New Poetry by Robert Bulman

The archaeology of anxiety

the archaeology of anxiety

found the fear of death inside the vase

plugged up and out of reach

until relentless curiosity

spilled thanatophobia

into the atmosphere

where it circulated

across the continents

drifting down as dust

the accretion of our collective fear

guided by gravity

floating back to the center of things

where we all meet up again

eventually

- © Robert Bulman 2021

Robert Bulman is a professor at Saint Mary's College of California, where poetry seems to hang in the air like smoke. Born in the American Midwest, he grew up in Southern California and then drifted north. He is an emerging middle-aged poet living and working in Northern California

New Poetry by Gwil James Thomas

Summer Departed like a Fallen Scoop of Peach Ice Cream, Licked up by a Rabid Dog from The Dirty Pavement.   

Beaming with black sunglasses

Summer wandered over

wearing denim hot pants 

and a sunflower yellow bikini top.

You gently wrapped your hands 

around her bronzed hips, 

as she pressed her chest against yours 

and planted a bittersweet kiss on your lips.

It was hard to see her go -   

but she assured you that she’d return 

and you knew that she would - 

just as you knew she’d be coming back 

for a long time after you were gone too.

Smiling, Summer then peeled herself 

from you and slowly stepped back -

brushing your palm with her fingers

as she disappeared to the 

rustling of leaves. 

Her sisters were already on their way - 

they were colder, grittier, more complex 

and all that made Summer truly matter. 

- © Gwil James Thomas 2021

Gwil James Thomas is a novelist, poet and inept musician. He lives in his hometown of Bristol, England, but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. His two most recent poetry chapbooks are Lonesome Wholesome Soup (Holy & Intoxicated Publications) and Under The Same Moon (Between Shadows Press) a split with the poet Tohm Bakelas. He plans to one day build a house, amongst other things.

New Poetry by Henry Stimpson

Memory Murder Mystery

I know the Cream of Wheat jingle,

the first four lines of “To Autumn,”

Mickey Mantle’s batting average,

Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns,

artiodactyls versus perissodactyls,

sushi versus sashimi,

my dead alcoholic grandmother’s

favorite brand of sherry,

and the square mileage of Delaware,

but among that vast detritus

I can never ever dredge up

those three pap-bland names

the singer had to rub out

to be reborn

as Nina Simone.

The Loneliest Monk

“And who is The Loneliest Monk?”

–MTV reporter to Bill Clinton, who said Thelonious Monk was his favorite jazz artist

The acolyte of solitude speaks sparingly,

each word a pearl cultured in his mind

with opalescent layers of meaning.

World leaders: pay attention.

His aura trembles to the music

of the spheres like candlelight.

- © Henry Stimpson 2021

Henry Stimpson’s poems, articles and essays have appeared in Poet Lore, Cream City Review, Lighten Up Online, Rolling Stone, Muddy River Poetry Review, Mad River Review, Aethlon, Bluepepper, The MacGuffin, The Aurorean, Common Ground Review, Vol1Brooklyn, Poets & Writers, The Boston Globe and other publications.  He’s been a public relations consultant and writer for decades. Once upon a time, he was a reference librarian, a prison librarian and a cabdriver. He lives in Massachusetts.

New Poetry by R. Gerry Fabian

Learning Curve

At last, the reunion,

under an Ottawa traffic signal

during December’s last days.

The return of a stranger

with heavy foreign accent

in the middle of an ice storm mirage.

A frozen tongue speaks stencil messages.

I’ve lost more

than I can ever regain 

to this city.

Ours is a unicorn union, now.

I fumble in the present

in an attempt to initiate the past.

You are a snow sculpture.

Every minute together

hangs like an icicle.

Finally we call a halt

to this terrible two day catastrophe.

It is awkward because you

are home

and I am a Christmas present

that needs to be returned.

- © R. Gerry Fabian 2021

R. Gerry Fabian is an internationally published poet and novelist. He has published four books of his published poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and Ball On The Mound. In addition, he has published three novels : Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, and Seventh Sense. His web page is https://rgerryfabian.wordpress.com, Twitter @GerryFabian2. He lives in Doylestown, PA.

New Poetry by Joe Balaz

Not My Circus                                                                                                             

I no tink so Slick,

dat no sound too good to me.

Not interested,

no desire,

so you can just stay deah

on your street corner

wit your little bags

of momentary euphoria.

               

I not looking

to be bathed in wun heavenly glow

cause wen da shine wears off

it’s like jumping out of wun airplane

witout wun parachute

and landing on da pavement

like wun ovah ripe cantaloupe.

I’m really much too spunky

to be wun sorry junkie

fooling wit da fire,

spoon, and needle.

It’s moa hip

to take wun natural trip

by rapping to da beat of my feet

dat stay walking away.

If you could read my mind

it would be telling you

not my circus,  

not my monkeys,

cause wen you play stupid games

you win stupid prizes.

- © Joe Balaz 2021

Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) and American English.  He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry. In July, 2020, Balaz was given the Elliot Cades Award for Literature as an Established Writer.  It is the most prestigious literary award given in Hawai’i.  Balaz presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

New Poetry by Jean Bohuslav

pruning

Inspired by Ali Whitelock's ‘the lactic acid in the calves of your despair’

who will wring disappointment from the

sleeves of your thick woollen jumper

soak separation from each repetitive stitch

with warm soapy water

as thoughts of mother hang in the air

who will lay your hand-knit on

a slab of hindsight

in bright forgiving sun of a new day

who will sow seeds of inspiration

into each stride

and serve you a meal at their table

does pride need to be honoured when

batons are left at the blocks

uncage the bird from your heart

only you

have keys for surrender

support exists  

even when you doubt

now is time to let the hungry dog loose

cleanse bat-winged corridors from mind

light bonfires of desire

prune

for spring buds

- © Jean Bohuslav 2021

Jean Bohuslav lives on the SurfCoast of Victoria. She enjoys submitting to Meniscus, Kissing Dynamite, Poetry on the Move, Poetry Wivenhoe, Mad Swirl, U3A SurfCoast Poetry, Tango Australis as well as Bluepepper.

New Poetry by Michael Keshigian

Panda Bear

 

Because he was terrified of loneliness,

he granted me life

and the ability to share with him

what little time he had remaining.

I placated his hours of isolation.

With no mobility,

he carried me everywhere,

onto the veranda with its view of the lake

on most sunny days

and nightly, in front of the television.

I could hear him limping

as he approached from the hall,

his gait, a telltale sign of concern.

Will he discuss his wife’s departure

or the considerable ineptitude

of political leaders?

Neighbors never visited,

they thought him odd, reclusive,

yet I know he would have welcomed

even the most abbreviated conversation.

No one complained about him,

he once entered a burning house

across the street

to save the wailing dog,

observation, his forte,

he knew no one was home.

The woman, living there,

who sobbed incessantly,

occasionally waved as she pulled

from out her driveway.

These midnight thoughts

are my only escape

from his ceaseless chatter.

I stare at him as he sleeps.

In the morning, he will open the blinds

and the sun will continue to melt

my button black eyes to a faded gray.

How I envy him. I yearn for eyelids 

and a single night of obscurity.

- © Michael Keshigian 2021

Michael Keshigian is the author of 14 poetry collections. His most recent poems have appeared in Muddy River Review, Studio One, Jerry Jazz Musician, San Pedro River Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal. He has been published in numerous national and international journals and has appeared as feature writer in twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)

 

New Poetry by Fotoula Reynolds

When the world seems a dungeon

What might a lily

With all her being

Wish for?

Her aim is true

Toward any sun

A bold rankness

An unceasing

Obsession to

Become herself

A continual longing

A tense line of ivory

Wrapping over

The boundaries of

The blossom is so

Unmistakable in

The decision of

Her direction

Skyward she rises

In a steady siren

Of Calla confidence

Her waxy petal cups a

Yellow spike like an

Eternal flame in God’s

Garden, on days blacker

Than night, when Earth

Becomes timid

Where the dragonfly

Goes beating his

Blind wings against

The long lines of the rain

The lily trumpets with spirit

 

- © Fotoula Reynolds 2021

Fotoula Reynolds is a writer of poetry, born in Australia of Greek heritage. She lives in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria and convenes a poetry reading group in her local community. She regularly attends and participates in spoken word events in and around the city of Melbourne. She is the author of three poetry collections and is published in five Australian anthologies. Fotoula is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee.

 

New Poetry by John Stanizzi

Jah Rain

Got to have kaya now

Got to have kaya now

Got to have kaya now

For the rain is falling

-Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Kaya"

                                  

rain in the hills

on curled October leaves

on the tarnished crop

 

one drop

mercurial hop

from blade of grass

to blade of grass

            glazed chain of rain

 

strings of grass

gilded with water light

playing faint notes

 

rain in the hills

a room just after dusk

the sacristy of night

 

thoughts of morning sun

thanks and praises

for the sound of wings in rain

 

blessings in blades of grass

that grow up

through shrapnel

into the air

into the clouds

the sweetest taste of life

 

lightest rain

in the dark

lights the dark

Jah rain

that makes children sing

when they drink it

- © John Stanizzi 2021

John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections Ecstasy Among Ghosts (Antrim House), Sleepwalking (Antrim House), Dance Against the Wall (Antrim House), After the Bell (BigTable), Hallelujah Time! (Big Table), High Tide – Ebb Tide (Kelsay Books), Four Bits (Grayson Press), Chants (Cervena Barva), Sundowning Main Street Rag, POND (imspired – UK)), and The Tree That Lights The Way Home (Antrim House). John is the Flash Fiction Editor of Abstract Magazine TV, and he has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others.  He teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com

 

New Poetry by Christian Garduno

The Eastern Hemisphere

The blood trade-

it stains your throat

skulking around Astrid’s blown-out town

I’ve been asleep for centuries

dreaming of yesterday

The gloaming has eight arms

to push the sands back up the hourglass

your heart beats in a sound-proof box

two things can be true at the very same time

strains of Vivaldi wafting through your hair

We are beginning our descent

yellow traffic lights blinking on blank streets

your eyelids flutter

the Sun is moving

it is we who are still in the night 

- © Christian Garduno 2021

Christian Garduno’s work can be read in over 80 literary magazines. He is the recipient of the 2019 national Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry. Garduno is a Finalist in the 2020-2021 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Writing Contest. He lives and writes along the South Texas coast with his wonderful wife Nahemie and young son Dylan.  

 

 

 

New Prose Poetry by Keith Hoerner

The Incredulity of Thomas

An index finger points the way from beneath the altar at Santa Croce Church in Gerusalemme, Roma. Postmortem examinations record the appearance to be blackened at the tip to the first knuckle; ashen grey for the remainder; absent of nail; with an irregular, saw cut along the webbing. Like a fat cigarette that’s been snuffed-out and soaked... I ponder this relic and imagine it in a clear, Petri-like dish, resting as a dial in a compass: coming to life with a shudder, spinning wildly, and settling its accusatory point on all passersby incredulous with doubt—of its existence. 

- © Keith Hoerner 2021

Keith Hoerner lives, teaches, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois. His recently published memoir, The Day the Sky Broke Open, can be found on Amazon. 

New Poetry by Brian Rihlmann

Pencil marks

I park in the cul-de-sac,
stop at the bottom 
of the driveway and 
grab the mail from the box.
The garage door’s open
so I take that route.
Before going in I pause and 
look at the pencil marks 
on the door jamb, 
just like the ones 
from my childhood bedroom.
I was always so eager
to be tall like Dad.
I waited impatiently 
for a summer growth spurt
that never quite came,
bugged her every week
to check it again.
Standing here now
I examine hers 
from ten years ago, 
five, and one from this year;
a half inch below the last,
a half inch closer to the ground.
I go in the house.
She’s in the kitchen.
Hi Mom, I say. I hug her. 
Squeeze. Too much.
Not so tight, she says.
You’ll break my bones.
I let her go, then.
I’m sure I’ve already broken her
more than enough.

- © Brian Rihlmann 2021

Brian Rihlmann lives in Reno, Nevada. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal Of Poetry, and New York Quarterly. He has authored three collections of poetry, most recently “A Screaming Place,” (2021) by Cajun Mutt Press.

New Poetry by Bow Campbell

In the Wheelhouse

Kill it with fire

Bury it at sea

The destination 

Never meant that much to me

She sails herself now

She sails of her own accord

I’m in the wheelhouse

And there’s no one else on board

In the wheelhouse

I’m in the wheelhouse

There is a pirate

And he sails the seven seas

He carries cargo

That nobody ever sees

A true believer

And a port in every storm

You lose your anchor

You wake up on the shore. 

In the wheelhouse

In the wheelhouse

I’m in the wheelhouse

And there’s no one else on board

There’s nobody else on board

- © Bow Campbell 2021

Bow Campbell is a musician from Sydney, Australia. He maintains he has no business posting his musings on a poetry blog. But he can’t do gigs due to lockdown, so an old friend suggested he send some lyrics to Bluepepper. In the interests of full disclosure, the editor of this blog is that old friend. Bow is a founding member of the legendary Sydney band Front End Loader, and has worked over the years with many of the greats of the Sydney music scene including Bernie Hayes and Brendan Gallagher. Bow and I have collaborated before with an old band of his, The Impossibles, and plan to do so again. 

New Poetry by Robert Ronnow

The Writer Working Hard

   

This morning I put the apostrophe in

and this afternoon I took it out.

Oscar Wilde’s comic wit

about the writer working hard.

Revision has lately become the sign

of seriousness, as in I revise

some poems a hundred times,

maybe more. A word of praise here,

a critical word there.

Before that there was the debate

if poems not stitched with end-sounds

were playing tennis without a net.

Late summer, August, hot, but

chickadees forming platoons.

Three months until the snow flies,

sure as the June my father died.

- © Robert Ronnow 2021

Robert Ronnow's most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). Visit his web site at www.ronnowpoetry.com.

New Poetry by John Grey

The Three Largest Cities In Europe

I keep watch in your sleep,

unwitting expressions I name like the birds,

a tremble, a sigh, like you’ve reached

the top of a hill –

I’ve kept up – I’m beside you.

It’s the face I saw when I was a child,

in the garden rose,

the blinding light at the top of the column,

in window mist after a day of rain.

When we are together,

we are five of the four elements,

candles flutter in our veins,

nerves climb stairs

then go down again.

I have loved you

in the three largest cities in Europe,

the sun-yellowed Italian piazza,

in the winter of separation,

in memory and expectation.

I find you in heaps of fine hay,

in red clay, morning upon morning,

in the solstice, the ripening trees -

on days when I hear no voices,

I listen to yours.

And yes,

when the lake is smooth as a cheek,

your shadow makes ripples in the water.

- © John Grey 2021

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Penumbra, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and Held.

 

 

New Poetry by Sherry Poff

Light, Shining

 

Out of the coal-seamed earth

   layers of leaf-fall

   April's tender buds

   July's verdant green

   blackened, compressed

 

out of the darkness

   of wooded roadsides

   cooled by streaming air,

   water oozing chill

   from beneath flat rocks

 

clean as stars in a dusky sky,

they rise on slender stems:

daisies and Queen Anne's lace,

nodding like sages

in the wake

of our passing.

- © Sherry Poff 2021

Sherry Poff grew up in the hills of West Virginia. She now lives and writes in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she interacts with a large group of students and family members. Sherry holds an MA in Writing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is a member of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous online and print publications.  Sherry’s short poem “Resurrection,” published in Liquid Imagination, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Three New Poems by Emma Foster

The Heroes

Things were so gray when we were young

We just didn’t know it.

Till now,

The world was sky-stabbing castles of stone,

Dragons gutted through—

Warm hearts of obsidian flesh—

Thrust into pieces by gold,

Before the day was saved

And the hero could be return home victorious

By dinner.

The Monsters

High school, the limbo years,

But we still don’t know why gray is so garbled.

One day we witness two girls in the hall

Engage in hand-to-hand combat

Between Biology and Algebra.

Blood and hair under their nails, they fling

Their makeshift kennings at each other.

We can’t understand

Why it’s so hard to be good

Before we realize we are monsters too.

 

The End

Now in our twenties

We confuse storybook endings with catechisms.

Back-alley sunsets

Like cut lips and bruises

Smear our faces—we sit in the gravel

By the abandoned train tracks.

These ashen bones, our unforeseen inheritance,

Feel empty at 4:30 am.   

We sit and scream, O, Wuldor-Fæder

Where did our castles go?

- © Emma Foster 2021

Emma Foster is a recent college graduate, fiction writer, and poet from Florida. She can be found in the Cedarville Review, Voices of the Valley, Ariel Chart, and she is forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit and Nailpolish Stories. 

 

New Short Fiction by Dale Stromberg

Geistergarten

I don't exist—I happen.

 A daydreamer’s story: “I told people he was my lover. I think he worked in a sexy profession. An architect or airline pilot or something. He was tall and Iranian, kept fit, barely spoke, and always had two-day stubble. His only English was, ‘I felt like seeing your face.’ I’d be out on the veranda, smoking a cigarette. Wondering if maybe today was the end of the world. He’d show up at my apartment without warning. And smile: ‘I felt like seeing your face.’ We’d take a bath together, at perfect rest.”

 An infantryman’s story: “They sent us up the wrong hill. They filled our guns with the wrong ammunition. They put us under the wrong general. Our boats were pointed in one wrong direction and our planes in another wrong direction. Our flag was the wrong color, blowing the wrong way. We attacked the wrong enemy from the wrong position. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You never hear the one that hits you. I leaked, I bubbled, I groaned, I faded. My country… my country… my country wasted me.”

 An investigator’s story: “We couldn’t find a next-of-kin. The medical examiner ruled it a cerebral infarction. Her landlord called her a model tenant. The neighbors on her floor were less charitable: ‘dirty whore,’ ‘raunchy bitch,’ ‘needed a bath.’ Still, the case looked commonplace until we searched the house. Found them at the back of the bedroom closet. The desiccated remains, wrapped in plastic, of four stillborn babies. Her diary made no mention of any children. Studied the whole thing, never found a clue. It was just a bleak record of loneliness.”

- © Dale Stromberg 2021

Dale Stromberg grew up not far from Sacramento before moving to Tokyo, where he had a brief music career. Now he lives near Kuala Lumpur and makes ends meet as an editor and translator. His work has been published here and there.

New Poetry by Jim Conwell

Dark Matter

 

Why, is a question

I’ve never found the answer to.

 

We do not even know why the galaxies

are flying apart instead of collapsing

down gravity wells.

 

My grandfather, who died in the time I was conceived,

he was a farmer, a wheelwright, a tailor,

could mend shoes.

He was a god-fearing, hard-fisted man.

 

I am his grandson.

Show me the equation for that.

Tell me, even, how many blackboards you would need.

- © Jim Conwell 2021

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 many  magazines including The Ogham Stone, The Pangolin Review, The Seventh Quarry, The SHOp, The Stray Branch, Turbulence and Uneven Floor, He has had two poems shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Prize and has work published in two anthologies.

 

New Poetry by Lisa Creech Bledsoe

Message From the Center of the Universe

- for Burley Creech

Lightning-flash. I see a man

with rugged hands at the pasture gate

who loves me, loved me, is gone, still

goes on. So many of us

were the only one & special favorite of 

a man guiding, building fires

under stars, deer going to ground

and his wiry, strong arms around

me. I remember a man at night

when I stood in tears who gathered

me in, brought me home, sang

and made the garden dirt, crushed weeds

& tobacco smoke sweet with story

and I knew a man in my dream—

younger somehow but known, leaping stone

to clean stone, laughing, gone. I knew

a man cracking nuts by the hurricane lamp

& the poems he told, the notes he slipped

folded into my coat. I climbed

in dusty barns, leapt down, swung out

on the rope and dropped into a dark river

dreaming below sycamore and oak, corn silver

under the lightning-bug night and a

walking stick by an empty chair, a man

stoking the woodstove who loves me,

loved me, is gone, still goes on.

- © Lisa Creech Bledsoe 2021

Student of weeds and crows, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the Western North Carolina mountains. She has two books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020), and poems out in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Softblow, Waterwheel Review, Otoliths, and Lammergeier, among others. She can be found online at AppalachianGround.com