Osmosis

When the paintbrush
cuts a rug on the canvas,
it informs
of a maelstrom in the mind
of the artist.
Piebald lineaments persuade.
Whenever you meander
with whoever you move,
it matters not,
as you influence the fountainhead,
of my métier
and I’m euphoric
about its rare steam
like the monochrome before me.

Sanjeev Sethi is an award-winning poet who has authored eight poetry books. His poems have been published in over thirty-five countries and appear in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He is highly commended in the Erbacce Prize, UK, May 2025. He lives in Mumbai, India.

 X @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems ||  

Poem for Andrea Gibson

we never met
but i thought
we were made
of stronger stuff
you & i

i thought we would
yell our words
down the throats
of caves forever
& that they’d echo back at us
with twice as many riddles
i thought we’d find all
of love’s hidden places

but this morning i cried
on the telephone
cancer & a failing heart
& a brain turned to mush
& you aren’t here
it turns out i was always
the stuff of soft clay
while your mouth
was always full of grit

if someone sends you a message now
there will be no reply from the dead
no final fight song
no morning gossip
disguised as a prayer

there will be
so many things
that get left unsaid.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020),
Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis
Chronicles Press, 2023) and Dead Photographs, (Stubborn Mule Press, 2024). He may be
reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

 

A Folk Painting

The mirror is cracked and I am torn in half.
Where the silver is gone, it is black;
a path I dare not tread is that.
And when I look in, I am partly missing.

I am everyman with the task
of recovering the fragments of myself scattered.
I would not have had it like that;
I would have preferred to remain whole
and present. To be in my body

in each step that is the dance I forgot,
and I have no dancing teacher but the past,
where the silver disappeared and cannot
be recovered. There are no craft masters to restore it.

I have seen folk paintings made on mirrors
and from them I can perhaps learn to fill the absences.

Jack Galmitz was born in 1951 in New York City. He was educated in the public schools and received a Ph.D in modern American Literature from the University of Buffalo. He has been writing for 50 years. Whether such a long-term committment was wise is still open to debate. He has published in numerous online and print journals. To name a few: Otoliths; Utsanga; otata; Former People; Synchronized Chaos. This year 4 poems will be published by Sandy Press.

Just To Clarify

… although I’m not looking to
actually arrive at
… ‘Apotheosis’…
just to keep almost hitting it
by a hairsbreadth
… the Goal is ‘Better’
not ‘Perfection’… more Road.
I’d take
‘Out Of The Ballpark’
all day every day, if I could,
over the ‘Winner’s Circle’
… I hope that I’m never
PERFECT in my Craft…
merely each year a little closer…

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 collections “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration”, “It Is Big And It Is Clever: Book 1 of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” and “South Wales Outlaw: Book 2 of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” are all available by Close To The Bone Publishing.