot change

from plays like this we never wanted tickets to.

- Janet I. Buck 2015

Janet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals worldwide. Janet's second print collection of poetry, Tickets to a Closing Play, was the winner of the 2002 Gival Press Poetry Award and her third collection, Beckoned By The Reckoning, was released by PoetWorks Press in the spring of 2004. Her most recent work has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine and Offcourse. In 2011, Buck was honored as a Featured Poet of the Editor's Circle in PoetryMagazine.com.  In the spring of 2015, Janet was "Poet of the Week" for PoetrySuperHighway.com. More of her work is scheduled for publication in various journals this coming summer.

New Poetry by Jim Walton

Iscariot’s Leap of Faith

My name is Judas, I took the money.
Not that it was much; I’d have preferred American dollars,
like any decent terrorist.
It was just that I’d had enough.
Lazarus, did he really want to go on,
the loaves and fishes, what about the next meal?
Bad enough that he had his own doubts,
crying in the garden, drawing a crowd, then releasing them.
A multitude wants action, the next step revealed:
faith needs the temper of a furnace, the honed edge
swinging cleanly through to the next cleave,
not some blinding revelation without strings.
Jesus, you stuffed up big time!
When you tossed the money lenders out, the wasted stash
would have been worth the keeping,
we could have done some real charity with that.
When the sky went black, I saw the Romans falter –
the masses ready for action, but it passed.
As for the pomposity of Ascension,
we needed and prayed for Deliverance.
Where was the Father, Gabriel’s trumpet, the wrath of Angels?
I hang here, low fruit,
this wasted olive, the last pear gone soggy and black,
the stone moved to release me  -
with a final glimpse of the power lines of crucifixes.


- Jim Walton 2015


Jim Walton's collection, "The Leviathan's Apprentice" has just been released through Strzelecki's Lover Press.

 

New Poetry by Michael Lee Johnson

Fall is Golden (V3)

The last golden yellow apple

hangs like a healing miracle

bow down old apple tree

winter is coming.

Life is a single thread this time.

- Michael Lee Johnson 2015

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 875 small press magazines in 27 countries, he edits 9 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  "From Exile to Freedom", several chapbooks of poetry, including "From Which Place the Morning Rises" and "Challenge of Night and Day", and "Chicago Poems".  He also has over 71 poetry videos on YouTube.

New Poetry by Ron Riekki

Walking the Streets of Croix After Our Argument

There are a thousand bars.

I could get drunk,

so drunk

that I’d become a fossil.

I’d be a dinosaur.

I’d drink myself

to the Big Bang,

before we ever met,

before anyone ever met,

before anything ever happened,

and I’d be drunk there,

stupid

and young

in an alley,

fighting

to remember you.

- Ron Riekki 2015

Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North (Wayne State University Press, chosen by the Library of Michigan as a 2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Michigan State University Press, May 2015, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU).

New Poetry by Jonathan Hadwen

Untitled

when you lower yourself

into the ocean, look outwards

as if there’s no shore,

no heartbeat to return to,

just that distant point

where no part of you, not even your eye, 

can ever reach.

- Jonathan Hadwen 2015

(Jonathan Hadwen is a Brisbane writer who has been haunting the various halls of SpeedPoets since 2008. In 2013 he was named runner-up in the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript, and in 2014 he placed second in the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize.)

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

An Easter Rising

 

Poetry by priests?

Who gives it more than mock attention?

We read their poems, yes,

author first, then the title,

finally the verse itself.

Not much, except for Hopkins.

We wait for Rome, you see,

to give us in addition to its saints

one more decent poet.

A sot once said

“When things get bad enough,

you will see a Celt,

armed with a quiver of poems,

ride flaming out of the hills, 

soaring over the lakes,

wearing a rainbow for a Roman collar.”

Things are bad enough right now by half.

We need to hear his gallop soon.

 

 

 - Donal Mahoney 2015

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He writes poetry and fiction. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Stop

Let's leave everything be.

Let's just stop fixing.
Perhaps if we let everyone settle
clarity will be revealed.

Today I entered the cathedral of the bush—
sought permission to walk the land; felt it granted.
Was buoyed by a chorus of cicadas ululating
their adulation to the Gaia of this world.
(On Facebook a slowed down recording of cicadas—
Oh my, what exaltation! Beyond the range of men.)

As I traipse through the bush
in my rag of a dress,
great slobbery dog lopping
at my side, a disheveled woman
with hands clasped behind her back
like some unhinged Confucian scholar—

a brown snake crosses my path.
It's an intimate moment, as if
he has been waiting for me.
What does one do in such a moment?
Acknowledge, pass...

Let's leave everything be.
Let's just stop fixing.
I want to open like that naked flannel-flower to the sun.


- Michele Seminara 2015

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Autumn Proverb

walking the paddocks I saw a dog attack a bird, 
take its fragile body in its jaws and shake it of all life.
it lay motionless on the earth, the shrill cry that shattered the grasses fleeting.
I wondered what it must have thought of when its throat was torn, 
who must now wait for its return, the coming of only a longer silence-

death, as absence, has a permanence the skin cannot repair,
captured in any moment that passes beneath a perfumed rain,
I recalled your ghost, transparent in the open paddock,
a thin veil of fog beginning to leak from the frame.

- Robbie Coburn 2015

MTC Cronin at the Brett Whiteley Studio

Margie at the Brett Whiteley Studio Sunday 22nd March, 2-3.30pm, 2 Raper St Surry Hills.

MTC Cronin has published 20 books of poetry, prose poems and essays with several translated into other languages. Her work has won major literary awards internationally and in Australia. Recent poetry collections include The world last night (UQP, 2012) and In possession of loss (Shearsman Books, UK, 2014). Today is the launch of her latest collection – a 20-year work in progress calledThe law of poetry (Puncher and Wattmann).

New Poetry by Dawnell Harrison

My first language

 

My first language was split

in two by a white light that

 

revolved around my head

like a halo -

 

the luminescence sparked down

like rain drops lit from within.

 

My first word was star,

a real white prism of light

 

that lead me up to a cloudless sky.

A silver and blue nebula followed

 

me around like a child dragging

a blanket behind her.

- Dawnell Harrison 2015

Dawnell has been published in over 240 magazines and journals including Pyrokinection, Fowl Feathered Review, Blue Pepper, Queen's Quarterly and many more.  She has have had 5 books published including Voyager, The maverick posse, The fire behind my eyes, The love death, and The color red does not sleep.

 

New Poetry by James Walton

The Hideout

When my father died
I remembered
buried outlaw long necks of beer
as tubers
under the colour of hydrangeas
splashing irises
beside the straggling hibiscus
drunk as


- James Walton 2015


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.

Bluepepper lives again!

After a good deal of patience and expense on behalf of yours truly, Bluepepper is finally back in business. Apologies to all budding "peppers" out there! Please feel free to re-submit.

Apologies

To all those who have submitted work in the past fortnight, I humbly apologise for my lack of response but repairs to my laptop are taking longer than expected. Bluepepper should be up and running again in the first week of March!

New Poetry by R. Gerry Fabian

The Winter Of Our Discontent   

With apologies to Shakespeare and Steinbeck

The rusted square metal clothes pole
sits in three feet of snow
with stiff frayed rope
thrashing against the cold metal.

Where are the the warms breezes,
the robins temporarily resting,
the flapping of shirts and skirts?


- R. Gerry Fabian 2015

R. Gerry Fabian is a retired English instructor. 

He has been publishing poetry since 1972 in various poetry magazines. 

He is the editor of Raw Dog Press http://www.rawdogpress.freesite2you.com/index.php

He is currently working on a book of his poems.

New Poetry by Pattie Flint

matchsticks

She’s matchsticks, my baby.
I’m hoping she’ll rub up on
my five o’clock shadow tonight
burning my dirty fingertips 
with the way she fingers
her earlobe with two studs.
She laughs, tells me I am a
moderately sized fish 
in a really small pond,
I say it’s not failure
I’m afraid of, it’s contentment. 


- Pattie Flint 2015

Pattie Flint is an uprooted Seattle native toughing it out in Scotland binding books by hand. She has been published in Five [Quarterly], Hippocampus and TAB, amongst others. She is currently working on her MFA at Cedar Crest College. 

New Poetry by Seth Jani

Nerves

It’s the raw nerve.

No more sex or whiplash,

Just the fire underneath,

The electricity.

For all the wondrous phantoms

That catch the flesh

It’s still just longing

In the end.

The old, flame-white face

Of desire

Still pulling us like a madness

Towards the beauties of the earth.

All these blood-soaked, irreplaceable things

That glow and perish.

- Seth Jani 2015

Seth Jani originates from rural Maine but currently resides in Seattle, WA. He is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com) and his own work has been published widely in such journals as The Foundling Review, East Coast Literary Review, Red Ceilings Press and Hobo Camp Review. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com. 

New Poetry by Mark J. Mitchell

NOCTURNAL BARRIER

                                                           

This unmended gate

marks where my dream rests.

It’s lazy, creaky, it waits

for another snore to move

it, I guess.

Clever, it eludes

sleep even when I’m up late.

It never ends—it escapes.

- Mark J. Mitchell 2015

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologiesIt has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net.  Good Poems, American Places,Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives.  Two full length collections are in the works: Lent 1999  is coming soon from Leaf Garden Press and This Twilight World will be published by Popcorn Press.. His chapbook, Three Visitors has recently been published by Negative Capability Press. Artifacts and Relics, another chapbook, is forthcoming from Folded Word and his novel, Knight Prisoner, was recently published by Vagabondage Press and a another novel, A Book of Lost Songs is coming soon from Wild Child Publishing. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster. 

If Not Now, When?

Australia is suffering a crisis of leadership that goes far beyond the machinations of the Coalition party room. It is hardly a huge leap to argue that the latest leadership tussle in Canberra is merely a symptom of a much deeper malaise in Australian society that has rendered ours perhaps the most volatile of the Westminster democracies (with the notable exception of Kenya). Whoever replaces our incumbent Prime Minister (and it is only a matter of when and how), they will be the fourth leader of this country in as many years. And all this at the tail end of a period of unprecedented prosperity that has made us the envy of the world.

As this golden age draws to a close, and our politics becomes ever more fractious, someone is going to have to explain to future generations why we chose to squander this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to nurture a more equitable and cohesive society rather than the hornet's nest we have become. With the gift of 25 years of almost unbroken peace and prosperity, how to explain a society mired in debt and completely unprepared for the challenges of the 21st century? How to explain rates of domestic violence in this antipodean shangri-la that rank amongst the highest in the world, a generation of barely literate high school graduates, an ever-widening gap between rich and poor? If for the poet Auden the 1930's were that "low, dishonest decade", then the noughties were ours. It seems we are a nation who frets over its children except when it comes to the legacy they will inherit.

It is pointless looking to our political leaders for answers to these questions. Even those easing into a well-funded retirement are too busy sniping about their individual political legacies to acknowledge the collective damage they have done to this country through their mindlessly partisan, pugilistic brand of parliamentary democracy, serenely oblivious to the fact that a turd is still a turd no matter how much you polish it. The politics of consensus, the politics of grown-ups is, sadly, not a concept they ever embraced. The indigenous leader, Noel Pearson, showed what an inspirational leader can mean in his eulogy for the late Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, reaching beyond his own constituency to tell a bigger story that touched us all. But sadly leaders like Pearson or Whitlam are the exception that proves the rule. Pearson's eulogy was like a desert flower amid the arid fare of the spin doctors and the nodding heads of the 24-hour news cycle. It proved that even a society now bordering on sub-literacy can still be moved by the power of words.

The more nuanced thinkers amongst the Australian commentariat, such as Fairfax's Peter Hartcher, do, of course, have a vital role to play in salvaging something from this train wreck. But although it is not our role to influence policy per se, we poets and writers need to be mindful that we do not devolve into a class of glorified ambulance chasers, that our role is not merely to hold up a mirror to society, but to remind it of what it may have left behind and how that may effect what we are becoming as a nation. To do so we need to throw off the last of the old cultural cringe and glory in the language of Pearson and Whitlam, Slessor and Carey, Dransfield and Wright, that great gift from our forebears which in the right hands can be a remarkable tool for change.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content 

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his

   generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their

   education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

- W.H. Auden "The Unknown Citizen"

New Poetry by Robert Verdon

Asylum

sleepless, I peer
through Soviet field glasses 
my father gave me
back in the 
Cold War

the dove dips 
toward the swell that snaps 
across its eyes,
boxes its ear-coverts, 
brittle as bakelite

the dove dips with
my heartbeat, through the
cross-hatched razor wire,
the shredded Southern Cross 
tottering above

a 
sinking ship, 
deck peeled back like a scab,
while thunder wrestles with
the wind’s wet screech

the dove dips and flips,
and falls,
and fights,
and dips and drips like a dislocated tap,
skimming, gasping slowing

early in the morning, I rise in safety,
a waking after an operation, the insomnia gone;
like gongs
gangly girls and boys in gold, and green, call out
on the hard beach below.


- Robert David Verdon 2015


Robert Verdon is a writer in Canberra, Australia, and has a number of publications to his credit.