A "Coo-ee" to all Aussie Poets (and maybe some Kiwis in the spirit of ANZAC)

 

Bluepepper simply does not see enough Australian poetry in our inbox. Why this is perhaps someone out there in Ozlit land could help (politely, please!) enlighten us. In the meantime, however, and at the risk of appearing both needy and parochial in these testing times, Bluepepper is issuing a call to all Australian poets to submit. Come on, let's see your work side by side with the best the northern hemisphere can produce! All we ask in return is that you consult the fairly clear and simple submissions guidelines before submitting.

New Poetry by Ian Ganassi

Test Pattern

Watching the cold brittle mountains devolve into memory,

It wasn’t much of a leap from one side to the other.

The other was significant in making two,

And then a third was on the way. 

It was a miracle, breathing in

And out. Up and down. The song went on from there.

The sky flinging rain around like confetti

Was better than a downright deluge.

I had just called the anxiety taxi,

And there it sat,

Waiting for the time to break down.

Daylight savings:

We lost an hour, but before long

We didn’t even miss it.

I’ll pick you up in 20 minutes he said. 

“Ever do much boondoggling?”

Check your racing form. 

“There’s something dashing about it.”

Dashing to the hospital. Dashing to the morgue.

“Which way to Sloan Kettering?” asked

The Marlboro man, from the saddle.

But let’s not break our arms

Patting ourselves on the back. 

“I’ll say,” she used to say, “I’ll say.”

- © Ian Ganassi 2020

Ian Ganassi's work has appeared recently or will appear soon in numerous literary magazines, such as New American Writing; BlazeVox; Twisted Vine, Manhattanville Review, Visitant, and The American Journal of Poetry, among many others. My poetry collection Mean Numbers was published in 2016. My new collection, True for the Moment, is forthcoming from MadHat Press. Selections from an ongoing collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com.

 

A New Appreciation of Craig Powell's "Music and Women's Bodies"

Craig Powell, Music and Women’s Bodies

Five Islands Press, Wollongong, 2002, 68pp

ISBN 0 864187769

RRP $26.

A review by Rebecca Kylie Law

 In admiration of Powell’s poetic oeuvre, I reached out to him recently via email unaware an accident of 2010 had left him brain-damaged and crippled.  My enquiry asked if he would consider contributing some comments towards my new, forthcoming collection of poetry with Wipf & Stock. He wrote back to express his regret at being unable to accomplish such a task but was flattered that he had been considered. Mortified by the news and the gall of my proposal, I quickly wrote back a letter of apology. Yet Powell persisted in making things well again, writing again and again with anecdotes of his poetic life, of insights into what was fast becoming a succinct biography of his life. We exchanged books and on receipt of Music and Women’s Bodies I was so stirred by its beauty that I approached Powell for the permission to write a review. It was granted and this is the product: for Powell and eternally, his readers.    

 

 There is something heavy, dark and immense in the early pages of this collection and like a world it shifts its weight to sleep with the moon or grow under the sun. True to its cover image “Artist and the Muse (Rembrandt)” by Gary Shead, Craig Powell’s Music and Women’s Bodies seems inspired by a wooden doll-like female marquette of a real women, shy to the light, sweet to the knowledge of touch and  brave to the new. Just as Shead’s doll comes forward out of the shadows, her hand touching the side of a supposed artist’s easel, Powell’s poems reveal truths of love that seem so honest they could be majestic – indeed, the doll’s dress is majestic in the silkiness of the fabric, the tones of lavender purples, smudged pastel pinks and moon dusted whites. Her silver drop earring adding class to her exposed shoulders and arms. The picture and the poetry collection speak of the same muse, that drifting presence of the beloved that is sometimes hiding but inexplicably devoted. This is the slowness that anchors Powell’s poems although the gaze is unapologetically male.

 Born in Wollongong, Powell’s male gaze finds its place in a rural landscape fraught with opposites, life versus death, pain versus happiness, the visible versus the invisible. So that, visiting his brother’s dairy farm in the first poem “The Calves”, Powell is witness to an experience he can never bodily know and the atmosphere is tense with pragmaticism and empathy. It is October and in “the paddocks one/by one the nubbly shadows stagger up from/ the soil” and calves are born of their “Ayreshire/ mothers”. Two days later, in the “wooden feeding pens”, there is a mess of life as the vigorous newborns clamour for the milk of “the whole herd, a blind blurring of mothers” poured out in buckets; whilst out of “the spring light”, on the “earthen floor of the barn”, his brother’s daughter “holds a bottle to a calf too frail to suck” and cradles it to its end. “She’ll keep cradling it”, announces Powell, asserting the maleness of his gaze and the marvel of the opposite sex. Yet the pain doesn’t stop there,  the mother cows in the closing stanza crying “noisily for the calves taken away” into the evening whilst inside the house, the human family share  “wine” and “a meal of male calf”. Powell’s gaze, pragmatic and empathetic empties itself into the landscape of his surrounds, gazing out at a moon rising behind a distant hill and drinking in its outpouring of light – “white as the ash of ancestors”. A communion of sorts, the timeline from birth to midnight and the end of the day is newly recognised by the late hour of their meal and the exaltation of the moon so that “they eat more slowly”. 

 There are four sections to Music and Women’s Bodies and the division considers the same landscape from different vantage points. In Section I, Powell is child and man, brother and grandson, son and nephew, husband with wife and in these guises is always the non-judgemental watcher, the human with feelings who suspects right and wrong but is never an outsider of a group experience. When a child, in “Die Zauberflote” for instance, he plays a tune about a “bird-man” wanting “a maiden or little wife” and announces only “grown-ups…/ knew about things like that”, deciding later in the verse, he wants “not to know”, for the world instead to be made up of fiction, of “stories”. Recognising difference, the “grown-ups” are still the same people that “take me home with them” and in this way, Powell unifies with the family unit. In Section II, Powell leaves the present landscape of his own birthing, youth and adulthood to visit the landscape of his father in c.1912 and 1922.. He describes the Australian landscape his father is born into, the disputes between Aboriginals, an Afro-American working for a “Chinese Market gardener AhSoon, known as ‘Smiler’  and police. There are violent mobbings and deaths not only racial but also territorial as Powell tells us in the end notes of the collection: “local aborigines were kept out of town and not allowed to camp on Crown land”. The two poems here, wedged between Section I and Section III become the understory of the first incarnation of Powell’s existence and the third incarnation of Powell’s existence as a poet and orator of difference, otherness and truths. Translating select poems of Sydney-based Russian migrant Yuriy Mikhailik, Powell fills the pages of Section III with a sense of a universal pastoral dreaming. So that the gaze of Milhailik across the Australian landscape meets the gaze of Australian born Powell and  nature, event and human sentiment are non-conflictual: “the moon glares in my eye, it scorches my heart,/ it chills memory”. There are “Hay-stacks… quiet/ where the sky’s edge is found” and “the evening star” dances “over the world’ as if it is “forever”. Section four becomes then, a celebration of “coming back” from the “world” to the place of childhood; and only then, being the adult with a past. Replete with memories of past girlfriends, the loss of a child, a rat surfacing to the sun from a basement, Music and Women’s Bodies is a child’s drawing of relationships between image, fact and music. Hearing music from the radio his Aunt tells him is Tchaikovsky, a boy peers out of her lap to better espy her newspaper and a “lingerie ad” of  “a woman in a petticoat” as “he’d once seen his mother”. Yet the adult Powell, imagining this scenario is smiling “at the boy” and his confusion and acknowledging what can be known is sometimes: “Just that, maybe. All he held against death./ Music and Women’s bodies. Just that.” 

 

 Concluding with the poem “Garden Spiders”, Powell’s journey across the vast landscape of his mind, heart and soul fixes on a garden time has left to grow wild, on a garden which “becomes truthful, a green/ wildness with no lawn or flower-beds”. And although Powell has told us earlier in “All you Know” that there is no God, the spiders in this honest garden are “angels” or “garden sprites” or even “the ghosts of ancestors” and that dark, heavy immensity of our world is given the breath to suppose it unfathomable. Which is, more exactly, Powell’s majestic muse, his opposite attraction; and that which brings the music of love but can never be known like the word. 

- © Rebecca Kylie Law 2020

Rebecca Kylie Law holds a PhD from UWS. She has published five collections of poetry with Picaro Press, Interactive Publications and Ginninderra Press and another is forthcoming with Wipf & Stock. Individual poems, reviews, interviews and articles have been published in numerous journals Australia and overseas. She works as a freelance writer and teacher.

 

New Poetry by Patricia Carragon

Having a Party

 

Anna had a good time   grooving to Sam Cooke on the radio 

time-traveled back to when she   a teenager

teased her hair   wore pencil skirts   twisted to 45s 

put popcorn on the Formica table   drank Cokes from the Frigidaire

chatted to friends about Johnny   the bad boy from Glenwood Road

 

her American dream resided in expectation

the princess wedding gown   the white picket fence around a Flatbush Victorian 

the family genes to be passed on

 

no matter how hard she tried   Johnny left her for Sally

 

other men kept their distance   

& early menopause called her instead

 

her wedding dress burned   her unborn kids buried   

her Victorian house sold to developers 

 

for a lifetime of work   a meager social security check    EBT benefits

& a cramped one-bedroom apartment with her tabby    Jenny

 

a cracked mirror meant 7 more years of bad luck 

& further decline in her reflection

 

she lived in quarantine before it became mandatory   

held on to her past in boxes   shopping bags   & 45s

 

the song ended   & Anna felt dizzy 

on her torn sofa   she thought about Johnny   Sally   & what transpired

 

with eyes still open   her head rested on the frayed throw pillow

 

Jenny tapped Anna’s shoulder   sniffed under her nose & mouth

realized that she was not responding

  

- © Patricia Carragon 2020

Patricia Carragon is the author of several books of poetry and fiction.  Her most recent poetry collections are Meowku (Poets Wear Prada) and Innocence (Finishing Line Press). Her debut novel, Angel Fire, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts the Brownstone Poets reading in Brooklyn and publishes an associated anthology annually. She is also an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.

New Poetry by Karen Neuberg

Days I’m a Hard Windshield

—after W.S. Merwin, Mary Chapin Carpenter

I feel lucky today
as though my reflection
will please me, as though the awful
events happening & happening
are not happening, as though I know
how to not go along with them.


COVID-19

This viral font of the fountain ceaselessly pouring into the spirit of us, onto the plains of us, across the prairies of us, into the dense (remaining) forests, along bridges and highways, through landmarks and spires, places of prayer, down urban streets, within playgrounds, onto soccer fields, and far into our days and nights. Continuation linked to an exponential growth formula as we stay inside the grip of its hold.

What the world will be like after 

There will be rubble and pillars of salt.
Some currently unknown, unimaginable
might crawl or bloom or explode
into the next creation.

There will be a circularity of time, infinity having
no human to calculate it. Math will exist,
waiting to be rediscovered if, in fact, math
remains a basic truth of the universe.

And the universe will continue filled
with the detritus of our explorations.
And the oceans will overflow the land.
And the cemeteries will be meaningless.

And the sun will shine in its pattern until
it, too, winks out, and is gone.


- © Karen Neuberg 2020

Karen Neuberg’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming Eratio Poetry Journal, Glassworks, Gone Lawn, Really System, and Unbroken. She is the author of PURSUIT (Kelsay Books, 2019) and the chapbook the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). She lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.

New Poetry by Ray Liversidge

Requiem

Our daily walk takes longer now.
But you still insist on
Passing through the cemetery
With its ever growing
Number of headstones.
You taught her grandmother
When we lived in Warrnambool
You tell me again. And his son,
You repeat, never returned from
The war in Vietnam.
And, as is our habit, we stop
To rest at the rotunda
Where, as usual, you turn
Away from the babies’ graves.
And I respectfully deflect
The trembling requiem.


- © Ray Liversidge 2020

Ray Liversidge’s latest book is Oradour-sur-Glane. He has also published two other books of poetry, a verse novel and a chapbook. 

New Poetry by S.K. Kelen

Dark Art

There were wars and hunger abroad,
misery, injustice and evil in the streets 
but on the home front who could bear 
a boredom deep as contentment thus Stupid
danced with Death at the pub, afterwards
in an ivy-tombed terrace house (built of gingerbread)
she opened a glamorous vial, just a whiff
put Stupid to sleep and she transplanted the dog's heart, 
bit by bit into him, it hurt and for a while life 
was lived in dirt—the world was desperate.
Voodoo puppet will live to regret (ironies befall).
The future. Cruel magic swarms happily 
inside the leftover fun people. They blame a song 
from youth for how old they got, or—not.


- © S.K. Kelen 2020

S. K. Kelen has been writing poems longer than he cares to remember. His most recent books are A Happening in Hades (Waratah, NSW: Puncher & Wattmann 2020), and Love’s Philosophy (Summer Hill, NSW: Gazebo Books 2020)

New Poetry by Jim Conwell

Especially the Girls

My cousins had freckles, especially the girls.
Speckled and emphasising how white
their skin was. Delicate white.
Translucent.
Washed by soft bog-rain and shy
of the sun or any other brash noise.

I have seen kids who were closer
to wild deer than anything else.
Shy but curious.
So easily startled.
And Patricia in the bog
with the hair on her head
like a wild spring.
Where have they gone,
with their shoeless feet?


- © Jim Conwell 2020

Jim Conwell’s parents were economic migrants from the rural west of Ireland and he was born, and has lived most of this life, in various parts of London. He currently has had poems published in various magazines including Pangolin Review, Poetry and Audience, Poetry Cornwall, Poetry Pacific, Pushing Out the Boat and Riggwelter Press, He has had two poems shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Prize. He is married to Annemarie van der Meer and they have eight grandchildren. 

New Poetry by Kitty Jospe

՛





Railroad Bridge 

Our shadows step out of our shoes, 
consider centuries 
as sun melts tar in the ties.

But what is not in the picture
is what happened that night
to George Floyd

                        nor five days later
when the sound of a helicopter
and the way the light at the end of the day hits
only certain leaves as protesters gather
and a screen in the window of a gallery, 
(closed for the pandemic)
flashes white letters on a black background
every other second
STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE.

And now, our shadows step into 
different shoes, feel the slash
of real bodies, on ties
to then on that railroad,
the sense of North,
of star.


- © Kitty Jospe 2020

Kitty Jospé loves the possibilities of language! After living and working in Europe, she delighted in teaching French (MA, NYU 1984).  Since 2008, midway in completing an MFA at Pacific University, OR, she delights in moderating poetry appreciation discussions at two of the Rochester, NY Libraries.  Popular reader and speaker, she also has 5 books and appears in many anthologies and reviews such as The Ekphrastic Review, Atlanta Review, The Orchard Journal,

Zingara,  Grasslimbs, Nimrod, Rundelania. 

New Poetry by Carla Sarett

someone somewhere 

It wasn't the first night
a guy was yelling 
loud enough to wake me as I
was dreaming of someone

in a trance on Highway 101 
crying out that he was Jesus,
when I woke up to someone 
shouting to no one. I couldn't tell

how far his fury was from me
but as I lost my dream's dying 
I know someone is shooting
someone somewhere

someone is lighting the sky with 
the red of blood and grief,
blinding white flashes
earthquake-loud battles

cannons, rifles, bombs,
blasts of rage and sorrow, 
and I cannot stop listening
for someone somewhere.


- © Carla Sarett 2020

Carla Sarett's recent work appears or is forthcoming in Third Wednesday, Prole,  The Virginia Normal, Hobart and elsewhere.  Her essays have been nominated for Best American Essay and the Pushcart Prize.  Carla lives in San Francisco.

New Poetry by Zebulon Huset

Honey-Blonde

The old barber keeps a lock
of honey-blonde hair in the side,
buttoned pocket of his apron.
Now and then, when the raised chairs
are vacant, and the radio hums
soft jazz he doesn’t hear anymore,
he reaches into that pocket slowly,
closes his eyes. The hair he feels
sliding, slipping across his fingertips
appears in front of him, and he watches
it gradate from sunshine to soft
sidewalk shadows to full moon.
He always imagines, as the oak
lid closes in his closed eyes, that
he’ll hear the door chime open
and lifting his eyelids, he’d see her
walk in the door, radiating sunbeams
and smiling that sweet smile that
once sold him homemade lemonade
in front of his grandmother’s neighbor’s
home, then walked with him under the
weeping willow’s whishing locks into 
what he imagined as the rest of his life.


- © Zebulon Huset 2020

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. His writing has recently appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Rosebud, Atlanta Review & Texas Review among others. He publishes a writing prompt blog Notebooking Daily and is the editor of the journal Coastal Shelf.

New Fiction by Linda McMullen

Grasshopper

            I only ever ordered grasshoppers because Cynthia Northrup did.  The crème slimed my tongue with the viscous vestiges of last year’s trapped-in-a-laundry-vent Thin Mint. 

I suspected Cynthia only ordered them to set off her flaming-fall-foliage tresses.

Our parents – longtime drop-by-for-a-beer/barbeque/birthday neighbors – assumed our friendship: any pair of young people within a three-year radius must possess an affinity for one another.  Cynthia was a year ahead of me at Salem North; we sat kitty-corner in Algebra II.  (I should say, I formed one corner of her eight-desk ring, otherwise consisting of Matt, Desmond, Jim, Josh, C.J., Adam, and Tommy.  I got 90+ on every test and none of them ever glanced toward my paper.)

After college, Cynthia and I boomeranged successively. 

Neither of us contemplated the other’s existence until we both appeared in Bar None one night.  She asked the manager for an old-school application; I skulked near the door, waiting for a Tinder date (or, it emerged, Godot).  We waved, halfheartedly. 

The three poorly-tipping customers in the bar, dismayed by their ability to hear one another, trickled out.  The bartender’s short sleeves rippled over his biceps; I purportedly recommitted to looking out for my (still absent) date.  The bartender extended his hand to Cynthia.  “Grant.” 

He offered her a poison ivy-tinted beverage – “No charge” – while she bent over her old-school hard-copy application, her V-neckline sinking. 

Cynthia said “thanks” without looking up. 

Then, with the utmost surprise – no “But soft!” about it – he noticed me.

“Grant,” he called.

“Fern.”  Mom’s favorite book: Charlotte’s Web. 

“I should, uh – I’ll get you one too,” he said.  I sipped mine with every appearance of gratitude; he mopped the counter at Cynthia’s elbow.

Cynthia signed her application but Grant interjected with a steady stream of questions about her experience, promising to put in a good word with Leif, the manager.  Cynthia responded with unfeigned seriousness and I found myself itching to slap her.

I texted my date.  He couldn’t lie if he didn’t respond, right?

“This is the best grasshopper I’ve ever had,” I called. 

“Thanks,” replied Grant.  To Cynthia: “Do you see yourself working late hours?  No… other commitments?”

I set down my drink, half-finished, picked up my purse.  

“You didn’t like it?”

“Trying to keep a clear head.”

Grant: everything I’d been unable to find in a boyfriend to date.  A job that would not shock the IRS, and, presumably, an eighth-grade-or-better reading level.  I sought his eyeline, but he was pouring out three nut varieties for Cynthia.

Cynthia handed in her application, called to me, “Hey, can I get a lift?”  

Grant’s face crumbled like a soap opera hero’s.  

I said, “I walked, actually,” which had the benefit of truth.

Cynthia pulled a face, involuntarily.  Grant murmured, “I can get you an Uber… when you’re ready.” 

I suppose some synapse finally fired, because she beamed.  “That’d… be nice.”

I exited.  

Five months and a remarkably unnecessary number of ghostings later…

…having frequently spotted Grant pulling into the Northrups’ driveway …

…I returned to Bar None with an under-inflated balloon bunch and a somber-eyed teddy bear.  I was ostensibly hosting a defective bachelorette party for Amelia from marketing.  She had asked me to be her bridesmaid due to a complete dearth of options.  I had selected Bar None for identical reasons.

Amelia spotted Grant and raised her eyebrows significantly at me.

“He’s seeing someone.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Ever see a low-speed car wreck in real time?” 

Grant presented us with laminated menus.

“What would you like?” I asked.

“Something rich,” Amelia said.  

“I make a decent grasshopper,” said Grant.

“Two, please,” I managed, knees disintegrating, stomach lurching.  Grant nodded without recognition.

Six grasshoppers later – only one and a half of them mine – I packed Amelia and four shrunken balloons into a Lyft.  Then I helped Grant close the place down, in the sense that I toyed with my phone for another ninety minutes atop a teetering stool.  We emitted occasional half-sentences.  He let drop, “my ex… of two days… seeing someone else…” 

At some point thereafter I gently suggested continuing the conversation at his apartment.  

We dated.  (I resumed my tip-tilting seat at Bar None during slow shifts, stayed over).  I imbibed green sludge and tried to replicate ‘30s movie-star lashes.

“You need to see an optometrist?” he asked.

Cynthia blew in one evening with an ex-Marine and a dress cut down to there and Grant offered his best impression of a wolverine on the wrong end of a home invasion.  

But he slid a grasshopper in front of her.  

“On the house.”

And when, inevitably, the Marine strode out, nearly ripping the door off its hinges, and Grant suggested he’d get an Uber for me, I re-downloaded Tinder.  

Right after tipping my bilious drink down Cynthia’s emerald dress.

- © Linda McMullen 2020

Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. Her short stories and the occasional poem have appeared in over sixty literary magazines, including Drunk Monkeys, Storgy, and Newfound.

New Poetry by Carol Casey

Crumpled Love

There are so many ways to crumple
and the lines that persist when smoothed out
turn to cracks, rivers when wet
so that a landscape forms,
grows vegetation, supports life. 
It's in the time it takes to do all this
that there’s a wasteland.

Children don’t think this
when it happens to parents, they
just feel, make it their own, mixed
with their multi-coloured imaginations,
the pictures come out sepia. 

It takes a life-time of crumpling
to understand that love was there,
in hands, meals, shelters,
cuts cleaned and bandaged
even without the kiss; 
to see that crumpled love takes odd forms-
harm not done, twenty-dollar bills
pickups from the bus station,
a tear at the presentation of a rose.


- © Carol Casey 2020

Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Leaf, The Prairie Journal, Synaeresis and others, including a number of anthologies, most recently, Much Madness, Divinest Sense, Tending the Fire and i am what becomes of broken branch.

New Poetry by Rebecca Dempsey

Coming home? 

This red brick-veneered low-rise terrain 
of straight-jacketed yards, 
hedged by swept concrete driveways 
is still warm underfoot. 
It used to be wetland. 

A roof tile slips as dragonflies 
dart over browning Kikuyu and Santa Ana – 
cut too short: straight, back and sides. 

The last startling train echoes across shallow valleys. 
Too few dreamers conjure blank faces, eyes clouded. 
Bleating struggle-throated flocks
crowd decks of floating hulks. 
Cannon fodder for foreign parts. 
Trade quotas fulfilled. 
Awake, I still remember, 
We promised them, sometime around 1990 (and later).
Waved them goodbye. 
I still hear knives sharpening in the Gulf.

Sacrificial Spring Lambs - 
holy meat that fed whey-faced youths, 
who stumbled toward the green dark
of freedom in the gloom of dawn raids.
Goggles on, smiling for cameras.

So many sated the blood frenzy,
dining out on night visions
of vast Mesopotamian plains:
bone strewn and barren, and no good for grazing. 

Who speaks for them? Are they heard?
Herded? Boats return from drying shores. 
Silent. They might stop, but for how long? 

The other day, or 4000 years ago, 
dispatches from Nineveh detail a fresh outbreak:
violence like a natural phenomenon. 

Contested borders, tolls/taxes, sanctions/slaves. 
Women wailing at the butchery. 
A child eating grass. 
We see it again and again. 

The Towers of Silence are dormant.
How can carrion birds be too rare to pick apart the bodies?

Sleepers in dozing suburbs sent them back where
the Cradle of Civilisation bloomed and ripened. 
To the desert. It’s no longer imaginary. 
But full blown. Its mud-bricked cities broken, 
at the edges of dry water ways, 
while reed warblers sing somewhere else. 
Its horizon peopled by smoky ghosts of burning oil wells.

Memories of missiles tracing paths in the night sky:
retina inscribed lightning after-images. I still see them.

The First Poet: She
wrote upon sun-hardened clay... intimations of battle. 
She among the ancient dead, 
Is lost in the sands with the newly deceased. 
Sheep bones and soldiers.
She knows no hierarchies.

She would cry, except there are no tears 
For sheep, nor for those who die as them.
Enheduanna saw the soil was red long ago. 
Red it remains. 


- © Rebecca Dempsey 2020

Rebecca Dempsey is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. He works have been published around the world. She can be found at Writing.Bec. 

New Poetry by Joel Schueler

Shell(ey)

I have brought for you this shell
from the molluskan mortuary. Listen to it.
Hearsay says you can hear might
of sea here. Take this chump — not
the hunter just the picker, and hear
sin fall in. My lament
sits this one out because I took out
the going of the dark and stored it
in the hole of this white and orange grave.
The lived-in jacket in my hand: gold
in a quartz vein. Anyway, how’s everything with
you?


- © Joel Schueler 2020

Joel’s works appear in ten countries in over forty publications including Pennsylvania Literary Journal & The Brasilia Review. From London, he has a BA(Hons) in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

New Poetry by Vern Fein

Mrs. Derment

I am 82 today.
While I cut the lawn,
I remember Mrs. Derment,
my first college landlady
when she was 82.

Walking past those Greek houses,
down those old streets,
fresh-minded new grad student,
I saw her first with her back turned 
in an old granny dress,
puffing a push lawn mower,
slight rust on the edge of the blades,
up the ridge of her yard.

She rented me a single room,
board elsewhere
and, new to that town,
became a friend. 
I watched Bonzana with her,
her wording for that cowboy classic.

Once stumbling back to my room
on a Sunday evening, 
a term paper weighing down my head,
she said:
Young man, (her name for me)
there's this group called the Beatles
on the Ed Sullivan show. Want to watch it with me?
No, I replied, I have too much to do, 
robbing myself of an iconic experience
to plumb the depths of Pope's Rape Of The Lock.

I am still fortunate to be able  
to cut my lawn with a power mower
and don't know how Mrs. Derment
did with just the old blades.
She died at 89.
I neglected  to see her that last year.
I think she is happy though.
Surely there is grass in Heaven.


- © Vern Fein 2020

A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over one hundred poems on over fifty sites, a few being: *82 Review, The Literary Nest, Gyroscope Review, The Vehicle, Courtship of Winds, 500 Miles, The Write Launch, Broadkill Review, Soft Cartel, and River and South.

New Poetry by Frank C Modica

J’accuse

Sneering greasers chase Thomas in the cafeteria,
he runs from laughing jocks down the hallway,
between the doorway and the desks of my French class
his voice rings like a bell but I don’t want to hear his words.

All these years I never acknowledge Thomas,
my tongue tied, the mute observer,
I never apologize, never stand with him--
I remain as silent as the acoustic drop ceilings.
Is it any wonder that  Proud Polacks, Dagos, Micks
get away with slamming Thomas into school lockers,
yelling “fag” as they rip books out of his arms?
There is no place he can hide, no sanctuary.

Fifty years after high school graduation.
he is skin and bones in a vault.
My mea culpas come too late. I stand accused
by the ghost of Thomas McKinley.


- © Frank C Modica 2020

Frank C Modica is a retired public school special education teacher  living in Urbana, Illinois. He taught students with special needs for 34 years.  His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Heart Magazine, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, and The Tishman Review.

New Poetry by Robert Nisbet

Dai’s Day

Dai prowls the town in deepest Western Wales,
finds garrulous acquaintance, becks and nods.
He buys a naughty postcard for his niece
in Ballymena, eats a bacon roll.

Spring soon, no burst of apple blossom yet,
but spring so soon, so very, very soon.
Two magazine rejections cloud no more
than twenty fleeting minutes of Dai’s day,
and on then to the Jug and Bottle bar,
two lagers with a sometime college friend.

Late afternoon, spring sun, and Dai, Dai’s girl,
meet in a quiet tea room


- © Robert Nisbet 2020

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who very much enjoys the current US poetry scene. He has been published regularly in magazines like San Pedro River Review, Panoply and Third Wednesday. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

New Short Fiction by S.F. Wright

The Cipher

  

Arlene Cardino lived with her mother. Before she was made a full-time cashier, she’d run the gift department, a job which allowed her to sit on a chair in the receiving area for long stretches of time while she opened and sorted merchandise. Once a year, Arlene attended the Renaissance Faire with her coworker, Katie, the latter of whom got into costume and jousted. Apart from this annual excursion, Arlene spent her free time reading romance novels.

*

Drew was responsible for changing out tills, counting deposits, authorizing returns, doing cash pickups, dealing with disgruntled customers, and supervising as few as one and as many as twelve cashiers at once. His day would run smoothly—even agreeably—if he had one of the efficient college girls or one of the more competent veteran employees for a cashier. On the other hand, his day could be aggravating if he were stuck with one of the garrulous housewives; the old man, Casey Fair; or Arlene Cardino.

*

Since corporate had rendered the position of gift department lead obsolete, Arlene had floated from one section to another: children’s, customer service, newsstand. But more and more management had put Arlene at cashwrap. Arlene was a slow ringer. However, she was always accurate, to the dime, with her till.

 She also went to the restroom often and for long periods of time, and always exceeded her allotted break time. Drew told Ryan Harris, the store manager, who told Drew that, as cashwrap supervisor, he should be the one reprimanding Arlene. Drew did. Arlene said it took two minutes just to walk to the timeclock, five if she stopped to use the restroom—and why should she use her break time to use the restroom when employees on the salesfloor didn’t? As for her fifteen-minute break—for which employees didn’t punch out—she didn’t consider the break to have started until she was in the break room. She walked as fast as she could, she shouldn’t be punished for not being able to move as quickly as others.

  Drew asked if she could be a bit more conscious of the time

Arlene huffed and returned to her register.

 One Saturday, Drew came in for the 10-6:30 shift. He’d closed the night before, and then drank Evan Williams and Coca-Cola in his room until two thirty. During the first hour, his mind was a blur; as it was two weeks before Christmas, the store was packed. He constantly approved returns, did cash pickups, counted down tills. Arlene had come in at eight thirty; the opening head cashier, Ken, had assigned Drew the register next to hers. So, throughout the day, he had to enter his numbers for her returns, restock her register tape, and do her pickups.

 At four, Ken took his till down, while the closing head cashier, Christina, set up her till in the cashroom. Drew had to authorize every return, exchange, and cancellation, and consequentially was constantly rushing around. So, he could barely suppress rolling his eyes when a man came to his register with a stack of dogeared books he didn’t have a receipt for and which he wanted to return to his credit card.

 Drew explained the return policy. The man was obdurate. Drew told him he couldn’t take the books back. The man got testy. 

 Drew called a manager. 

 Leonard showed up.

 A few minutes later, Leonard not only took the books back, but put the credit onto the man’s Visa. Drew was livid. When he asked Leonard why, Leonard shrugged. It was a judgment call; the books didn’t look that bad; he told the man he was making an exception. 

 Stewing, Drew said nothing more.

 Shortly thereafter, Arlene called Drew over. She held up a receipt, a woman at her register looked piqued. 

  She wants to return this book and put it back on her Amex. But this was from seventeen days ago.

  It’s only been three days. I was out of town and didn’t get back until last night.

  Drew, still exasperated, said, You can put it back on her card. He entered his numbers and walked over to help Violet, a twenty-two-year-old nursing student. And breathing in Violet’s perfume as he helped her with an exchange, he wished he had another life completely.

*

He thought nothing more about the return—he still smarted over Leonard’s approving the other one. When he took down Arlene’s till and she acted chilly, he attributed it to nothing more than her typical moodiness.  So, he was somewhat surprised, a short while later, when Ryan Harris asked to speak to him.

 In the tight, nearly claustrophobic cashroom, Drew’s mouth dropped open when Harris told him Arlene complained about the way he’d handled the return that was three days past the fourteen-day window.

  We know we tell our head cashiers to use their judgment, but you have to make an effort to enforce the policy—especially after Arlene was trying to enforce it herself. She felt you didn’t back her up.

  Drew looked at Harris. Any other day he might’ve let it go, but the frustration that had been building was too much: he told Harris he’d been very busy, that he’d just been overridden on a much more questionable return by Leonard, and that he did tell the woman the policy was fourteen days before authorizing it (a minor lie).

   Harris sighed. He said to be a bit sterner. Drew muttered, Fine, and returned to his register.

*

 He’d have Arlene as a cashier numerous times after that; always, there was unspoken tension between them. Drew knew he could’ve extinguished or at least assuaged the uneasiness if he apologized for—or even acknowledged—his cursory approval of the late return. But he didn’t think he had anything to apologize for.

  Less than a year later, Drew quit. He later heard Arlene left as well to take a job at the company’s customer service headquarters. He assumed the position would allow her to sit all day while answering the phone, which Drew was certain would suit her.

- © S.F. Wright 2020

S.F. Wright lives and teaches in New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Quarter After Eight, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and Elm Leaves Journal, among other places. His website is sfwrightwriter.com

New Poetry by Paul Koniecki

i tried on my father’s pants

i tried toughskin and corduroy
polyester chino cotton rayon

i tried on my father’s pants
and they were too long

i traced pictures of scorpions
on graph paper and hid them

in the miniature coin pockets
of his jeans folded laser tight

i tried on overalls
and the onesies mechanics wear

i tried on costumes and starch
spells spelling poison five fingered

death-touch curses nunchuck
training don’t ask me what i do

to make a living
ask me what i do to make a life

i am the still blue figure

the dead lake
the terrible mirror

typing like a moon
i am the little boy waiting

to grow eight legs
and a barbed tail

sting the sun
and the hand that placed

it there
make a desert of the sky


© Paul Koniecki 2020

Paul Koniecki lives and writes in Dallas, Texas. He was once chosen for the John Ashbery Home School Residency. He is the Associate Editor of Thimble Literary Journal. His books of poetry are available from Kleft Jaw Press, NightBallet Press, Dark Particle Press, and Spartan Press.