New Poetry by James Croal Jackson

Like a box of chocolates

Did you know what you were going to get, strolling

through the supermarket handpicking chocolates,

deciding between pecan bon bons, truffles,

and white chocolate shells filled with fudge?

We did not yet know the salt of incandescence,

your caramel smile on the roof of my mouth,

blind with each other’s taste, the lavender

some sickly rose blooming.

We melted together in the sun not worrying

about how our distinct tastes would smelt and swirl

around in our greedy mouths how our tongues flicked

and explored until we were almost satisfied but

every good thing melts the way autumn crumples

at the peak of its most swirling sweetness.

- James Croal Jackson 2016

James Croal Jackson writes poetry and occasionally music. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Find out more at jimjakk.com. 

New Poetry by James Diaz

Monty IV

Cold hands how do I say

go before me

lay everyplace

you've been

on my body bone

thigh-offspring crawling

crystal clear

water heart gushing

at the edges

screaming 'last night

I loved you so bad

I thought it would not end'

bending toward your oak

and acrylic fingertips

water willows

you don't understand

I write because

you are death-spirit

and I am compact

like a lover

from out of the woods

a compass pressed

into your breast bone

inking three thousand names

for 'enduring' and 'getting through'

and 'walk it off, kid'

that I cannot ingest you like air

that so much of you escapes me

that my filament, my soul bruise

burns in the aftermath

gathering your crumb trail

weapon of love cut out of paper

these words won't do

but I'll say them anyway

I love... (...)

- James Diaz 2016

James Diaz lives in upstate New York. He is the founding editor of the online literary arts journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in HIV Here & Now, Foliate Oak, Chronogram, Indiana Voice Journal, Pismire, Epigraph, and Cheap Pop Lit. http://heroinchic.weebly.com/

New Poetry by Faith Pomeroy

Writing Process

As usual it is not beautiful,
but only scribbled words against a white blank rage. I
cry out for  my petty injustices and
dread the 2 a.m. bell toll that
explains the difference between intent and consequence;
fragility of bone is no excuse to
give misery a poetic line.

Heavy on tongue and tooth
I leave the writing desk for
jasmine tea, replace an embrace for a
kindred spirit in chipped porcelain.
Loving me is not effortless.

Men throw rings away like tea bags,
(Nothing about this is poetic), they

Open legs and leave lust lying like
partially structured paragraphs
quietly clawing at margins and footnotes. It’s
redundant to write the same thing over and over.

Short of breath and breadth, I
type routine  into conversation, I
utilize absence  for coping, I scratch
Vinyl against  needle and pray it has more meter than
women begging for rings.

Xenocide bleeds in every line and
you think that makes it
zealous poetry. 


- Faith Pomeroy 2016

Hello! My name is Faith Pomeroy and I am a graduate from James Madison university in Harrisonburg, VA where I studied English with a concentration in creative writing. I have been writing all my life and feel like it is something that I use to express myself as well as think things through. Specifically, in this poem that I am submitting I tried to pinpoint the exact process I go through mentally and physically each time I begin a new piece. I also played around with the form of the poem; each break begins with the next letter of the alphabet. I believe that poetry speaks very loudly of ones heart and I have hope that this poem is speaking loudly for mine. 

New Poetry by Kip McMillan

Gloria

can you learn how to place an iv

hitch hiking an emergent vet visit

on your way to San Diego

his teeth spattered

raindrops wrapped in

a tourniquet blanket the size of family

you raised him

alone

run with your thumb out

sobbing catheters

trying to save a dead dog.

- Kip McMillan 2016

Kip McMillan is a bilingual poet in Spanish and English living in Boone, North Carolina. She is a student of nursing and Spanish at Appalachian State University. She hopes that nursing can cure things that poetry cannot and vice versa.

New Poetry by Margaret Holley

Lilies of the Valley

And then everything blooms. 
Snowdrops dot the hillside, redbuds blush dark pink,

and one morning the scent of lilacs
steals in through our window.  My husband has purchased

a second cane, this one with a leather-
wrapped handle and handsome wood shaft, more elegant

than the drug store version we started with.
He walks in very small steps now . . . “for balance.”

For two days I’ve been trying to recall
the name of our handy kitchen slicer, without success. 

And the name of that white-flowered bush . . .
gone for good?  I imagine my words like petals, one

by one letting go of their little twigs.
I’d rather not remember that all these blooms – fireworks

of forsythia, the blood-red tulips –
are incarnations of ice and the slush it became. 

One December my picture calendar promised,
“The new bread sleeps under the snow.”  For now, we are

the new bread – hyacinths, lilacs, lilies of the valley. 
Then we are snow.


- Margaret Holley 2016

Margaret Holley’s fifth book of poems is Walking Through the Horizon (University of Arkansas Press).  Her work has appeared in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and many other journals.  Former director of Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program, she currently serves as a docent at Winterthur Museum.

New Poetry by Don Thompson

T&R Farms

A brisk, self-confident wind

touches the brackish pond—

a sludge green that broods

and broods until

it becomes almost black.

Nothing happens: Sometimes

the wind has to move on

without moving the water.

- Don Thompson 2016

Don Thompson was born and raised in Bakersfield, California, and has lived in the southern San Joaquin Valley for most of his life.  He has been publishing poetry since the early sixties, including a dozen books and chapbooks.  For more information and links to his publication, visit his website San Joaquin Ink (don-e-thompson.com).

New Poetry by Abigail George

The theft of George Botha’s silence

Comrade, elsewhere
there’s progress in a distillate
that can’t be erased
from public life. “Man for all seasons”.
After silence I’m
caught between the wires of
the rise and decline of apartheid.
The decline and fall
of an empire. Tidal.
Its aftermath windswept
with integral bridges.
Out there cities plural,

it’s a landscape of graves.
The brilliant gone long
before their time. Comrades,
countrymen, countrywomen.
They’re welcomed
into eternity even
though they’re more
ghost than ash, dirt, clay, earth, soil.
Afterwards, I feel
a kind of emptiness inside.
As if I’ve been hollowed
out with fingers.

He's an atom. He's an angel
whose sins have been
washed away. His
hands are clean as
snow. He’s wind
and sky and rain
without a soul. The
forecast says that
he’s a weathered particle with velocity.
Listen, he’s a symphony.
A Masai warrior feet
in the dust. He’s independent
of the river. I can taste
his truth. Its light. Salt.


- Abigail George 2016

Abigail George briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. Some of her poems have appeared in and are forthcoming from Birds Piled Loosely, Hamilton Stone Review, Literary Orphans, The Writing Disorder, Toad Suck Review, Vigil Pub Mag. Some of her stories have appeared in and are forthcoming in Spontaneity, Hackwriters Magazine, Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine, and Africanwriter.com. She is the recipient of grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, Centre for the Book in Cape Town, and ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council).

New Words by Rob Walker

Generic Trump Speech

Wow. UN. BELIEVABLE. UN. BELIEVABLE.

We have amazing people. I’m self-funding. I’m putting in my own money. I’ve made millions and millions of dollars. These people are so stoopid. We’re gonna win in Florida. I gotta tell ya. I’m a non-politician. We gonna win Big League. Yuge. I have to say. Wow. We have a number of – and I’ll never forget it – we’re gonna make America great again – I love you too darling – I LOVE Oklahoma I love your football team yeah let’s hear… hear it for that football team and by the way we are going to build that wall and who’s gonna Pay for that wall? That’s right, the border’s become a very big deal a very big deal this is important we’re gonna have to send these people back we don't know where they come from they have no paperwork see that guy in the old days I’d punch him in the face everyone’s too politically correct nowadays were all going to Hell. It’s disgusting. Everyone’s stoopid but I’m very smart you know remember what I said I love waterboarding. I think it’s fine. Standing ovation. We gotta build up our military our military is depleted we gotta take care of our vets they are important so important and I’ll tell you what so I came down that escalator and it was about borders it was about trade it was about the military and it resonated and I’ve been number one in the polls since that very first day. Number 1. I have to tell you. Aren’t those debates ridiculous though? The networks were forced to have these debates. How about I don’t do the next one? No I’ll do… I like this guy – stand up! It’s all about turning this country around rapidly and beautifully we have countries you haven’t heard of making a fortune out of the United States by the way I love Hispanics I have thousands working for me I will be the greatest jobs president that God every created that I can tell you that I can tell you we’re not gonna get ripped off any more. I’m a very good business person I built an amazing company and by the way you know with the tax returns? You don’t learn about – I love you too – look at her, thankyou we have got the dumbest tax policy by a factor of twenty. It’s a tremendous problem. Our leaders are dummies folks, major major dummies. We gonna replace Obamacare with . . . something terrific. You know I love my supporters. I love them. I love the people in this room and it comes out in every single poll and they’re better than – every single poll said like Trump can do anything. They love Trump. I love them. And the numbers are staggering and I’m like 98% and they’re like 10%. Were gonna save so much money so much money. Win against Chinah, the Japaneese… nobody can do this stuff better than me. Nobody. Nobody. We have something so special going on. Something so special going on - it’s a movement. It’s a movement. It’s a movement to take our country back. And it is. And that’s what it is. A movement to take it back. I can promise you that.  It’s gonna be so beautiful and that’s what we’re doing. It takes guts to run for president. Not easy. I’m self-funding my campaign. I can’t be bought. That I can tell you.

We’re gonna do something that’s so amazing. We are gonna start winning again. We’re gonna kill ISIS. Folks call me and thank me so I’m gonna say get out there vote make America great again folks. Thankyou. I love you. Thankyou.

- Rob Walker 2016

Born Robert John Walker (26 June 1953), Rob Walker has lived in Adelaide or the Adelaide Hills most of his life. He attended Cowandilla Primary and Plympton High Schools and trained as a primary school teacher at Western Teachers College (later University of South Australia.) He has worked as a primary school educator, particularly in the Performing Arts area. In addition to poetry he writes occasional book reviews, articles, essays and short fiction. He currently divides his time between Australia and Himeji, Japan. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

New Poetry by James Walton

Here and Now/Then and There

Love walks out of the same door
it came in by,
the aperture between heart and mind
be grateful for that.
How the rooms grew in adrenalin rush
and the most simple of things
a sofa for instance,
where you hugged over family life and death
held in the turmoil of it all.
Wallpaper moments that look back at you
open windows that let sighs waver,
laughter doing the washing up
whose turn it was to cook in that lousy oven.
The speeding world settled
in scattered books and music,
fur balls and muddy paws
or a child’s sudden end of the world sob.
So close the panel tenderly,
turn the handle as though you’re touching a rib cage gently,
this place was the centre of something.


- James Walton 2016

James Walton lives in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland, Australia. He has been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, and many journals and anthologies. He has been short listed twice for the ACU national Literature Prize, is a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, and Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition.  His collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ is available. He’s been a Librarian, bred Salers cattle, and was a public sector union official for many years.

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Night Walk

I am not thinking, or walking for any reason

though I calculate these steps.
the madness in me
is breathing

in the silent hours
I see the air 
does not belong to anyone, lost
against the freezing skin
I am still not tired enough 
to sleep.

and if my blood runs 
it is not accidental 

from where I am standing 
the damage is immeasurable

no one on the road at 4am 
listening 
to the cars approaching.


- Robbie Coburn 2016

New Poetry by Stanford Cheung

Pewter

is not what defines color,

for this poem I wrote was before love,

before the darkness poured

a half bottled week,

painted so quickly

into bent back fear.

The shades, that keep

our days and nights,

before the slow witness

of our time,

where no one directs

what's right or wrong

but an outgrown canvas,

gliding paler down chests

of past and ties.

How I wish to catch another glimpse

of your black pewter dress, how I could

touch your rising arms, not to wake, but

to be woken in your dreams.

How I wish of your colors, outside all

spectrum, no different from different

springs than my distant aged eyes-

How those gaits, I choose

to follow, of a permafrost you,

a light that needs more flint

than your little song you always

sung,

- Stanford Cheung 2016

Stanford Cheung is a Canadian poet and musician from Toronto. He is the author of the chapbook "Any Seam or Needlework" from The Operating System Press (2016).  

New Poetry by Victor Clevenger

It’s True

She was small,
dried tobacco 
tinted and
beautiful;

she sold me
three-dollar
wine and new
notebooks
after I had torn
the last pages
out of mine.

I loved her, 
but never stood 
a chance; I was
a drunken poet
who nobody 
knew and she
was not 
interested in 
agony—

another smart 
woman.



- Victor Clevenger 2016

Victor Clevenger's latest collection is titled, In All These Naked Pictures Of Us.  Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print or online in, Chiron Review; The Beatnik Cowboy; Eleventh Transmission; Crab Fat Literature; NEAT; Dead Snakes; Blink Ink; Zombie Logic Review; and coming soon to Poetry Pacific; Your One Phone Call; BAD ACID LABORATORIES, INC.; and the Poems-For-All project. Victor’s work has also appeared in anthologies published by Lady Chaos Press.

New Poetry by Sean Wright

Black Snake Driving

We drive

north to the next town;

pass fields of stubble, grey

in late summer heat.

The road slows and stretches out;

a long black snake

basking in the morning sun.

Straight, the ride lulls us

to a meditative state.

Sheep so still, a quick

glance sees them stone;

small granite boulders nosing through

the lee side of the hill.

We drive

north to escape the sense

that standing still

is one foot out of six

beneath the ground.

Road side’s littered with plaques

that mark the resting place

of towns half remembered in

the double barreled names

of the district football teams -

Premiers ‘06,

‘07 and ‘13

We drive

north, the vista

never seems to change

but ruined farmsteads

claw up from the scrub;

each year sees them less

above ground than before.

Limestone monuments

forestalling the end of a dream.

We drive

north and the next

town feels just like

the one we left behind.

Familiar looks in faces

resigned to settling down.

Dusty streets, shriveled

grass, young children marched

off to a school

that bears family names

on halls, fund raised

playground sets

and clay-brick memorials

We drive on

and on, that long black snake

to feel it curve back
upon itself.

- Sean Wright 2016

SB Wright was born in Nhulunbuy, Arnhem Land, though most of his life has been spent in Alice Springs. A graduate of NTU he has spent his adult working life as a security guard, a martial arts instructor, a trainer in an international gaming company and as a secondary school teacher.

His work has been published in Tincture Journal, INDaily Adelaide, Eureka Street,  A Hundred Gourdes and the Anthologies: The Stars Like Sand, 50 Haikus and the forthcoming Poetry & Place (2015).

A Selection from "Engraft" by Michele Seminara

Dog

Pulled forth by a line
of scent, the dog’s snout snakes
through hissing grass —

I jerk his neck, master 
to slave, and drag him
from shit’s wonderment.

On brighter days he’s free to sniff:
when the wind’s not wet 
and the ground’s not mud 
and the children snooze 
and the drudge is done
and my mind’s been set free —

When my head’s
been buried long enough 
in the cool green strands 
of its siren-muse, 
burrowing to inhale
the prized and pungent self.

Pulled forth by a line
of scent, my furtive soul craves 
closet verse —

World jerks my neck, master  
to slave, and drags me
from word’s wonderment.

- Michele Seminara 2016

Michele Seminara is a poet and managing editor of online creative arts journal Verity La (http://verityla.com/, @VerityLa). Her first poetry collection Engraft (Island Press, 2016) was recently launched in Sydney by Martin Langford and will be launched in Newcastle by Anne Walsh on Feb 29, 7:30pm, at Poetry At The Pub (Wickham Park Hotel, Cnr of Maitland Road & Albert St, Wickham). She will also be reading (along with the other Island Press poets — Les Wicks, Mark Roberts, David Gilbey and Lauren Williams) in Melbourne on Saturday 19 March, 2pm, at the Dan O'Connell Hotel (225 Canning St, Carlton).

Michele blogs at TheEverydayStrange (http//wordpress.com/stats/micheleseminara. Wordpress.com) and is on Twitter @SeminaraMichele.

Copies of Engraft ($20) can be purchased by cheque from http://islandpress.tripod.com/ISLAND.htm or directly from Michele via Paypal or direct credit by contacting micheleseminara@hotmail.com.

New Poetry by Thomas Lequin

Solitude

I let her in for the

winter, Solitude.

She arrives in December

and stays till May.

She likes the basement best,

seated by the wood stove

in a rocking chair.

Wind, ice storms, nor’easters—

below twenty degrees

she seems more present,

more quiet.

Every so often

she falls asleep.

When she wakens thereafter,

startled and chilled,

more wood is needed.

- Thomas Lequin 2016

Thomas Lequin is a priest in Maine, who is also a farmer, Maine Master Guide, hunter, fisherman, and poet.  His work has recently appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal, Anglican Theological Review, Iconoclast, Echoes, The Whirlwind Review, The Daily Bulldog, Church World, A Parallel Universe, The Alembic, and an anthology of contemporary animal poetry, The Wildest Peal (Moon Pie Press), 2015.

New Poetry by John Swain

The Threaded Loop

Gown of salmon and mantelet

over the coast

she shoulders with the winter sun. 

I finger a pearl clasp through

the threaded loop

and then her back shows, descending

into the sea. 

Running with a chasing wind

behind the elk,

her death day split my tongue

into ribs and flint

to give the timber wolf 

of the forest and mountain cloud

bleeding the fawn on the ground.

The wild light shines

without our prayers or offering,

I will still keep hers

in a metal box of smooth beach stones

and torn cloth and knife teeth

singing to the killed

we will be alone. 

- John Swain 2016

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.  Least Bittern Books published his second collection, Under the Mountain Born.  

New Poetry by Michael Keshigian

Settling

They did what they desired,

pursued a dream until it evaporated,

relinquishing then

to the arduous commerce of acquisition,

allowing sorted perspectives

and temperaments of trophy representations

to infiltrate an idyllic affection

that long ago dwindled

behind the guise of co-existence.

And now, they are here,

at a table of ruin,

years of routine impossible to amend.

Dinner is served,

the baked salmon drowns

in the clear glass lake of the plate,

the wine’s bouquet has wilted.

It has been decided,

the present has its promise,

it yields a blessing,

no expectation, no loss,

yet a place to go,

vague reasons to remain.

Creature comforts have

no hearts to break.

- Michael Keshigian 2016

Michael Keshigian’s tenth poetry collection, Beyond was released May, 2015 by Black Poppy.  He has been widely published in numerous national and international journals, appearing as feature writer in over a dozen publications with 6 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations.

New Poetry by David Ades

Whether or Not They Will Ever Understand

The man tries to solve himself.

He breathes himself in and out, full of being.

He speaks the stories of himself,

shares them, listens to their echoes returning,

folding and unfolding himself

over and over like a worn map.

The woman picks at locks, listens

with her inner ear, looks with her third eye

but cannot reconcile herself to her reflection,

the way a stranger peers back at her,

image not conforming to the image

in her mind. Strangers to themselves,

they can only be strangers to each other,

each one a puzzle, an enigma, unsolvable,

and oh, their children, their burdened children.

- David Ades 2016

David Adès is a Pushcart Prize nominated Australian poet living in Pittsburgh since 2011. He is the author of Mapping the World (Friendly Street Poets / Wakefield Press, 2008) commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008, and the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal (Garron Publishing, 2015). David’s poems have appeared widely in Australia and the U.S. in publications including over 20 of the Friendly Street Readers, and numerous literary magazines and have also been widely anthologized, most recently in Verse Envisioned: Poems from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Works of Art They Have Inspired. In 2014 David was awarded the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was also shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.

New Poetry by Gregg Dotoli

Approach

Relearn the approach toward word
Like the bread-handed child coaxing a bluejay
For the feather and blue close-up
to satisfy his curious nature
to get peace-close
to observe not cull
that child is pure in objective
and sincere in goal
but becomes polluted and eco-aloof
time sheds innocence
instills neglect towards nature
like our empty approach to climate-wreck
animals and plants wordlessly weep
Nero fiddled while Rome burned
and we look away as nature dies
Relearn the approach toward word
get peace-close to word
accept waning nature , man as viral polluter
Earth
this is our circle, every point
words deny, nature never lies


- Gregg Dotoli 2016

Gregg Dotoli lives in New York City area and has studied English at Seton Hall University. He works as a white hat hacker, but his first love is the arts. His poems have been published in, Quail Bell Magazine, The Four Quarters Magazine, Calvary Cross, Dead Snakes, Halcyon Magazine, Allegro Magazine, the Mad Swirl, Voices Project, Writing Raw and Down in the Dirt.

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

 Splinter

The stairs wound tightly and to the left but doing so at their own tempo. The fact that they were not quite narrow enough prevented anyone from describing them properly as winding.

Regardless of whether it was day or night, there was little light to be had so that were any of the tenants asked, each would give a different answer as to what color the plaster walls were.

There was one point where the stairs, shortly before the first floor truly began their curve, happening immediately before the landing.  It created an almost optical illusion, a cracked plaster wall jutting out to block any further progress.

 In general I never took the stairs too fast but years of living in the same place had taught me to maintain a steady, set motion as to not feel the effects of my ascent until at my door.

Immediately in the spot after the illusion was where Nadjet had decided to sit, one step below the first of those to creak, “night out on the town” shoes in her hand.

I had almost actually almost tripped over her. She had taken her shoes off in the foyer. The hour being late, heels on the stairs informing all of her return as she passed each floor being preferably avoided.

 A splinter had painfully lodged itself on the underside of her big toe. It was not that she was going to remove the wood here, the hour and alcohol mixed with the initial surprise so that she had taken a seat to momentarily catch her breath.

She started to say something, witty banter eluding her. She instead let out a gentle purr like sound. I reached down my hand to help her up.

 I knew that I always looked best in bar light. Night, its’ cousin did not want to play favorites, her in the stairwell, she looked good, someone’s heart’s desire.

We both once again began our climb. I took the lead. Several times her palm found the small of my back by way of preventing herself from face-planting. I knocked my shins on a few steps and was sure that tomorrow would find a trail of my palm prints on the wall where I had righted myself.

 Her door was opposite mine. Once again to save money on light bulbs the concierge had “accidentally” turned off the light on our landing so that my key could not find the door.

Nadjet laughed.

“C’mere, I have some matches.”

She lit one to open her door first.

“Come in for a drink?”

Our apartments were the same size but hers was in a perpetual state of disarray which made it seem smaller.

She let her dress fall to the floor. Now only in a cream colored slip so worn out that there were shiny spots marking where the once soft material had given up, she crossed the living room. Two steps and she grimaced as her big toe reminded her of its invader.

 I was asked to help her. We went into the bathroom. I sat on the lip of the tub, using the sink to balance herself, she extended her barefoot towards me.

“Do you see anything?”

I did. There was a thick muted brown streak. My fingertip tickled the spot but felt nothing but skin, it had burrowed. Opening her medicine cabinet she found a safety pin. Running the hot water for a moment the pin was slowly passed back and forth under the tap before violently shaking it dry with several flicks of her wrist.

 She switched positions. Now, putting the bad foot up on the sink, bending forward so that chin almost touched knee and the ghost of Degas’ ballet dancers were conjured up. I had to guide her hand to the top of the streak.

 She began rooting around with the pin. Distantly, it reminded me of a childhood surgery.

“Jesus, look at you, you’re white as a sheet. Got it, let’s get those drinks.”

She let the water blast her toe for a moment and this time it was my turn to follow her.

I was handed a glass. She peered over the top of hers at me. Her lipstick was perfect for the shape of her mouth, its color the same as that of petals about to fall off a flower.

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2016

www.waynewolfson.com