Natural Chime

A warm day– and my dog is playing fetch
with the ghosts of our buried friends;
gusts from the mountain top return
with poppy seeds and hints of rain,
and we sit on the patio,
remembering those months in Poland,
artisan villages in France, where
fields of wheat bend like catapults,
and spring during the day.

I’m searching for something more
than hanging pots, but natural gardens,
wildflowers with a smudged lipstick gaze
wondering why life demands beauty; cottages
invaded by armies of dandelions,
trucks decades gone
but the aching farmer finds ways
to keep a rusty engine running.

Hiking towards a river only ever heard,
surrounded by sunflowers, elderberries,
the music of bluebirds on burnt wood,
frogs jubilant in their stagnant ponds,
a cadence eons in training,
effortless like the mad stillness
after a successful round
of Russian roulette.

Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, The Chiron Review, IceFloe Press, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Ink in Thirds, Dark Winter Lit, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English.

Hurtz Donut

Dumb tattoos
as meaningless/ful
as detention hall dreams
scrawled on the desk
just passing time
til they let me go

Jonathan S Baker lives and works just above the frown of the Ohio River in Evansville, Indiana.  They are the author of several collections of poetry and the host of Indiana’s longest running poetry series, Poetry Speaks.

PARTHENON

The Parthenon stands before me, tilted,
an orange halo around it,
clumps of meandering green in front,
two grey clouds above, like huge birds,
one on each side.

Black and white rectangular patterns
stripe around the rim.

It has survived years in a multiple of houses.
When I first saw it, I was young.
Now, it’s going to survive its founder,
its creator, its builder, its purchaser.
Things from antiquity outlast the people who saw them first.
There’s nothing of note in that.

The plate outliving me is of no substance.
Inanimate things do end up in museums,
or on top of household furniture,
irrespective of the generation who made them,
or first spied them on display in cheap tourist stalls.
Moments we have had we resuscitate,
till our last breaths.

Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school. Published in Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Littoral, Orbis, South, Pulsar, Lothlorien and others. Poetry pamphlets Wasted Leaves (1995) and I Went With Her (2007). Alan has just recently started submitting again (after a little pause).

…At A Gentle Canter

Abstinence and Repulsion
… I blame the Celibates
for the Fires in the Temple.
Put your ‘Confessional
Face’ away, it’s making
me nauseous… Mask On!
“… they’ve blamed
Rachael for it… just like
you claimed they would… ”
It’s not the ‘Evidence’
… but those in Attendance
that matters… and we Rule.
‘Splinters’ completely…
Cell-Pondering past-tense
is a Punishment wrapped
up inside a Prison Sentence.

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry books “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration” and “It Is Big And It Is Clever: Book 1 Of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” are all now available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

Poll Watcher

So say it rains.
Say it rains during zazen
during posture practice.
The drops strike the roof
and leak into your mind.
During a daydream at night
a reverie of a revered one
before bedding-down a day
rolls like a drop rolling
off the beleaguered roof.
A few dead in Arkansas.
Tornados rarely make it this far.
We get the last of the rain,
Godzilla diminished,
still, when he falls he damages
plenty. The effect is felt
at the precinct hall
where watchers count out
the minutes left till closing time.
The president’s name is immaterial.
None of those who voted for him know

they voted for the one
destined to appall.
This cycle meant nothing after all.

Steve Hamelman teaches English at Coastal Carolina University where he has published two books and many articles/reviews on American fiction and rock, some creative pieces too (e.g., poems in The Blotter). He’s the review editor for the journals Popular Music and Society and Rock Music Studies.

Watching ping pong

Level is level either way
but lever, given
the opportunity
quickly turns into a party.

While my 1991 Civic
works great
in drive or reverse.

Doug Sylver’s writing can be found in Drifting Sands, The Sun Magazine, The New York
Times and Fixator Press, among other publications. He is a recently retired public high 
school teacher and lives with his love, Monica, in Seattle.

The linguistic fall

Aurora Borealis
& its strange, new meaning.
Ionization in the
magnetospheric plasma
the sky’s open eyes
the goddess of the dawn subsumed
now a palimpsestic trace.

What’s the point of trying to
immortalise these thoughts
with words that aren’t my own?
We all dip from the same linguistic well,
& everything said
has been better said
by minds & souls
with more depth
& the ability
— uncanny & otherworldly —
to harness more precisely
that harmony between
meaning & saying.

Nothing sets one’s words apart
from those of any others
besides, perhaps, those deviations
from the “real”
— infidelities & lies,
delusions & denials,
blind spots & wilful obscurities —
but they anchor me
— with cams & carabiners
belay-rappel devices —
to the sheer face
perilously perched
above the catacombs
of the first Christians.

Cartesian consciousness
is a lonely & desperate thing.
We all dip from the same deep well
but we dip to slake a thirst
like no other,
& water flows
to fill each vessel
& match its shape.

In the beginning was the word
& the word ‘came flesh
but the flesh falls
& all ends
in silence.

Julian is a fledgling poet from Melbourne, Australia. He studied literature and professional writing and now works as a corporate shill, selling his corrupted pen to the highest bidder. His poetry is an attempt to make sense of a lifetime of bad choices. He has been published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Horror Sleaze Trash.  

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Fixator Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Censor

Derailed by unsympathetic deliveries
Mending my dull midpoint
That owned a snail-like level speed
Gratitude as a safeguard stung me
Below par verbal communication
Scrutiny took a nosedive
Elasticity and some emolument
Fleeting footing produced by past abrasion encounters
Rancorous thoughts were often frequent
Gawking at forged reinforcements
A Family jungle filled with irregular black oaks
Censor all success classifications
This emotional peroration experienced a beheading

CJ The Tall Poet is a poet, digital artist, and author based in Chula Vista, California who’s currently attending Cal State University San Marcos for a degree in Literature and Writing.Their writing has appeared in The Drabble, Shortkidstories.com, Bardics-Anonymous, Dadakuku, Coalition-works, Journal of Expressive Writing, and redrosethorns.

Stephen Jarrell Williams can be found on “X” Twitter @ papapoet